Experts on countries of origin by country

Expertise on religion and politics in a number of African, Asian and Latin American countries - and in a number of languages. Current research includes China (Tibet), Chile, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Argentina, DRC, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Malawi and Zimbabwe; Libya and Syria

Andrea S. Allen research has addressed matters of race, sexuality, gender, violence, and religion in Brazil and the African Diaspora. Her first book Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) focused on the experiences of lesbian women in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Dr. Allen is currently working on a second book project about LGBT evangelical Brazilians, race, religious identity, and sexual subjectivity.

Danielle Annoni is an associate professor of International Law and Human Rights at the Federal University of Parana (UFPR-Brazil), where she coordinates the Human Rights Observatory and Legal Practice in Human Rights and Migration. She has been conducting human rights research for 18 years. She is an educator, a mother and an active human rights defender, with a focus on migration, gender and the Latin American human rights protection system. Because of her work developed with vulnerable groups regarding the education of labor rights, the empowering of women through handicraft and gastronomy fairs, advocacy in the mediation of cultural conflicts, and access to justice and education, she has received several awards.

PhD in Social Science, sociologist and human rights expert specialising in country conditions analysis related to political violence, forced displacement, and asylum claims in Latin America. 

I am a Law and DEI expert with 15+ years of experience and intersectional background. I have presence on: Walpole, GQ Heroes, MBS & British Council of Fashion, Attitude Magazine, quoted by Vogue Business and Boston Consultancy Group. I teach at Instituto Marangoni and have extensive experience in: LGBTQ+ Rights, Human Rights in Latin America, Political Landscape of Brazil and Latin American Countries, Law and Politics. 

Cintia Cruz has extensive research experience, including one and a half years at the Gender and Race Department at UC Berkeley. They earned a PhD in Gender and Women’s Studies at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. Their thesis, defended in 2019, “Trails of Black Women,” centered on the comparative self-esteem of Black women in Oakland, California, and Salvador, Brazil. After receiving their doctorate, they served at the United Nations: Joint Program on the Eradication of Child Marriage and Early Unions in Latin America and the Caribbean (2021); The Project to Prevent Pregnancy among Teenagers at the Triple Border, Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (2019). 

Dr. Cruz became broadly familiar with the numerous and varying structural impediments and cultural practices constraining girls’ mainly black and Indigenous, in the region. They hold a Master’s degree in Social Sciences and gather an academic trajectory strongly defined by the alignment of project management and research wo to enhance marginalized communities’ autonomy. In 2022, as a national consultant for UNICEF, they delivered the Brazilian report to the Summit Education at the United Nations General Assembly 2022, entitled The Map of Hope to Transform Education in Brazil. In 2020, Dr. Cruz was the… Read more

I am a social and medical anthropologist who has worked in the field of global health for over 25 years.  I lived in Eastern and Southern Africa for 22 years, where I worked with government and other institutions including NGOs, the National Institute for Health Research (Tanzania), the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Research Programme (Malawi).  I have extensive experience of social and health related research and fieldwork in rural and urban communities.  I have conducted fieldwork in medical anthropology on social and health risks including on treatment seeking, disease interpretation, traditional religio-cultural beliefs, social networks, social status (reputation), social position, stigma and discrimination.   

I am a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Global Research Professor based within the Department of Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).  I have a portfolio of research across geographies and diseases with a primary focus on sub-Saharan Africa and am strongly committed to supporting capacity strengthening in sub-Saharan Africa.  I hold a number of external positions including on funding panels and the World Health Organisation (WHO) HIV… Read more

Dr. Kristen Drybread is an anthropologist specializing in Latin American studies; political and legal anthropology; studies of race, gender and sexuality; and international prison studies. She is currently a graduate writing specialist and lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Drybread earned her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University and has held postdoctoral research appointments at the Center for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo and in the Drugs, Security, and Democracy Program of the Social Science Research Council. She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Brazilian prisons, courts, drug treatment centers, and children’s shelters. Her research addresses topics including gender-based violence, political corruption and white collar crime, drug trafficking and treatment, children’s rights, and prison administration. 

The expert is a seasoned International Analyst and Political Scientist, specializing in humanitarian disarmament, arms control, and criminal structures operating in the Latin America and Caribbean region, with extensive experience in NGOs in Argentina and Colombia. His research and academic endeavors are dedicated to addressing pressing issues in defense, security, and humanitarian efforts in the region.

I analyze emerging and developing markets focusing on how economic structures and institutions shape real outcomes. My work delivers practical insights on risk, growth, and structural constraints based on how these politics and economies actually function on the ground.

Dr. Pacifico has been an international lawyer since 1993, with expertise in International Human Rights Law, particularly human rights of refugees and forced migrants, since 1997. She has been an associate professor for Law and International Relations at Maceio, Brasilia, and Joao Pessoa universities since 1997.  She has taught International Law/Relations, Human Rights, and Refugee and Migration Issues for more than two decades. Dr. Pacifico has also presented seminars, given lectures and interviews, published papers, supervised theses and dissertations on these issues, and my own research principally focuses on human rights of legal minorities and human rights protections of refugees and legal minorities in Brazil and abroad.

Currently, Dr. Pacifico is a full-time associate professor in International Relations at Paraiba State University and a full-time collaborator/researcher at the Post-Graduate Program in Comparative Studies on the Americas, at University of Brasilia, both in Brazil, in addition to being a Senior Research Associate at the Refugee Law Initiative at University of London, UK. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the York University Centre for Refugee Studies, Canada (2009 to 2010), visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies… Read more

My work has equipped me to evaluate country conditions through a disciplined framework that considers security, governance, community dynamics, institutional behavior, and vulnerability in combination, rather than in isolation. My expertise is especially relevant where a case turns on whether an individual could reasonably obtain protection, safely relocate, or avoid persecution, serious harm, reprisals, extortion, gang coercion, political targeting, gender-based violence, or reprisals linked to family or community structures. I assess, where relevant, whether state protection is available, effective, and accessible in practice; whether criminal or political actors can act with impunity or informal protection; whether relocation within the country would be realistic and durable; how local factors affect the risk profile of the individual concerned; and whether socio-economic, ethnic, political, or family-based vulnerabilities materially increase exposure to harm.

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.

Lesley Jo Weaver, PhD, MPH, is an academic expert in medical anthropology, global health, mental health, race, gender, chronic diseases, food insecurity, and homelessness. Her research focuses, broadly, on the social production of health and illness. In the US, Weaver's federally funded research addresses the ongoing crisis of houselessness in the Pacific Northwest by exploring stress and health among people living with insecure housing. In India, Weaver’s federally funded research explores how the day-to-day management of type 2 diabetes shapes North Indian women’s abilities to participate in social roles considered appropriate for women of their age, class, and caste groups. She also studies how South Indian women explain and understand distress, and what they do when they are so stressed that they need to seek help. In Brazil, Weaver’s work has examined how food insecurity influences physical and mental wellbeing. In addition to this fieldwork, Weaver co-hosts and co-produces the academic podcast Speaking of Race, a longstanding program that explores the history and present-day reverberations of scientific racism around the world.

Lesley Jo Weaver, PhD, MPH, is an academic expert in medical anthropology, global health, mental health, race, gender, chronic diseases, food insecurity, and homelessness. Her research focuses, broadly, on the social production of health and illness. In the US, Weaver's federally funded research addresses the ongoing crisis of houselessness in the Pacific Northwest by exploring stress and health among people living with insecure housing. In India, Weaver’s federally funded research explores how the day-to-day management of type 2 diabetes shapes North Indian women’s abilities to participate in social roles considered appropriate for women of their age, class, and caste groups. She also studies how South Indian women explain and understand distress, and what they do when they are so stressed that they need to seek help. In Brazil, Weaver’s work has examined how food insecurity influences physical and mental wellbeing. In addition to this fieldwork, Weaver co-hosts and co-produces the academic podcast Speaking of Race, a longstanding program that explores the history and present-day reverberations of scientific racism around the world. 

Dr. Tara Rava Zolnikov focuses on aspects of culture in a global health setting. Dr. Zolnikov earned a Ph.D in Developmental Science from North Dakota State University and an M.S. in Environmental Health from Harvard School of Public Health and a second M.S. in Industrial Hygiene from Montana Tech of the University of Montana and recently finished her third MS degree in Sport Psychology at North Central University and is expected to graduate in 2024. She also earned a B.S. degree in Biological Sciences from Montana Tech of the University of Montana.  She has been a professor of global health and environmental health for the last decade.  She also has chaired and been on committees in over 400 doctoral projects; to date, she has graduated over 150 PsyD’s under her guidance and tutelage. She was also recently accepted as a fellow of ultra elite The Explorer's Club. Dr. Zolnikov’s research primarily focuses on global health issues in low and middle-income countries, including Kenya, Ghana, India, Colombia, and Brazil. She has worked with the Kenya Red Cross on a variety of public health projects, ranging from infectious diseases (E.g. Ebola and HIV/AIDS) to access to water projects. She is primarily a qualitative researcher and concentrates on providing… Read more