Experts on countries of origin by country

The Expert is an Advocate from Bangladesh, holding substantial fieldwork experience within the country. She earned her LLB (Hons) from the University of London and completed her LLM (Master of Law) with a specialization in Victimology and Restorative Justice at Dhaka University.

She has attended various training programs, including "Transitional Justice in Asia and Participatory Research Tools with Survivors" organized by the Centre for the Study of Genocide and Justice, and "Human Rights and Gender Relation Analysis" organized by Ain o Shalis Kendra. Her expertise lies in Bangladeshi society and culture, particularly in the realms of Bangladeshi politics, human rights (focusing on gender and sexuality), and the rights of religious minorities (Hindus, Christians, Atheists). `

The Expert has actively contributed to research, advisory, and consultancy projects in Bangladesh, concentrating on formal and informal justice systems, freedom of speech, political rights, anti-corruption measures, violence against women, and minority rights. She maintains a robust network of experts throughout Bangladesh for document verification and is available to provide oral testimony in any court or tribunal, if necessary, to support her expert opinions.

Dr. Zvan Elliiott has studied Moroccan gender, family, and societal relationships, human rights and people’s access to them, as well as political and legal reforms since 2006. She has also published with reputable academic peer-reviewed publishers on these topics and has undertaken extensive sociological and anthropological field research in urban, provincial, and rural areas in Morocco. From 2012 until 2022, she lived, conducted research and was employed at a Moroccan university. She has a DPhil in Oriental Studies (2013) from the University of Oxford. From August 2012 to August 2018, she worked as an Assistant Professor of North African and Middle Eastern Studies at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses on North African Politics, Middle East Politics, Gender and Politics in Modern Middle East, Gender in Society and Politics, and North Africa and the Middle East in the 20th Century. In September 2018, she was promoted to the Associate Professor rank. She was a founding and an active member of the on-campus No Violence Alliance (NoVA), a committee in charge of dealing with gender-based violence cases, such as bullying, violence against LGBTQI+, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. She has also supervised undergraduate… Read more

Yihenew Alemu Tesfaye holds a PhD in Applied Anthropology, specialization in Medical Anthropology, from Oregon State University, USA. Since 2019, Yihenew has been working as a visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Gondar (UoG) and Bahir Dar University (BDU), Ethiopia. From 2022 to 2024, Yihenew worked as Professor of Anthropology in the U.S. Ambassador’s Distinguished Scholars Program (ADSP) in Ethiopia based at BDU and Dire Dawa University (DDU). For the last fifteen years Yihenew has been engaged in several multidisciplinary research projects including bio-cultural and medical anthropology, public health, water satiation and hygiene (WASH), food and water insecurity, community health workers, and inter-communal conflicts in Ethiopia and Kenya. Yihenew co-authored well over twenty-five journal articles and two book chapters. Yihenew’s research interests include anthropology, public health, inter-communal conflicts, implementation science, social determinants of health, maternal and child health, food and water insecurity, community health workers, political economy, political ecology, sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia and Kenya) and the USA.   

I am a specialist in the history and anthropology of West Africa, especially related to conflict, gender-based violence, and traditional harmful practices. For the past 17 years I have lived and worked across West Africa, in particular Liberia and Ghana, as well as Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire. Since 2019 I have worked as the Director of an Oxfordshire-based research company, Résolu Ltd. Prior to this, I held positions as Assistant Professor in Gender Violence at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Tutor in Gender, Geography & Environment at University of Oxford, and various other roles related to gender-based violence research in West Africa. My work has been published in Routledge, Third World Quarterly, and Democracy In Africa. I completed my DPhil at University of Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 2016.

An accomplished Senior Analyst with 20 years of extensive experience spanning Latin America, Australia, the United States, and Europe, supported by interdisciplinary training in economics, political science, sociology, and international affairs. Currently Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University after two years as Research Fellow at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota and two years as Senior Policy Fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Before returning to the US in 2019, I have been for a decade Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Colombia in Bogota and have directed for four years the Center for Social Studies at the same university. I have spearheaded technical cooperation initiatives focused on democracy-building and my work has involved community mobilization and outreach in Colombia, particularly on counter-radicalization and narrative transformation. I have engaged in collaboration with civil society, media, business sectors, policymakers, and academic institutions and have linked local efforts with regional and global initiatives, facilitating alliances at national, regional, and international levels. My role has also included… Read more

Dr. Tran Thi Lan Anh (PhD in Law) has worked as a senior official for the Vietnamese Government. Expert holds PhD in Law from the School of Law, University of Leeds and worked as post-doctoral researcher on human rights here.

Dr. Tran Thi Lan Anh is also an expert on various aspect of Vietnam in include the socio-economic system, legal regime, human rights, political regime, women and children, and human trafficking. This expert has written many expert reports and made numerous appearances at the court as an expert witness.

Kathy Trang acquired her doctoral training in biological anthropology from Emory University and is an Associate Research Scientist at NYU and incoming Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dept. of Psychology at Yale University. Her research focuses on characterizing heterogeneity in post-traumatic stress and treatment outcome among high-risk populations in Vietnam, Jordan, and Bangladesh. 

Anthropologist and qualitative researcher with over a decade of experience conducting research with vulnerable populations. Specializing in participatory, ethical, and mixed methods research with lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ+) women and LGBTIQA+ groups; human rights; SOGI inclusion; intersectional data analysis; sexual and gender-based violence; sexual and reproductive health and rights; NGOs and community-based organizations; HIV/AIDS programming; and inclusive and diverse programming in development and nonprofit interventions.

The Expert is a Barrister-at-Law of England and Wales. The Expert is a practicing Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. He holds the position of Head of Chambers at "Justice for All', with nearly a decade's experience in legal practice. The expert regularly moves before the Supreme Court of Bangladesh for various matters including Writ (Judicial Review), Criminal and Civil Appeal and Revision, Bail Petition, Intellectual Property, Company Matter, Inheritance, Public Interest Litigation, Muslim Personal Law,  Succession Law,  Hindu Law, etc.

Parallel to his legal pursuits, the expert is the Legal Affairs and Political Editor of The Daily Campus and columnist. Accumulatively, he possesses over 18 years of sustained experience as a Journalist in Bangladesh, having written extensively on a broad range of issues, including human rights, the criminal justice system, politics, education, health, mental health, and international laws.

The Expert is an academic specialist in the politics and international relations of South Asia, & the Middle East with almost two decades of experience studying the region. The Expert has conducted research, advisory, and consultancy work in Bangladesh on the formal and informal justice systems, freedom of speech and… Read more

Eva van Roekel is assistant professor in Cultural Anthropology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and specialises in conflict, morality, and human rights in Latin America. She is author of the awarded monograph Phenomenal Justice. Violence and Morality in Argentina. Her current work focuses on the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis, transnational crime and natural resource extraction.

Dr. Hanna Vasilevich is a researcher and academic currently based at the International Centre for Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity Studies in Prague, where she serves as Board Chair. Dr. Vasilevich has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Law & Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. Before she worked at the European Centre for Minority Studies (Germany) and taught in a number of Universities in Czechia and Germany. 

Neha Vora is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology & Sociology at Lafayette College. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Irvine. Her areas of expertise include migration, citizenship, higher education, South Asian and Muslim diasporas, gender, labor, race, liberalism, political economy, and the state, in the Arabian Peninsula region and in the United States. She is the author of Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2013) and Teach for Arabia: American Universities, Liberalism, and Transnational Qatar (Stanford University Press, 2018). She has also published a co-authored book with Ahmed Kanna and Amelie Le Renard, Beyond Exception: New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula (Cornell University Press, 2020).

Emmah Wabuke holds a PhD from University of Cambridge, a a Master of Laws (LL.M) from Harvard Law Schooland a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) from the University of Nairobi. She is also an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. She has experience conducting in-depth and impactful research works on varied human rights issues, including, women, peace and security, reproductive justice, criminal justice reform and sexual and gender-based violence.

Emmah also has extensive experience designing teaching curriculums on the impact of the law and politics on women’s lived experiences, and has conducted professional trainings on refugee protection, SGBV and human rights law in Kenya; and the laws governing Human Rights Defenders’ advocacy. She has previously worked as a law lecturer and was the Founding Director of Strathmore Law Clinic, based at Strathmore Law School, Nairobi, from 2018 to 2020. She has also worked as a summer lecturer at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge on Politics of Conflict and Peace.

The Expert is a sociologist and religious studies expert with specialisation in Asia and the Middle East. He has authored over 150 subject-specific expert legal reports concerning human rights, asylum and terrorism cases. The Expert has spent several years in the field, carrying out research both in Britain and abroad, enabling him to generate expert reports on the country conditions of asylum applicants. The Expert has been involved in several cross-cultural research projects in the private and public sector. As an expert in South Asia, he spent several years conducting extensive fieldwork across South Asia. In Pakistan, he worked alongside local politicians and social workers, gaining considerable insight into national and local political and legal structures in Pakistan. This makes him a regional expert of South Asia and the Muslim world, especially related to religion, society, culture and politics. He is a peer-reviewed member of the academic community and currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of History, Philosophy and Social Science at Bangor University. He has authored three books: (1) Radicalism Unveiled (Routledge, 2013); (2) Segregated Britain: Everyday Life in Muslim Enclaves (Peter Lang, 2020); (3) Leaving Islamism (Peter Lang, Forthcoming).

Lauren Wallace is a medical anthropologist and public health expert with nearly a decade of experience in global health. She has specific expertise in women’s health and reproductive health in West and East Africa. She is presently a Senior Researcher at Dodowa Health Research Centre of the Research and Development Division of Ghana Health Service, in Accra, Ghana, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. 

Lesley Jo Weaver, PhD, MPH, is an academic expert in medical anthropology, global health, mental health, race, gender, chronic diseases, food insecurity, and homelessness. Her research focuses, broadly, on the social production of health and illness. In the US, Weaver's federally funded research addresses the ongoing crisis of houselessness in the Pacific Northwest by exploring stress and health among people living with insecure housing. In India, Weaver’s federally funded research explores how the day-to-day management of type 2 diabetes shapes North Indian women’s abilities to participate in social roles considered appropriate for women of their age, class, and caste groups. She also studies how South Indian women explain and understand distress, and what they do when they are so stressed that they need to seek help. In Brazil, Weaver’s work has examined how food insecurity influences physical and mental wellbeing. In addition to this fieldwork, Weaver co-hosts and co-produces the academic podcast Speaking of Race, a longstanding program that explores the history and present-day reverberations of scientific racism around the world.

Bruce Whitehouse is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lehigh University, where he is also affiliated with the Africana Studies and Global Studies programs. He teaches courses pertaining to culture, globalization, capitalism, humanitarianism and development, and contemporary African societies. His first book, Migrants and Strangers in an African City (Indiana University Press, 2012), examines the multigenerational flow of people from West Africa to the Congo River Basin. His second book, Enduring Polygamy (Rutgers University Press, 2023), studies the resilience of plural marriage in Bamako, Mali. His research has been published in journals including African Studies Review, Global Networks, Hommes et Migrations, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

James Wintrup is a medical anthropologist with expertise in development and global health in Africa, especially Zambia. He has over 8 years of experience in conducting research, using qualitative research methods. He has collaborated and conducted research with policymakers and academics in Africa, the UK and Norway. His research has ethnographically examined the social and political effects of a range of different health interventions in Zambia. He has published articles in Social Science & Medicine, Critical Public Health, Critique of Anthropology, and History and Anthropology.

Currently working as an Assistant Professor and Assistant Director, Centre for Public Interest Law at O.P. Jindal Global University in India. The Expert teaches courses on international law, human rights, and citizenship. Their work addresses issues of asylum, refugee status, nationality/citizenship, and statelessness. Their latest engagement has been in the case of R v Budlakoti (Superior Court of Ontario, Canada) where they provided a legal brief on Indian citizenship, immigration, and human rights law.

The Expert is a Visiting Professor at the Université Catholique de Lille where they teach a Master’s course on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and a guest lecturer at the University of Edinburgh where they teach a module on citizenship law in India. The Expert also serves on the Advisory Group of the organisation Nationality for All to form a regional alliance on nationality and statelessness.

Prior to this, they assisted Afghan refugees in New Delhi with the UNHCR asylum applications and worked with human rights organisations.

Turkish-Belgian lawyer specializing Turkish law, human rights, and political issues, with expertise in transnational repression, persecution of dissidents, prison conditions, and torture in Turkey.