Experts on countries of origin by surname

Hana Rohan is a researcher and practitioner with over a decade of experience in humanitarian, development, and public health settings, with particular expertise in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She holds a doctorate in international development and has led qualitative and mixed-methods research for institutions including the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team, BBC Media Action, and international NGOs. Her work spans health systems, epidemic response, gender-based violence, and displacement, often at the intersection of conflict and structural inequality. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and contributed to high-level policy processes, bringing both academic rigour and grounded insight to her analysis. She specialises in producing clear, evidence-based expert reports that communicate complex sociopolitical contexts with accuracy and ethical care for asylum and human rights proceedings.

Tameka Romeo is a Legal Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist, Informed Practitioner in Investigative Psychology, adjunct lecturer, and consultant. She received a Joint Doctorate in Legal Psychology from Maastricht University in The Netherlands and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The findings from her studies have been presented at multiple international conferences in The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Czech Republic, and Jamaica. In 2019, she received the award for Best Paper for 2019 in the Journal of Memory & Cognition by the Psychonomic Society. An alumna of The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, she read for the degree of Master of Science in Clinical Psychology (distinction).

For over a decade, Tameka has contributed a significant portion of her expertise towards multiple social passion-projects, including offender rehabilitation, gender-based violence (GBV) awareness, and her non-governmental organisation (NGO), Mothers of the Missing and Murdered (MOMM).

Sarah Rudrum is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Acadia University. She received her PhD from the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. She is concerned with issues of health equity, particularly in relation to gender relations and transnational health activities. She is the author of Global Health and the Village: Transnational Contexts Governing Birth in Northern Uganda.

Gabriel Velázquez is a legal strategist with a policymaker’s mind and an educator’s heart. His hands-on experience in litigation, policy design, and public-private partnerships gives him a 360° view of the legal and development world. Whether drafting constitutional defenses or designing trade strategies for Parliament, Gabriel consistently delivers with precision and clarity. He blends legal acumen, multilingual communication, and deep regional expertise—making him an ideal candidate for roles that demand intellectual rigor, cross-sector collaboration, and global awareness.

Dr. Rusenko is an expert on the transhistorical role of public policy in producing and maintaining structural inequalities, particularly as relates to poverty and homelessness in Japan and Malaysia. In her academic research, she employs historical and ethnographic methods to investigate the development, implementation, and street-level impacts of historical and contemporary policies across multiple fields including housing, employment, welfare, policing, identification, urban planning, and property rights. She has 14 years of fieldwork experience in Japan and 5 years of fieldwork experience in Malaysia.

Criminologist and gender expert with over 15 years of experience advising the United Nations, academia, and international organisations on gender justice, conflict sensitivity, human rights, social inclusion, and vulnerable populations, including in Syria, Ukraine, across the Middle East and Central Asia. Specialist in gender-based violence, policing and security services, prisons and the criminal justice sector, women’s and children’s rights, and victim-centred approaches. Proven track record of working in politically sensitive and fragile settings, and of authoring reports for private companies, ministries and UN offices. Fluent in Arabic and Ukrainian. 

I am a dual-qualified legal professional with over 18 years of legal experience, specialising in both Iranian and UK legal systems. I am:

A distinguished legal expert, advisor, and former judge with extensive experience in international diplomacy, public administration, and government tenders within the Balkans region. A former advisor to the office of the President and a legal consultant for major governmental and international organizations, the expert brings unparalleled expertise in navigating the complexities of the Balkan legal and political landscapes. The expert’s career is defined by his leadership in high-level negotiations, capacity-building for public institutions, and contributions to the stabilization and development of the region.

Dr Devanik Saha is a Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Greenwich, London. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Essex working on migration, gendered violence and mental health. He holds a PhD from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.  His areas of expertise are gender, global public health, mental health, migration and refugee health, and political economy. He is also a prolific columnist having written on Indian politics, Hindu nationalism and public policy for prominent media outlets in India. He is also a recipient of the Global Talent Visa by the UK government, wherein he has been endorsed as an exceptional talent in the field of Global Health and Development. He has worked and consulted for different organizations such as Tetra Tech International, Duke NUS Medical School, BBC Media Action, UNICEF India, World Bank and other organizations.  In 2024, he was selected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London. He is also a Trustee and Board Member, Results UK, a charity focused on global health advocacy. He also advised the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) UK on various global health issues such as health systems strengthening, locally led development and emerging… Read more

Dr. Sandoval-Cervantes is a cultural anthropologist from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He is an UDLAP alum, and obtained his PhD from the University of Oregon in 2016. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). In the Spring 2022 semester, He will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School where he will be working on his project “Dead Letter”: Animal Law, Activism, and Mexican Politics," which is part of a new research on the animal rights movement in urban Mexico. 

His research interests can be divided into two overlapping sub-fields. The first sub-field includes the anthropology of migration, particularly the analysis of internal and transnational migrations, gender (masculinity and femininity), indigeneity, kinship, and care. The second sub-field includes multi-species ethnography, legal anthropology and the anthropology of social movements, particularly through the study of activism and animal rights in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands.

Dr David Seddon is a social scientist with more than 40 years experience in Africa and the Middle East, and Nepal, who has produced around 500 country expert witness reports 

Samantha Serrano earned her Sc.D. in Collective Health from the Federal Medical School of São Paulo. Her research was the Bolivian immigrant women’s experiences in motherhood and family healthcare in São Paulo, Brazil. She has an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her Master’s thesis was an institutional ethnography on the perceptions and treatments of the sexuality and sexual abuse of people with intellectual disabilities and mental illnesses in urban Guatemala. 

Samantha has multiple international and domestic publications and has conducted fieldwork in the United States, Guatemala and Brazil. Her areas of specialization include: the social determinants of health, health systems and policies, immigrant healthcare, intercultural healthcare, primary healthcare access, healthcare and disability, transnational motherhood, sexual violence, domestic violence, ethnography and qualitative research methods.

I earned my PhD in Kurdish Studies, University of Exeter this April. I awarded Mphil in Iranian Studies (2019) and MSc in Middle East Politics (2017). With the support of some friends, I have established an institute focusing on democratic developments in the Middle East.

Our main services will be to provide professional advice and reports to the courts, solicitors, and the Home Office case workers. I can offer impartial, evidence-based, and fresh analysis of the socio-political situations in Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, including the governments and societies within these countries. I am in contact with people from these countries, ranging from ordinary individuals to lecturers, journalists, and lawyers. I am also in partnership with universities, institutions, and research centres within the region and globally, which work on Middle Eastern politics and its social changes.

Alongside my research and academic activities, I am active on social media, with 21,000 followers on Facebook, 63,000 on Instagram, and 89,000 on X (formerly Twitter), mainly from Iran and Iraq. The reason for this influence is that I have been a public figure on Farsi and Kurdish TV Channels (based in London) since 2010.

Orisa Shinta is an experienced environmental management and sustainable development professional with a proven track record supporting climate adaptation, community livelihoods, and participatory environmental planning across Southeast Asia. She has successfully combined technical knowledge with deep community engagement to design and deliver impactful donor-funded projects. Orisa’s commitment to sustainability and inclusion, along with her strong communication and facilitation skills, make her an excellent partner for organizations aiming to advance local climate resilience and sustainable natural resource management.

Dr. Smith has been writing about Mexico for over twenty years. Currently, he specializes on twentieth-century politics, the narcotics trade and crime. His most recent book, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade was published by Ebury/Norton in 2021. As a historian of nineteenth and twentieth-century politics, he started my research in the archives, villages, churches, and markets of the predominantly indigenous state of Oaxaca. Since then he has branched out to write about about indigenous politics, Catholicism, conservatism, newspapers, journalism, censorship and civil society. He has regularly appeared on TV, radio and in the press to talk about issues of Mexican politics, crime, social movements, Catholicism, and narcotics.

Dr. Smith has served as an expert witness in asylum cases in the United States and the United Kingdom. He has written c. 180 export reports, predominantly for Mexican asylum seekers in the United States. Most have concerned persons fleeing criminal or cartel violence. He has also dealt with cases involving religious, political, and gender discrimination.

The Expert has completed over 3,000 expert witness reports on Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Malaysia since 2005, primarily for the UK courts but also in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.  This has also included cases on terrorism and extradition. Oral expert evidence in all recent Sri Lankan Country Guidance cases from LP (2007) to KK & RS (2020).

Most recent one month research visit to Sri Lanka in March 2022 (Northern and Eastern Provinces).  It is usual to visit Sri Lanka and select countries in Asia each year for at least a month.  Strong emphasis on fieldwork and interviews with officials and in-country experts and focus upon risk and vulnerability on return.

Also, expertise on India, especially Tamil Nadu and Khalistan and LGBTQ issues generally.  Recent expert witness on high profile extradition cases in Hong Kong, London and New York.  Research visits to India, Pakistan and Malaysia are planned for 2023. 

Extensive field work and publications record in India from 1983, including my PhD on India’s defence industry and security sector (1988) and two year tenure at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies/United Nations University (Delhi) (1983-85).

Expert witness research trip planned for… Read more

Lahra Smith is an Associate Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University and the Director of the African Studies Program. She is a Political Scientist with a particular interest in citizenship, migration and political development in Africa. She is the author of Making Citizens in Africa: Ethnicity, Gender and National Identity in Ethiopia (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and her other publications have focused on the role of political institutions in addressing conflict based largely on ethnic and language identities.

Karen S. Rotabi-Caseres is Professor of Social Work at California State University- Monterey Bay. She has extensive international experience, with an emphasis on Guatemala, El Salvador and Somalia. Her practice in these countries is oriented to child protection as well as violence against women. She has worked as an expert witness, mainly for Guatemala, but recent work in Somalia has expanded her area of expertise.  She has an extensive publication history, with an orientation to human rights.

Valentyn Stoliarchuk is a trusted rule of law and legal reform expert with a strong record delivering judicial and governance reforms across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. His work bridges technical policy advice, hands-on program implementation, and capacity development for legal institutions and civil society. Valentyn’s commitment to promoting access to justice, anti-corruption, and human rights protection makes him an invaluable asset for international organizations and partners working to strengthen democratic institutions and uphold the rule of law in transitional contexts.

BBC journalist, film-maker and broadcaster with extensive experience of travelling to and investigating human rights abuses in Russia, including Chechnya, Belarus and other parts of the former USSR. Also considerable experience working with victims of human rights abuses in location in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Israel / Palestine, China, Turkey and Cuba.