Experts on countries of origin by surname

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.

Tariq Jahan is a PhD researcher in International Relations at the University of St Andrews (UK), specializing in conflict, terrorism, and strategic communication in Afghanistan. His research focuses on how state and non-state actors—including the Taliban, the former Afghan government, and international forces—have used narratives, propaganda, and information control during Afghanistan’s post-2001 conflict. His work draws on extensive primary materials, academic research, and qualitative interviews with practitioners, officials, and analysts.

Tariq has professional experience in strategic communications and policy analysis and has worked closely with Afghan and international stakeholders on issues of security, extremism, governance, and civic space. He provides country-of-origin analysis for asylum and refugee cases, offering independent, evidence-based expert opinion on political risk, persecution, and conflict dynamics in Afghanistan. He is fluent in English, Pashto, and Dari, with working knowledge of Urdu. 

The Expert is an analyst and researcher based in Istanbul since 1989. His special areas of interest are leftist, Kurdish and Islamist movements and organizations, religious and ethnic minorities, rightist organizations, political Islam, human rights, security issues and civil-military relations.

Michelle Johnson is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. A cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and ritual in West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora (i.e., West African immigrants in Europe and the United States), she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and with Guinean immigrants in Portugal. She has held grants from the Social Science Research Council, the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), and the Institute for Citizens &; Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Religion in Africa, African Studies Review, Anthropology Quarterly, and Food and Foodways. She is author of Re-making Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon - Mecca - Bissau (Indiana University Press, 2020) and co-author (with Edmund “Ned” Searles) of Reciprocity Rules:Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters (Lexington Books, 2021). She provides COI expert information and testimony on asylum cases pertaining to West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora on the topics of female genital cutting, arranged (forced) marriage, and religious persecution and freedom. She teaches courses on… Read more

Will Jones is a British academic who has been working on Central and Southern Africa, with a specialization in asylum, since 2007. He received his doctorate on refugees in Central Africa, particularly Rwanda, from the University of Oxford, where he later became a Departmental Lecturer in the Politics of Asylum at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre. He has also served as an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Excellence in Global Mobility Law and is currently an Associate Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.