The Expert is an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He received his PhD in anthropology from Boston University in 2015. His ethnographic fieldwork research was carried out in Afghanistan from 2009 until 2013, and again in 2016, and focused on the psychological impact of cultural norms of masculinity among Pashtun men. In 2020,
The Expert published a book based on this research, entitled Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Boyer Prize for contributions to psychoanalytic anthropology, from the Society for Psychological Anthropology. Additionally, he published several articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes on conflict, violence, and gender relations in Afghanistan. Since 2016, The Expert has been carrying out original ethnographic research in Greece, investigating the psychological impact of the migratory experience among Afghan refugees in the country.
LGBTQI issues; child abuse; sexual abuse/assault; gender-based violence/domestic violence; child soldiers, forced marriage; human trafficking; forced conscription/refoulment; Likelihood of destitution or homelessness; ethnic, religious, or tribal discrimination or persecution; ex-combatant reintegration; land issues/land tenuredisputes; risk of torture or political persecution; risk from state actors, risk from non-state actors; risk of retaliation; sufficiency of protection; possibility of safe internal relocation; healthcare access; health systems capacity; mental illness, Psychodynamic interviewing, masculinity, psychological processes and dynamics within cultural contexts, migration and its psychic ramifications, war and ethnic conflict.
Since 2016 The Expert has worked in Greece with Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, focusing on the psychological ramifications of the migratory experience. Since 2018 his wife Melissa Chiovenda and The Expert have been regularly providing our expertise to individuals, law firms and private and pubic institutions, with affidavits, expert reports, live testimonies and consultations
Books
- 2020: Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan, New York: Oxford University Press.
WINNER OF THE 2021 BOYER PRIZE for contributions to psychoanalytic anthropology - Society for Psychological Anthropology (section of the American Anthropological Association)
Articles and book chapters
- 2022: Good, Byron, Andrea Chiovenda, Sadeq Rahimi. “The Anthropology of Being Haunted: On the Emergence of an Anthropological Hauntology”, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 51, pp. TBD.
- 2020: Chiovenda, Andrea, Devon Hinton and Byron Good. “Culture, PTSD, and Emotion Regulation: An Anthropological Perspective”, in Kimbrel, Nathan and Matthew Tull, eds., Emotion in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Philadelphia: Elsevier.
- 2019: Chiovenda, Andrea. “From Metaphor to Interpretation: ‘Haunting’ as Diagnostic of Dissociative Processes”, Ethos, 47:4, pp. 489-500.
- 2018: Chiovenda, Andrea. “’The War Destroyed Our Society’: Masculinity, Violence and Shifting Cultural Idioms Among Afghan Pashtuns”, in Shahrani, Nazif, ed. Modern Afghanistan: The Impact of 40 Years of War, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- 2018: Huang, JingJing, Andrea Chiovenda, Yang Shao, Huajiang Ma, Huafang Li and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good. "Low Level of Knowledge Regarding Diagnosis and Treatment among Inpatients with Schizophrenia in Shanghai", Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment 14: 185-191.
- 2018: Chiovenda, Andrea. “Shaping a Different Masculinity: Afghan Pashtun Men’s Untold Side”, in Inhorn, Marcia and Nefissa Naguib, eds. Reconceiving Muslim Men: Love and Marriage, Family and Care in Precarious Times, New York: Berghahn Books.
- 2018: Chiovenda, Andrea and Melissa Chiovenda. "The Specter of the 'Arrivant': Hauntology of an Interethnic Conflict in Afghanistan", Asian Anthropology, 17: 165-184.
- Forthcoming in Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society: “Retranscribing the Past: Memory, Subjectivity and Trauma Among Afghan Asylum Seekers in Greece”.
- Under peer review: “Injury by Time: Psychic Suffering and the Politics of Temporality among Afghan Asylum Seekers in Greece”.