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.