Skip to main content

Benjamin Nicholas Lawrance

Academic, based in USA, experienced in written and oral expert reports in USA, Canada and UK, on many social groups and diverse matters including violence and torture.

Name
Benjamin Nicholas Lawrance
Occupation
Barber B. Conable Jr. Endowed Chair in International Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology (former Professor of History, University of California)
Expertise

QUALIFICATIONS: BA, MA, AM, PhD.

SPECIFIC 'AREAS' OF STUDY/EXPERTISE: 

Prison, torture, military regimes, press/media, freedom of association, judicial/administrative systems in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, the Gambia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone.

Trafficking, slavery, smuggling, female genital cutting/mutilation (FGC/M), forced marriage, domestic violence, witchcraft/voodoo/juju, homosexuality/homophobia; citizenship, nationality; statelessness, children’s rights, medical access, medical/psychiatric care, throughout in sub-Saharan Africa.

COUNTRIES & 'INCOUNTRY' AREAS VISITED: 

Most often to: Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, others.

Experience

Over 350 written reports and provided expertise in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Israel, South Korea, Hong Kong, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Over one hundred 'appearances' on the phone and at least fifty appearances in person in court - on political, religious, ethnic, cultural, sexual, gender, discrimination, violence and torture matters.

Conducted extensive research and published several articles, book chapters, and books on the subject of expert testimony [see Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony, with Galya Ruffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights, with Iris Berger, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Joanna Tague, and Meredith Terretta (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015)].

Publications

SINGLE-AUTHORED BOOKS

2016   Les Ewés sur le Joug Français : le Colonialisme périurbain au Togo entre les guerres (Lomé, Togo: Éditions Les Graines du Pensées), édition française du Locality, Mobility and ‘Nation’ traduit by Fidele Messan Nubukpo.

2014   Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling (New Haven: Yale University Press) ISBN:  9780300198454

2007   Locality, Mobility and ‘Nation’: Periurban Colonialism in Togo’s Eweland, 1900-1960 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press) ISBN: 9781580462648 

 EDITED ANTHOLOGIES

2017   Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness, with Jacqueline Stevens (Durham: Duke University Press) ISBN: 9780822362913

2016   Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa, with Anne Bunting and Richard L. Roberts (Athens: Ohio University Press), ISBN: 9780821422007

2015   African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights, with Iris Berger, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Joanna Tague, and Meredith Terretta (Athens: Ohio University Press) ISBN: 9780821421383

2015   Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony, with Galya Ruffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) ISBN: 9781107069060 

2012   Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experiences of Women and Children in Africa, with Richard L. Roberts. “New African Histories” Series (Athens: Ohio University Press) ISBN: 9780821420027 

2012   Local Foods Meet Global Foodways: Tasting History, with Carolyn Thomas de la Peña (New York: Routledge/Taylor Francis) ISBN: 9780415697750

2006   Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa, with Emily L. Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press) ISBN: 0299219505 [Reissued in Paperback 9780299219543 (2015)].

2005   The Ewe of Togo and Benin, Volume III in the “Handbook of Eweland” series (Accra, Ghana: Woeli Publishing) ISBN: 9789988626549  

 PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES AND JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUES

2016       “Boko Haram, Refugee Mimesis, and the Archive of Contemporary Gender-Based Violence,” Radical History Review Vol. 126

2015       “Boko Haram, Asylum, and Memes of Africa,” HAWWA: Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 13.2: 148-53

2014       “‘A full knowledge of the subject of slavery’: The Amistad, Expert Testimony, and the Origins of Atlantic Studies,” Slavery and Abolition Volume 35, Issue 4: 1-21

2013       “‘Your poor boy no father no mother’: ‘Orphans,’ Alienation, and the Perils of Atlantic Child Slave Biography,” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Volume 36.4 (Fall), 672-703

2012/3   “Humanitarian Claims and Expert Testimonies: Contestation over Health Care for Ghanaian Migrants in the United Kingdom,” Ghana Studies Volume 15-16: Special Double Issue, “Health and Health Care,” 251-286

2011       “A ‘Neo-Abolitionist Trend’ in Sub-Saharan Africa? Regional Anti-Trafficking Patterns and a Preliminary Legislative Taxonomy,” with Ruby P Andrew, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Volume 9, Issue 2, 599-678

2011       “Traversing the Local/Global and Food/Culture Divides,” with Carolyn de la Peña, Food & Foodways Special Issue about “Food Globality and Foodways Localities,” edited with Carolyn de la Peña, 19.1-2, 1-10

2010       “From Child Labor ‘Problem’ to Human Trafficking ‘Crisis’: Child Advocacy and Anti-Trafficking Legislation in Ghana,” International Labor and Working-Class History 78.1, 63-88

2008       “Trading children: Mental health and physical rehabilitation of trafficked West African boys and girls,” Wellcome History 38 (Summer): 2-3

2005       Bankoe v. Dome: Traditions and Petitions in the Ho-Asogli Amalgamation, British Mandated Togoland, 1919-1939,” Journal of African History 46: 243-67

   2004  “Refreshing Historical Accounts of Human Rights in Africa,” Oriental Anthropologist 4: 34-59

2003       ‘En proie à la fièvre du cacao’: Land and Resource Conflict on an Ewe Frontier, 1922-1939,” African Economic History 31: 135-81

2003       “La Révolte des Femmes: Economic Upheaval and the Gender of Political Authority in Lomé, Togo, 1931-33,” African Studies Review 46: 43-67

2001       “Language Between Powers, Power Between Languages: Further discussion of education and policy in Togoland under the French Mandate, 1919-1945,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 163-164, XLI: 517-539

2001       “Réflexions sur les recherches sur les enjeux linguistiques des Ewé,” Traverses: Subjectivité, Singularités, Cultures, 3: 223-230

2000       “Most Obedient Servants: The Politics of Language in German Colonial Togo,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 159, XL: 489-524

PEER-REVIEWED BOOK CHAPTERS

2017       “Historicizing as a Legal Trope of Jeopardy in Asylum Narratives and Expert Testimony of Gendered Violence,” in Jacqueline Knörr, William P. Murphy, Anne-Sophie Helger, and Christian Kordt Højbjerg (eds.), Politics and Policies in Upper Guinea Coast Societies: Change and Continuity (New York: Palgrave), forthcoming

2017       “Asylum and the ‘Forced Marriage’ Paradox: Petitions, Translation, and Courts as Institutional Perpetrators of Gender Violence,” in Joel Quirk and Annie Bunting (eds.), Modern Slavery and Global Change (University of British Columbia Press), forthcoming

2017       “Statelessness-in-Question: Expert Testimony and the Evidentiary Burdens of Statelessness.” In Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness, Benjamin N. Lawrance and Jacqueline Stevens (eds.)

2016       “Resisting Patriarchy, Contesting Homophobia: Expert Testimony and the Construction of African Forced Marriage Asylum Claims,” with Charlotte Walker-Said, in Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa, edited by A. Bunting, B. N. Lawrance, and R. L. Roberts (Athens: Ohio University Press), 199-224.

2016       “‘Something Old, Something New’: Conceptualizing Forced Marriage in Africa,” with Annie Bunting and Richard L. Roberts, in Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa, edited by A. Bunting, B. N. Lawrance, and R. L. Roberts (Athens: Ohio University Press), 1-40.

2015       “Law, Expertise, and Protean Ideas about African Migrants,” with Iris Berger, Tricia Hepner Redeker, Joanna Tague, and Meredith Terretta, in African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), 1-37

2015       “From ‘Health Tourism’ to ‘Atrocious Barbarism’: Contextualizing African Migrant Choice, Expertise, and Medical Humanitarian Practice,” in Benjamin N. Lawrance and Galya Ruffer (eds.), Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 221-244

2015       “Witness to the Persecution? Expertise, Testimony, and Consistency in Asylum Adjudication,” with Galya Ruffer, in Benjamin N. Lawrance and Galya Ruffer (eds.), Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1-24

2012       “Contextualizing Trafficking in Women and Children in Africa,” with Richard L. Roberts, in Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts (eds.), Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experiences of Women and Children in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press), 1-25.

2012       “Documenting Child Slavery with Personal Testimony: The Origins of Anti-Trafficking NGOs and Contemporary Neo-Abolitionism,” in Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts (eds.), Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experiences of Women and Children in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press), 163-82.

2011       “‘All we want is make us free’ – The Voyage of La Amistad’s Children through the Worlds of the Illegal Slave Trade,” in Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph Miller (eds.), Child Slaves in the Modern World (Athens: Ohio University Press), 12-35

2006       “Petitioners, ‘Bush Lawyers’ and Letter Writers: Court Access in British-occupied Lomé, 1914 – 1920,” in Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily L. Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), 94-114

2006       “African Intermediaries and the ‘Bargain of Collaboration’,” with Emily L. Osborn and Richard L. Roberts, in Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily L. Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), 3-34

CHAPTERS, RESEARCH NOTES, ESSAYS, & ARTICLES

2016       “The Impact of Framing Migration as Crisis,” http://southwritlarge.com/articles/the-impact-of-framing-migration-as-crisis/

2016       “To know where you come from; that is divine: Three New Documentary Films about the African Slave Experience.” Film Review Essay, Slavery and Abolition, 36, Vol. 4: 738-746

2016       Foreword, Child Migration in Africa, edited by Marie Rodet and Elodie Razy (London: James Currey/Boydell and Brewer)

2014       “Nigeria’s Trafficking Situation in 2014: A Research Synthesis,” National Intelligence University, Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Research Note, 1-13

2014       “La Amistad’s ‘Interpreter’ Reinterpreted: James Kaweli Covey’s Distressed Atlantic Childhood and the Production of Knowledge about Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone,” in Suzanne Schwarz and Paul Lovejoy (eds.), Slavery, Abolition and the Transition to Colonialism in Sierra Leone (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press), 217-56.

2013       “Chocolate Chiefs: Cocoa, Borders, and Colonialism in the Togoland Mandates, 1920-1945,” in T. Nicoué Lodjo Gayibor (ed.), Peuples et Frontières dans l’Espace Ouest-Africain Collections Patrimoines, No.15 (Lomé: Presse de l’Université de Lomé), 241-287.

2012       “Foodways, ‘Foodism,’ or Foodscapes? Navigating the Local/Global and Food/Culture Divides,” with Carolyn de la Peña, in Benjamin N. Lawrance and Carolyn de la Peña (eds.), Local Foods Meet Global Foodways: Tasting History (Routledge/Taylor Francis), 1-19

2005       “France in Tropical Africa,” with Richard L. Roberts, in Dinah Shelton (ed.), Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (New York: Macmillan, Gale Group), 383-386. The New York Public Library honored the Encyclopedia as a “Best in Reference” work in 2006

2005       “Le Togo Britannique de 1920 à 1957,” in Nicoué L. Gayibor (ed.), Histoire des Togolais: Vol. II, de 1880 à 1960 (Paris: Karthala), 283-305

2005       “The History of the Ewe Language and Ewe Language Education,” in Benjamin N. Lawrance (ed.), The Ewe of Togo and Benin (Accra, Ghana: Woeli Publishing Services), 215-28

2004       “Bodies of Water: Expressions of the Anlo-Ewe Past and Present,” Review of Emmanuel Akyeampong Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana, c1850 to Recent Times, Kathyrn Linn Geurts, Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community, and Sandra Greene, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana, in Anthropological Quarterly 76: 361-368

Encyclopedia Articles

2011       “Sylvanus Olympio,” in Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (eds.), Dictionary of African Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press), Vol. 5, 34-36

2011       “Trokosi,” in Junius P. Rodriguez (ed.), Slavery in the Modern World: A History of Political, Social, and Economic Oppression (ABC-CLIO), 529-31

2008       “Togo: Geography and Economy,” “Togo: Society and Cultures,” and “Togo: History and Politics,” in John Middleton and Joseph C. Miller (eds.), New Encyclopedia of Africa, 2nd Ed. (Thompson/Gale), 60-62, 62-65, 65-67

2006       “Benin,” and “Togo,” N. Schlager and J. Wiesblatt (eds.), World Encyclopedia of Political Systems and Parties, 4th Edition, (New York: Facts on File), 132-135, 1349-1352

2005       “Sylvanus Olympio,” and “Africa in World History” in Kevin Shillington (ed.), Encyclopedia of African History (London: Fitzroy Dearborn), 1177-8, 1666-70

             2005 “Togo” and “Lomé,” World Book Encyclopedia, 309-311, 427

2004       “Ewe” and “Togo” in C. Skutsch (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World’s Minorities (New York: Routledge), 449-50, 1206-7

2002       “Togo,” in Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and Dickson Eyoh (eds.), Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century African History, (London: Routledge), 561-63

2002       “Lomé, Togo” in C. Ember & M. Ember (ed.), Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures, Vol. 3, Human Relations Area Files (New Haven: Macmillan), 56-63

2001       “Togo,” in C. Ember & M. Ember (ed.), Countries and their Cultures, Human Relations Area Files (New Haven: Macmillan), 2218-2226

             2001  “Africa: Oral Life Stories,” in M. Jolly (ed.), Encyclopedia of Life Writing, (London: Fitzroy                        Dearborn), 15-17

1999       “République du Bénin,” in D.A. Kaple (ed.), World Encyclopedia of Political Systems and Parties, 3rd Edition (New York: Facts on File), 109-11

 Book Reviews

2017       Meera Venkatachalam, Slavery, Memory, and Religion in Southeastern Ghana, c. 1850-Present, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) International Journal of African Historical Studies, forthcoming

2016       Jonathan M. Bryant, Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope (New York: Liveright/Norton, 2015) The Journal of American History, forthcoming

2016       Richard Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean 1500-1850 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014), Comparative Studies in Society and History, forthcoming

2012       Sandra E. Greene, West African Narratives of Slavery: Texts from Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth Century Ghana (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), Journal of Biography, Vol. 35, Issue 3 (Summer): 519-22

2011       Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton University Press, 2010). H-Africa, H-Net Reviews, August 2011. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30780

2010       Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (Norton & Co, 2007). Journal of World History 21.2: 339-41

2008       Edna G. Bay and Donald L. Donham, (eds.), States of Violence: Politics, Youth, and Memory in Contemporary Africa (University of Virginia Press, 2006). International Journal of African Historical Studies 40.2: 327-29

2007       Adam Jones and Peter Sebald, An African Family Archive: The Lawson of Little Popo/Aneho (Togo) 1841-1938, (Oxford University Press/British Academy), Fontes Historiae Africanae New Series No. 7. Africa: Bulletin of the International African Institute 77: 620-1

2007       Gareth Austin, Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807-1956 (University of Rochester Press, 2005). Africa: Bulletin of the International African Institute 77: 300-2

2007       Stephan F. Miescher, Making Men in Ghana (Indiana University Press, 2005). African Studies Review 50.1: 185-6

2006       Roger Gocking, History of Ghana (Greenwood, 2005). Africa 76: 609-10

2004       Ulrike Schuerkens, Du Togo allemand aux Togo et Ghana indépendants: changement social sous régime colonial (l’Harmattan, 2001). Cahiers d’Études Africaines 175: 717-8

2003       Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Between the Sea and the Lagoon: An Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana, c.1850 to Recent Times (Ohio University Press, 2001). Africa 73: 309-10

2003       Paul Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier (Ohio University Press, 2003). African Studies Review 46: 136-8

2003       Toyin Falola (ed.), Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen (Africa World Press, 2002). International Journal of African Historical Studies 36: 205-6

2002       Jan Jansen, The Griot’s Craft: An Essay on Oral Tradition and Diplomacy, Vol. 8: Forschung zur Sprachen und Kulturen Afrikas (LIT Verlag, 2000). Anthropological Quarterly 75: 423-27

2001       Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe (eds.), Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Sexuality and Culture Vol. 5, Issue 2: 99-102

2000       Charles Piot, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1999). Cahiers d’Études Africaines 160

Languages
French, German, Portuguese
Ethnic groups expertise
As relevant
Political groups expertise
As relevant
Religious groups expertise
Christian, Vodou, Muslim
Other social groups expertise
Political prisoners, trafficked persons, children, women, union workers, journalists, AWOL military.
Fees
[Private to EIN members]
Phone
[Private to EIN members]
Address
[Private to EIN members]