I am a doctoral researcher in linguistic and legal anthropology at the Department of Culture, Communication and Media (CCM), University College London; native speaker of Arabic language with expert technical knowledge of Kuwait’s and Iraq’s cultures and sub-dialects; and with hands-on experience assessing and providing expert evidence on claims of persecution pertinent to arbitrary deprivation of nationality and fundamental rights in Kuwait. My key areas are society, culture, laws and politics of Kuwait, on which I conducted numerous studies and wrote reports that were commended by legal practitioners and judges as well measured. In my capacity as a country expert of Kuwait, I draw on formal training as Expert Witness at the Refugee Law Initiative; training in Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre; and lived experiences as a stateless (Bidoon) Kuwaiti who has been recognised as refugee in the UK on grounds of the 1951 Refugee Convention. My qualifications and approach as a country expert of Kuwait have been accepted by both the UK Government and the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal.
I have relevant academic and professional experience:
- Expert Witness Training, Refugee Law Initiative (June 2025)
- Doctoral researcher, UCL Institute of Education (2024-present)
- Postgraduate researcher, UCL Institute of Education (2019-present)
- Movement-building consultant, Institute on Statelessness & Inclusion (Jun 2023-May 2024)
- Volunteer interpreter (2019-present)
I participated in and co-organised conferences, workshops and talks involving the stateless Bidoon people of Kuwait, including:
- Refugee Law Clinic 5th Anniversary Summer Event 2025 (23 June 2025)
- Kuwait’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 59th session (May 2025)
- Implications of the ‘Good Character’ guidance on stateless Bidoon refugees’ access to citizenship, Birmingham University, (March 2025).
- The World Conference on Statelessness, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Feb/Mar. 2024)
- Childhood Statelessness & Education Awareness Month, London (Nov. 2023)
- Oxford Sanctuary Fair, University of Oxford (May 2023)
- Mental health among Kuwaiti Bidoons in the UK, University of Oxford (Feb. 2023)
- Becoming a Kuwaiti Bidoon refugee in the UK, Oxfordshire and Reading Sanctuary Hosting (2021).
I have been a member of:
- UCL student-led Culture, Communication & Media PhD seminars group
- UCL Institute of Education’s Sociolinguistics Lab research network
- UCL student-led South West Asia & North Africa (S.W.A.N.A.) Forum for Social Justice
- The European Network on Statelessness
- Northern Arabia’s Surviving Indigeneity (NASI), an initiative by members of an exiled Bedouin Kuwaiti community known as Northern Bedouins of Kuwait (since 2023).
I volunteered as expert witness, wrote country of origin reports (#3) for the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal where I also attended hearings to provide oral evidence.
Benswait, A. (2025, May 9). A Crisis of Statelessness: Inside Kuwait's Mass Revocation of Citizenship. https://dawnmena.org/a-crisis-of-statelessness-inside-kuwaits-mass-revocation-of-citizenship/.
Benswait, A. (2024). Statelessness through the lens of time [Blog post]. Available at https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/statelessness/resources/critical-statelessness-studies-blog/statelessness-through-the-lens-of-time
Benswait, A. (2021). Language and statelessness: The impact of political discourses on the Bidoon community in Kuwait. In Bloom, T. & Kingston, N. L. (eds). (2021). Statelessness governance, and the problem of citizenship. Manchester University Press. https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/9781526156426/9781526156426.00015.xml
Benswait, A. (2021). Critical sociolinguistic ethnography as a lens to statelessness: a case from the Bidoon community in Kuwait [Blog post]. https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/statelessness/critical-statelessness-studies-blog/critical-sociolinguistic-ethnography-as-a-lens-to-statelessness-a-case-from-the-bidoon-community-in-kuwait
English
Mass-denaturalised ‘Article 8’ foreign-born/blood Kuwaiti women
Mass-denaturalised ‘dependent’ Kuwaitis
Islamic Constitutional Movement
Kuwaiti Progressive Movement
Civil Conservative Party
Islamic Salafi Alliance
Group 80 (ultranationalist group)
Kuwait’s exile dissents
Sunnis