Academic and practicing attorney, based in USA (admitted to AZ bar), experienced in written and oral expert reports in variety of national formats, on many social groups and diverse matters in West Africa and Africa broadly.
Depending on issue/claim basis, I may be able to provide expertise on any country in West Africa. I have testified and provided expertise for cases from: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
QUALIFICATIONS: BA, MA, MA, JD, PhD
SPECIFIC 'AREAS' OF STUDY/EXPERTISE:
Country-Specific: Prison; torture; (para)military violence; press/media; freedom of association; land disputes; gang/vigilante violence; judicial/administrative systems [specifically in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo].
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa: Trafficking; slavery; slave-status; slave-caste heritage; forced labor; human smuggling; female genital cutting/mutilation (FGC/M); forced marriage; domestic violence; witchcraft/voodoo/juju/vodou/magic; homosexuality/homophobia/LGBTIQ persecution; citizenship; nationality; apostasy; statelessness; children’s rights; medical access; medical/psychiatric care; widows/widowhood.
COUNTRIES & 'INCOUNTRY' AREAS VISITED:
Most often: Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mauritania.
Over 700 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 two hundred 'appearances' in court (via Webex, phone, etc) and at least seventy appearances in person. Published twenty books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Former Editor-in-Chief of the African Studies Review. 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)]. |
SINGLE-AUTHORED BOOKS 2022 Les Ewés sur le Joug Français : le Colonialisme périurbain au Togo entre les guerres (Paris: Éditions l’Harmattan). 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 2025 Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present, co-edited with Joanna Davidson (Athens: Ohio University Press) 2024 Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking, six volumes; Series Editor (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press), ISBN: 9781350053915. 2018 Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity, co-edited with Nathan R. Carpenter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), ISBN: 9780253038081 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 (partial list) 2021 “‘A Genius Without Direction’: The Abortive Exile of Dugmore Boetie and the Fate of Southern African Refugees in a Decolonizing Africa,” with Vusumuzi R. Kumalo, The American Historical Review Vol. 126, Issue 3: 585-622. 2020 “Asylum Courts, Transnational Petitioning, and Digital Dispersal in Africa,” with Louise Hooper and Erin Corcoran, History in Africa Vol. 47: 243-267. 2019 “Viral Video ‘Blood Chocolate’ Activism, Millennial Anti-Trafficking, and the Neoliberal Resurgence of Shaming,” with Richard L. Roberts, Slavery & Abolition Vol. 40, Issue 1: 168-198. 2018 “Ebola’s Would-Be Refugees: Performing Fear and Navigating Asylum During a Public Health Emergency,” Medical Anthropology Vol. 37, Issue 6: 514-532. 2017 “Autocracy, Migration, and The Gambia’s ‘Unprecedented’ 2016 Election,” with Niklas Hultin, Baba Jallow, and Assan Sarr, African Affairs Vol. 116, Issue 463: 321-40. 2017 “Unfreedom Papers: Trafficking, Refugee Protection, and Expertise After Neo-Abolitionism,” Journal of Global Slavery, Vol. 2, Issue 1-2: 139-161. 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 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 2008 “Trading children: Mental health and physical rehabilitation of trafficked West African boys and girls,” Wellcome History 38 (Summer): 2-3 PEER-REVIEWED BOOK CHAPTERS (partial list) 2025 “Widows and Widowhood in Africa: A Re-Introduction,” by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Joanna Davidson, in Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present, (eds.) Joanna Davidson and Benjamin N. Lawrance (Athens: Ohio University Press). 2025 “Simply Disliked By Her In-Laws: Litigating African Widowhood in Refuge and Exile,” in Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present, (eds.) Joanna Davidson and Benjamin N. Lawrance (forthcoming with Ohio University Press). 2024 “Social Organization, Culture, and Ritual,” in Bloomsbury Cultural History of Slavery & Human Trafficking, Vol. 6, (ed.) Matilde Ventrella (London: Bloomsbury), 93-115. 2023 “A History of Togo and the Togolese People,” with Marius Kothor, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Africa, (ed.) Thomas Spear (New York: Oxford University Press) https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.714 2019 “Country of Origin Information, Technologies of Suspicion, and the Erasure of the Supernatural in African Refugee Claims,” in Bridget M. Haas and Amy Shuman (eds.), Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum (Athens: Ohio University Press), 129-152. 2018 “Reconstructing the Archive of Africans in Exile,” with Nathan R. Carpenter, in N. R. Carpenter and B. N. Lawrance (eds.), Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 1-36. 2018 “A Nation Abroad: Desire and Authenticity in Togolese Political Dissidence,” in N. R. Carpenter and B. N. Lawrance (eds.), Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 286-302. 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. CHAPTERS, RESEARCH NOTES, ESSAYS, & ARTICLES (partial list) 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 2014 “Nigeria’s Trafficking Situation in 2014: A Research Synthesis,” National Intelligence University, Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Research Note, 1-13 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. 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 |