The Expert is a Part-time Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, and Junior Research Fellow at the Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa, Wilfrid Laurier University. Drawing on the disciplines of anthropology, geography, political science, and law, he examines the cultural, spatial, and politico-legal dimensions of persecution and discrimination. He has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Peru, Rwanda, and Turkey, producing original research and providing consulting services in the areas of migration policy, refugee rights, and integration.
As a practitioner, the expert has taken on active roles in several organizations, including the Association for Solidarity with Refugees, the International Refugee Rights Initiative, Watch The Med, and Columbia University’s Teachers for Teachers Initiative. He is also founder of Praxis Initiative and the Observatory for Human Rights and Forced Migrants in Turkey. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Montreal-based The Refugee Centre.
Climate-related issues; Coercive population control; Ethnic discrimination or persecution; Ex-combatant reintegration; Gender-based violence/domestic violence; Healthcare access/health systems capacity; Journalist persecution; Land tenure disputes; LGBTQ; Political persecution; Government/state actor persecution; Sufficiency of protection; Torture; Trafficking; Tribal discrimination or persecution; Violence against children/child abuse
I have been working on issues of forced migration since 2014, largely within the Global South. Within the contexts of Peru, Rwanda, and Turkey, I have operated in my capacity as a researcher, practitioner, and consultant. Working primarily with refugees from Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, questions of local integration have provided me expert insight on the political and social conditions of the host countries they inhabit. As someone who draws extensively on anthropology, geography, political science, and law, I examine the cultural, spatial, and politico-legal dimensions of persecution and discrimination.
-Parent, N. 2022. Commitments to Refugees and Displaced Persons in African Peace Agreements, 1990-2018. The International Journal of Human Rights, 26(8): 1333-1352.
-Parent, N., Freier, LF., and Dawson, W. 2021. Lost at Sea, Saved by Allah: Religious Coping on a Migrant Journey from Cape Verde to Brazil. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 24(7): 659-669.
-Freier, LF. and Parent, N. 2019. The Regional Response to the Venezuelan Exodus. Current History: A Journal of Contemporary World Affairs, 118(805): 56-61.
-Parent, N. 2018. Turkish Perception of Risk vis-a-vis Syrian Refugees: An Exploratory Study of Cultural Cognition in Izmir, Turkey. Journal of Identity and Migration Studies, 12(1): 2-25.