Experts on countries of origin by surname

Extensive experience in expert reports on all the countries listed, and also in particular, Kurds in country of origin and diaspora

Dr. Laker is a seasoned conflict, security and development practitioner with 15 years of experience with a specialized focus on forced displacement, gender, security sector reform, international humanitarian law, and transitional justice. Dr. Laker's consulting, research, and academic interests are grounded in the field of defence, strategic studies and international relations. He is currently Assistant Professor in international humanitarian law, conflict, security, military ethics, humanitarianism, and air, land, and sea operations to both junior and senior military officers, at Zayed Military University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. His book manuscript, Rethinking Internal Displacement: Geo-Political Games, Fragile States, & the Relief Industry was published in 2021. 

Intercultural and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, specialising in issues relevant to various Muslim countries, incl vendettas, honour killing, domestic violence, PTSD, Rape Trauma Syndrome, assault in detention and traumas of migration and exile.

Gideon Lasco, MD, PhD is a physician and medical anthropologist. He is senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines Diliman's Department of Anthropology, affiliate faculty at the UP College of Medicine’s Social Medicine Unit, research fellow at the Ateneo de Manila University's Development Studies Program, and honorary fellow at Hong Kong University's Centre for Criminology. 

I am a country-of-origin expert witness for Afghanistan. I prepare expert reports on different issues related to Afghan nationals for asylum, family and criminal cases. 

I also verify the authenticity of documents issued in Afghanistan. I have completed my degree at the King’s College London and am studying for a Diploma in Linguistics. 

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.

Professor Leclerc-Madlala is an anthropologist whose research and publications since 1995 have focused on the intersections of culture, sexuality, gender and HIV in Africa, especially in South Africa and in relation to young women’s vulnerability. Her academic work as former Professor and Head of the Anthropology Department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal was complimented by active involvement in the design, implementation and evaluation of HIV programs in South Africa and its neighboring countries. Dr. Leclerc Madlala retired as Senior Advisor for HIV and Health with the US Agency for International Development and currently serves as an Affiliated Senior  Researcher with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Professor Leclerc-Madlala got her start in development as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon.

Prof Leclerc-Madlala has worked as a consultant to UNAIDS, SADC, the World Bank, and WHO, as well as to several regional non-government organizations and community-based organizations. She helped to draft South Africa’s Sexual Offences Act and the Children’s Bill and authored UNAIDS’ 2009 Action Brief on Inter-generational and Transactional sex in Southern Africa. She worked with the Commission on Gender… Read more

Dr. Elena Lesley is an anthropologist who has been working in Cambodia since the early 2000s. Much of her research has focused on mental illness and access to health services. She is particularly interested in cases related to mental illness or disability, addiction, healthcare systems and torture.

Natalie Letsa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. Previously, she was the Wick Cary Assistant Professor of Political Economy in the Department of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the Director of OU’s African Studies Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University in 2017, and in 2018-19 she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Jordan Levy is a sociocultural anthropologist with a research program focused on state formation, political culture, and out-migration in Honduras. He has been studying Honduras and conducting non-governmental (NGO) work in the country since 2001. He was present during the 2009 military coup, and has since studied how these events polarized Honduran society and have increased different forms of violence.

Dr. Levy’s doctoral dissertation focused on the political activism of schoolteachers and post-coup policies of governance. He has conducted expensive ethnographic research in Tegucigalpa and the Honduran South, through which he has learned about Hondurans’ experiences with gang-related violence, gender-based violence, and the persecution of political activists. At DePaul University (Chicago) he teaches a variety of courses for the Anthropology major, is an affiliated faculty member of the Latin American & Latino Studies program, and serves on the DePaul Migration Collaborative advisory council.

Tim Lindsey is leading expert on Indonesian law, and has advised governments, business, international organisations, courts and legal practitioners around the world, giving expert evidence in many courts and tribunals. He is Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the Melbourne Law School. He holds a Bachelor of Laws, Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Letters from the University of Melbourne and completed his PhD thesis in Indonesian studies. A fluent Indonesian speaker, he is a specialist in a wide range of aspects of Indonesian law, including public law, citizenship law, criminal law, commercial law, inheritance, and family law. He has won teaching awards and has previously practised as barrister. His more than 100 publications include Indonesia: Law and Society; Islam, Law and the State in Southeast Asia (three volumes); The Indonesian Constitution; Drugs Law and Practice in Southeast Asia; Religion, Law and Intolerance in Indonesia; Strangers Next Door: Indonesia and Australia in the Asian Century; Crime and Punishment in Indonesia; Indonesian Law; and The Routledge Handbook of Indonesian Law (in press, 2026) He is a founder and an… Read more

Marilisa Lorusso is a regular contributor to Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa, an Italian think tank and online magazine with approximately 5,000 daily views.

She has been deployed by the Italian Foreign Ministry as an expert for post-war civilian monitoring missions in Georgia. Additionally, she has served in a non-diplomatic capacity at the Geneva International Discussions on the Georgian peace settlement while based at the European Union Council in Brussels.

Candace Lukasik is Assistant Professor of Religion and Faculty Affiliate in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University. Her research explores religion and the transnational politics of violence, migration, race, and indigeneity in the Middle East, specifically Egypt and Iraq, and its US diasporas. She was previously a Faculty Leave Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, an AAUW American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellow, Affiliate Faculty Member in the Department of Anthropology at University at Buffalo, and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Her first book, Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire (NYU Press, 2025) examines how American theopolitical imaginaries of global Christian persecution have remapped Coptic collective memory of martyrdom in migration. Drawing on continuing fieldwork with Assyrians in Detroit and northern Iraq, her second book project, Somewhere Else: Political Ecologies and Indigenous Sovereignty in Global Assyria… Read more