Experts on countries of origin by country

The Expert is a Full Professor of Social and Political Anthropology at the University of Konstanz in Germany.

Barrister and academic, with extensive research, publishing and advisory experience in former Soviet Union and other countries, fluent in Russian

C. Christine Fair is a Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at the United States Institute of Peace.  Her most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2018/2019).  She has authored, co-authored and co-edited several books, including Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (Oxford University Press); Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Policing Insurgencies: Cops as Counterinsurgents (Oxford University Press, 2014); Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh (Routledge, 2010); Treading on Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (USIP, 2008), and The Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008), among others.  

She is a member of Women in International Security, International Studies… Read more

Dr. Shaul Gabbay completed a BA at Bar Ilan University and an MA at Tel-Aviv University. In 1991 he received a Presidential Fellowship from the U.S. to continue his studies. In 1995 he completed the PhD program at Columbia University in New York and received an invitation from the University of Chicago for a Post Doctoral program. In 1998 Dr. Gabbay returned to Israel to join the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Professor Gabbay joined the University of Denver as the Director of the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies in 2001- 2010.  He continued his research at DU as a Senior Scholar until 2015 when he was appointed Director of the Global Research Institute.

His areas of expertise include Middle East cultures and societal norms,   Middle East conflicts, and human rights issues existing in Muslim societies.  He is regularly cited and acts as a commentator in national and international media such as the Associated Press, CBS, NBC, FOX and MSNBC.

John Heathershaw is Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter.  His research addresses conflict, security, and development in global politics, especially in Central Asia.  He is author of Post-Conflict Tajikistan (Routledge, 2009), Dictators Without Borders (Yale, 2017), The UK’s Kleptocracy Problem (Chatham House, 2021) and over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles including in International Studies Review, the European Journal of International Relations, the Journal of International Relations and Development, the Review of International Studies, and the Journal of Democracy.  John is currently the principal investigator of a research project which seeks to identify the characteristics of kleptocratic enabling networks via an analysis of the data of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.  In 2021/22, he was a senior fellow of British Academy studying relations between postcommunist elites and British professional service providers. 

Heathershaw  has previously been on the faculty of the American University in Central Asia, the London School of Economics, Kings College London, and the University of Notre Dame.  Prior to entering academia, Heathershaw was a research analyst at the Ministry of Defence… Read more

The Expert is a Country Expert and academic with extensive fieldwork expeirience and providing expert reports (100+) for more than 40 firms in the UK, US, Netherlands, and Canada with areas of expertise such as but not limited to:
- Authentication documents originating from countries of expertise
- Country reports on the indicated countries of expertise
- Minority groups, religious groups
- Political, social and cultural groups: LGBT
- Organized crime and mafia, state crime
- Extremist and violent groups, including religious groups
- Human rights violations
- Women issues: honor killing
- Human trafficking
- Psychiatry and prison conditions
- Disadvantaged groups e.g. children, minorities, mentally ill, disabled, terminally ill
- Availability of medical services
- State structure, military and security services
- Drug dealing and trafficking

Dr Imam brings more than two decades of experience in mixed methods international social science practice, research, and teaching around the world, focusing on East and West Africa, South Asia, USA, and Central Asia. Her interests involve research, development, and instruction on advanced issues of human rights, international conventions on human, civil, and political rights, and against torture; police service, judicial and quasi-judicial institutions, and persecution; grievance redressal arrangements; gender analysis, gender equality, gender-based violence, forced marriages, and sexual abuse; child abuse, child marriages, and violence against children; climate-related issues; and more. She has written books and scholarly articles about public administration, employing quantitative data and qualitative streams of historical changes in socioeconomic, judicial, political, and administrative institutions.

Her work employs innovative research methodologies, focusing on getting to the crux of socio-cultural and institutional situations to deliver efficient solutions that take into account complex dynamics involving human rights, child rights, gender equality, sustainability, and other such standards, in diverse socio-political contexts.

Rico Isaacs is a Professor of International Politics at the University of Lincoln and non-resident visiting professor at Riga Stradinš University. His research concerns the relationship between culture and politics with a focus on how this appears in authoritarian, nationalist and populist politics with a specific focus on the post-communist space, especially Central Asia. He is the author Political Opposition in Authoritarianism (Palgrave 2022), Film and Identity in Kazakhstan (Bloomsbury 2018) and Party System Formation in Kazakhstan: Between Formal and Informal Politics (Routledge 2011), as well as authoring several edited volumes, including the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia (Routledge 2021) and a Critical Reader in Central Asian Studies (Routledge 2022). He also co-authored an introduction to Politics textbook and has published widely in leading peer-reviewed journals. He is also currently serving as editor of the leading peer-reviewed journal within the field of Central Asian Studies, Central Asian Survey.

Melissa Chiovenda is an assistant professor of anthropology at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi. She has  been conducting research in Afghanistan since 2009. Dr. Chiovenda’s  main research in Afghanistan concerned ethnic Hazara civil society movements and the transmission of cultural trauma. Her earlier research in Afghanistan concerned Pashtun women who were working with Western NGOs. She has a PhD from the University of Connecticut in anthropology, an MA from Georgetown University in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies with a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Crises, and a BS in Russian Language and Literature from Georgetown University. Since 2016, She has been conducting research on the political identity of Afghan, mainly Hazara, refugees in Greece and Italy. She has also started projects concerning the Hazara genocide of the late 1800s, and sexual violence historically and currently experienced by Hazara women.

Prior to working in academia, Dr. Chiovenda was a high school teacher in South Los Angeles. She also worked for United States exchange programs in Russia, was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and spent a summer teaching children at an organization in Nablus, West Bank.

Expert on Russia and Post-Soviet Countries, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

Experienced scholar and consultant combining theoretical and practical skills of analysis, intelligence and policy advise with expertise in informal networks, organized crime, corruption, illicit trade, crime-terror nexus, policing and public sector reform

Dr. Logvinenko is an expert in autocratization, democracy, and rule-of-law institutions. He is a tenured Associate Professor of Diplomacy & World Affairs at Occidental College. His research and commentary have been published in highly regarded academic journals such as Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Democratization, European Journal of Politics and Gender, Europe-Asia Studies, and Russian Politics, among others. I have also contributed to popular publications such as The Washington Post. His first book, Global Finance and Local Control: Corruption and Wealth in Contemporary Russia, was published by Cornell University Press in 2021 and received the co-winner of the 2023 Best Book Award given by the International Political Economy section of the International Studies Association. He holds a doctorate in Government from Cornell University and has taught at Wellesley College, the Cornell-in-Washington Program, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, and the Monterey Institute for International Studies. As a native of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, he studied Physics and Mathematics at Lyceum #61.

Meghan McCormack has over a decade of international development experience, with expertise spanning international human rights law, project design and implementation, and democratic governance.

During her eight years living and working in Kyrgyzstan, Meghan travelled across the country to research informal dispute resolution in un-demarcated border zones, led the design and implementation of numerous country-wide studies on human rights norms and beliefs, trained domestic lawyers on international human rights law, and founded her own CSO to represent disadvantaged households in court. In Kosovo, she has led the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission in Kosovo portfolios to enhance parliamentary democracy, electoral processes, and decentralised local governance — contributing to Kosovo’s successful parliamentary and electoral reforms in 2022 and 2023, respectively. As an independent consultant, her work has spanned Central Asia and the Balkans, encompassing monitoring and evaluation reports, grant proposals and project documents, legislative drafting, and qualitative research for UNDP, UNICEF, UN Women, USAID, Tetra Tech, and Search for Common Ground, among other organisations.

Meghan holds a J.D. from… Read more