Experts on countries of origin by country

Sharon Abramowitz is Associate Research Professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. She is a medical anthropologist who specializes in community engagement, mental health, gender violence, epidemic preparedness and response. She has been a leading global advocate for building national community engagement capacity, strengthening integrated analytics (IOA) and social science, risk communications, and community engagement (RCCE) capacity, metrics, and utilization in public health emergencies.

She is presently on the editorial board of the Journal for Humanitarian Affairs, and is honorary faculty at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. She is the author of the Inter-Agency Minimum Quality Standards and Indicators for Community Engagement and the monograph Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War, co-editor of the book Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice, and has written for Nature Human Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, The Lancet, Global Public Health, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and the Journal of Infectious Disease. Lastly, Abramowitz leads Communitology, an initiative that connects social science researcher/country-of… Read more

Ibrahim Bangura has worked extensively in the fields of Transitional Justice, Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants, Security Sector Reform, Sustainable Livelihoods, Gender and Conflict Resolution in Africa.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and History and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from University of Sierra Leone; another Master’s degree in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam; and a Doctorate degree in Economics from the Leipzig Graduate School of Management in Germany.

He currently lectures at the Peace and Conflict Studies Programme, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, and he is also a senior partner at Transition International, a consultancy firm based in the Netherlands.

Nicola Bulled is a public health anthropologist. Her scholarship interrogates health inequalities, using mixed methods to examine the intersection of biology with the social to offer multi-level perspectives on public health programming, service delivery, and policy. Her specific fields of interest include HIV, infectious diseases, disease prevention technologies, health communication, and community collaboration.  She has engaged in research and public health programming in South Africa, Lesotho, Liberia, Greece, and the United States. Her research has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Fulbright IIE. 

Dr Hazel Margaret Cameron – Expert Witness and Country Specialist Independent expert on barriers to reintegration and risks on return in a range of African countries, with evidence judicially commended and relied upon in the UK, US, EU, and Hong Kong. Dr Cameron is a critical criminologist and internationally recognised expert witness specialising in barriers to reintegration faced by failed asylum seekers and deportees. 

Her expertise covers: 

Dr Cameron has been instructed in more than three hundred cases of asylum, deportation, and human rights cases, including claims under Articles 3 and 8 ECHR. Her reports have been relied upon in courts and tribunals in the UK, US, EU, and Hong Kong. Judicial decisions consistently commend her evidence as “cogent, impartial, and highly persuasive,” describing it as “compelling, impartially applied, with a… Read more

Kendra Dupuy is a social science researcher and Assistant Professor of African politics. She has expertise with quantitative & qualitative research on energy, climate change, environment, natural resource management, democracy, human rights, civil society, education, and forced migration. She is a certified project manager, technical writer, and program & project evaluator. She has has deep expertise in the African region and specifically on countries in West Africa, East Africa, southern Africa, and the DR Congo.

Dr. Molly Fitzgerald is a public health professional with 25 years of experience in global health programming and research on health and human rights, stigma, health and social equity. Much of her work has been in Africa (West and Southern Africa) centering on research and programs pertaining to access to sexual and reproductive health, HIV, and equitable health systems. 

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.

Audra Grant works at the intersection of conflict, human rights, and governance in fragile, conflict-affected settings in the Middle East and Africa. As an international development professional and subject matter expert at NORC, her projects addressed diverse issues affecting vulnerable populations, from human rights, illicit trade, extremism, and organized crime to child labor and youth recruitment into violence. Audra has over 20 years of experience as a practitioner, security and policy professional and academic and has worked in nearly every country in the Middle East and North Africa and also in over 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing policy and program advice to the USG, private sector, and international donors. She held senior positions at RAND and was a career analyst at the U.S. Department of State / INR. A former assistant professor at University Al-Akhawayn, Ifrane, Morocco, she is a Senior Lecturer at The George Washington University. Audra is also an advisor for the Women’s Ambassador Foundation, Howard University, and reviewer for the Journal of Peace and Development and Contemporary Review of the Middle East. 

Akin Iwilade is currently Senior Lecturer (Associate professor) in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He holds a doctorate in International Development from the University of Oxford. His research has addressed various areas of politics and society in Africa, including cultural anthropologies of violence, regional security in West Africa, and the exploration of human rights, social services and everyday life in Africa more generally. His work is both empirically and conceptually grounded, with regular fieldwork conducted in countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Liberia. He is widely published and also serves as editor of leading journals in the field of African Studies, including Critical African Studies and Canadian Journal of African Studies.

Michelle Johnson is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. A cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and ritual in West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora (i.e., West African immigrants in Europe and the United States), she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and with Guinean immigrants in Portugal. She has held grants from the Social Science Research Council, the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), and the Institute for Citizens &; Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Religion in Africa, African Studies Review, Anthropology Quarterly, and Food and Foodways. She is author of Re-making Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon - Mecca - Bissau (Indiana University Press, 2020) and co-author (with Edmund “Ned” Searles) of Reciprocity Rules:Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters (Lexington Books, 2021). She provides COI expert information and testimony on asylum cases pertaining to West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora on the topics of female genital cutting, arranged (forced) marriage, and religious persecution and freedom. She teaches courses on… Read more

Professor and Head of Research Group Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/S., Germany. 20 years of experience preparing expert reports concerning the issues mentioned under “Expertise: Areas of expertise”.

Dr. Muzong W. Kodi has more than 40 years of research, writing and lecturing on Africa as well as working and residing in several African countries. He has written more than 200 country expert reports for asylum seekers and other migrants from several African countries. He has also provided more than 100 authentication reports for official documents and several reports on nationality and adoption cases. As a consultant, he has been contracted by international organisations, regional African organisations, and multinational companies. He previously held senior management positions in Transparency International, Amnesty, International, and the African Centre for Monetary Studies. I also taught at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He holds a PhD in African History from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA, and speaks fluent French, English, Lingala, and Kikongo, as well as intermediary Swahili.

Occupation: International Consultant in governance, anti-corruption, human rights, as well as political and investment risks in Africa.

Countries of expertise: the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo (ROC or Congo-Brazzaville), Angola, Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda… Read more

Academic and practicing attorney, based in USA (admitted to AZ bar), experienced in written and oral expert reports in variety of national formats, on many social groups and diverse matters in West Africa and Africa broadly.

Depending on issue/claim basis, I may be able to provide expertise on any country in West Africa. I have testified and provided expertise for cases from: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

Journalist and researcher, with more than twenty years experience reporting on human rights, development issues and related humanitarian affairs. Has prepared a number of expert witness reports for the UK, USA and the Netherlands. Extensive base of complementary knowledge in Francophone Africa. 

Dr. Onuoha is a HIPAA Certified expert witness who has written several expert witness reports and opinions, and testified in immigration evaluation and immigration detention hearings over the years. His expertise spans asylum, human rights and human security claims, persecution and discrimination based on political associations (including party politics, social and environmental activism), religion, ethnicity, identity, customs and culture (gender-based persecution ranging from forced marriage, child marriage, polygamy and to FGM, among other gender-related cases), and self-determination cases of people fleeing violence and conflict from West African countries with similar dynamics.

As an African social anthropologist, he has taught and designed courses in American universities bordering on Female genital cutting, Gang-related violence, General country knowledge, LGBTQ+ issues, Political associations, Race/ethnicity, Religion, Trafficking, Violence against children, Violence against women. He has extensive experience on a variety of theorical, epistemological and practical cultural problems in African societies.

Academic and international development consultant with expertise around the cross-cutting themes of violence, extremism, anti-corruption, human rights, elections natural resources, poverty, community development, and risks.

Karen O’Reilly is a country expert who has produced over 300 reports for asylum, criminal, deportation, high profile and country guidance cases in the UK, US, and Canada. Her expertise derives in large part from her extensive experience as a Refugee Resettlement Expert and Protection Officer for UNHCR, beginning in 2006. She is also a writer who has published extensively on refugee-related issues. 

I am a specialist in the history and anthropology of West Africa, especially related to conflict, gender-based violence, and traditional harmful practices. For the past 17 years I have lived and worked across West Africa, in particular Liberia and Ghana, as well as Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire. Since 2019 I have worked as the Director of an Oxfordshire-based research company, Résolu Ltd. Prior to this, I held positions as Assistant Professor in Gender Violence at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Tutor in Gender, Geography & Environment at University of Oxford, and various other roles related to gender-based violence research in West Africa. My work has been published in Routledge, Third World Quarterly, and Democracy In Africa. I completed my DPhil at University of Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 2016.