Experts on countries of origin by country

Mirjam van Reisen is Professor International Relations, Innovation and Care at Tilburg University and Professor of FAIR Data Science at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) at Leiden University. Van Reisen is Research Leader of the Globalization, Accessibility, Innovation and Care (GAIC) network and Project Director for the Digital Innovation and Skills Hub (DISH), part of the Africa University Network on FAIR Open Science (AUN). Her teaching experience includes, among others, the University of Pavia, Tilburg University, Amsterdam University College, Leiden University and the College of Europe.

Van Reisen is the Director of the organisation Research Advisors & Experts Europe (RAEE) in Brussels. Van Reisen is the Principle Investigator of VODAN Africa. She is a Member of the Supervisory Board of PharmAccess.

Van Reisen was a member of the Dutch Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) and Chair of the Development Assistance Committee (COS) from 2013 to 2020. She was a member of the Board of Philips Foundation and the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation until 2020.

Mirjam van Reisen has published extensively on Europe and international… Read more

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 

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.

Yihenew Alemu Tesfaye holds a PhD in Applied Anthropology, specialization in Medical Anthropology, from Oregon State University, USA. Since 2019, Yihenew has been working as a visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Gondar (UoG) and Bahir Dar University (BDU), Ethiopia. From 2022 to 2024, Yihenew worked as Professor of Anthropology in the U.S. Ambassador’s Distinguished Scholars Program (ADSP) in Ethiopia based at BDU and Dire Dawa University (DDU). For the last fifteen years Yihenew has been engaged in several multidisciplinary research projects including bio-cultural and medical anthropology, public health, water satiation and hygiene (WASH), food and water insecurity, community health workers, and inter-communal conflicts in Ethiopia and Kenya. Yihenew co-authored well over twenty-five journal articles and two book chapters. Yihenew’s research interests include anthropology, public health, inter-communal conflicts, implementation science, social determinants of health, maternal and child health, food and water insecurity, community health workers, political economy, political ecology, sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia and Kenya) and the USA.