Experts on countries of origin by country

Experienced international trade and logistics expert specializing in infrastructure procurement, supply chain management, cross-border commercial operations, and strategic market development across emerging markets.

Dr. Sandoval-Cervantes is a cultural anthropologist from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He is an UDLAP alum, and obtained his PhD from the University of Oregon in 2016. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). In the Spring 2022 semester, He will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School where he will be working on his project “Dead Letter”: Animal Law, Activism, and Mexican Politics," which is part of a new research on the animal rights movement in urban Mexico. 

His research interests can be divided into two overlapping sub-fields. The first sub-field includes the anthropology of migration, particularly the analysis of internal and transnational migrations, gender (masculinity and femininity), indigeneity, kinship, and care. The second sub-field includes multi-species ethnography, legal anthropology and the anthropology of social movements, particularly through the study of activism and animal rights in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands.

Dr Kübra Zeynep Sariaslan is a social anthropologist specialising in gender and development with a focus on Turkey and Europe. Her book Empowering Housewives in Southeast Turkey: Gender, State, and Development is based on her dissertation, which she defended at the University of Zurich in 2018. She held a visiting fellowship at the University of Cambridge, where she researched on civil dialogue between Turkey and Armenia. She has also been a fellow at the London School of Economics and the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (Leibniz Association). Her recent work examined transnational politics and the creation of online news in exile. Currently, Dr Sariaslan is an associated researcher at the University of Bern and also teaches part-time. 

The expert is a highly experienced legal professional with extensive expertise in criminal law, immigration law, human rights, and country conditions analysis, particularly within South Asia and Southeast Asia. He has been enrolled as an Advocate of the Judge Court of Dhaka since 1989 and has been a practicing Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh since 1997. In addition, he served with distinction as an Assistant Attorney General of Bangladesh for a continuous period of nine years, from 2011 to 2019.

Dr. Megan Schmidt-Sane is a medical anthropologist with interdisciplinary training and experience in global health. She has 10+ years of research experience in Uganda on topics such as HIV/AIDS, climate change and health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and violence. She is currently involved with projects related to climate change and health in urban sub-Saharan Africa (the Urban Futures project), on the social determinants of HIV treatment in Kampala, Uganda, and on the social dimensions of mpox outbreaks. Her experience includes work with the WHO, UNICEF, and national and local public health practitioners.

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 

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.

Dr. Serap Ruken Sengul is a sociocultural anthropologist and independent country-conditions expert specializing in Turkey, with over twenty-five years of experience in longitudinal country research, field-based human rights documentation, legal and institutional analysis, and policy work. She has substantial expertise in Turkey's legal and regulatory framework as it relates to political and human rights conditions, including anti-terror legislation and its implementation, and extensive experience assessing country-of-origin information and documentary evidence.

Her substantive expertise encompasses political and ethnic persecution; the Kurdish conflict and Kurdish populations in Turkey; political participation and actual or imputed political opinion; state and security practices; gender-based persecution and the intersection of gender with ethnicity, religion, political identity and family relations; forced displacement; and ethnic, religious and sectarian minorities, with particular expertise on Kurdish Alevis and Armenian Christians.

Since 2017, she has provided independent expert evidence in U.S. asylum proceedings involving Turkey, preparing approximately twenty expert affidavits, declarations, and country-conditions reports. Her expert work combines… Read more

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.

Hemn Seyedi holds a PhD in Kurdish Studies, University of Exeter. He was also awarded Mphil in Iranian Studies (2019) and MSc in Middle East Politics (2017). With the cooperation of some colleagues, Seyedi established the Middle East Institution for Democratic Developments, MEIDD, focusing on research and democratic developments in the Middle East.

One of the main services of the institution is providing professional advice and reports to the courts, solicitors, and the Home Office case workers. It can offer impartial, evidence-based, and fresh analysis of the socio-political situations in Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, including the governments and societies within these countries.

Hemn Seyedi is in contact with people from these countries, ranging from ordinary individuals to lecturers, journalists, and lawyers. He is also in partnership with universities, institutions, and research centres within the region and globally, which work on Middle Eastern politics and its social changes.

Alongside the research and academic activities, Seyedi is active on social media, with 21,000 followers on Facebook, 68,000 on Instagram, and 91,000 on X (formerly Twitter), mainly from Iran and Iraq. The reason for this influence is that he has been a public figure on Farsi… Read more

Experienced in working with diverse populations, including women and girls, children and youth, refugees, internally displaced persons returnees, migrants, persons with disabilities, minority groups, rural communities, and marginalized populations. Strong commitment to inclusive development approaches, gender equality, social protection, human rights, accountability to affected populations, and sustainable solutions that strengthen community resilience. 

Fluent in English with professional experience working in multilingual and multicultural settings, including collaboration with French, Arabic, and local-language-speaking communities through direct communication and interpretation support where required. Experienced in navigating complex cultural and political environments while building trust and effective partnerships with national and international stakeholders.

I am a UK trained Barrister and practicing law in Bangladesh with experience across a wide range of practice areas, including banking and financial institutions, employment law, anti-corruption and money laundering, immigration and citizenship law, Human rights law, Criminal law, civil justice and litigation-related work.

My professional work involves providing legal analysis, research, advisory services, and submissions on complex legal and regulatory issues. I have been regularly engaged by renowned national and multinational companies and institutions, offering expertise on compliance, risk, and legal frameworks within Bangladesh.

In addition to my domestic legal experience, I work as an independent country expert, specialising in the Bangladeshi and Myanmar legal and justice systems. My role includes preparing expert opinions, country reports, and legal assessments for international organisations, law firms, and other stakeholders. 

I also engage with international human rights standards and their application to the Bangladeshi context, including obligations under key treaties relating to torture, arbitrary detention, fair trial rights, and freedom of expression. I am experienced in presenting complex country conditions clearly and professionally… Read more

I am a licensed attorney in India and New York. For 13 years I have conducted academic and professional research on LGBT+ rights, women’s rights, and religious and cultural rights in India. My research on LGBT+ rights has been cited by the Indian Supreme Court. I regularly write articles and book chapters on the same in academic journals and edited collections. I have also conduced socio-legal research on LGBT+ rights, worked in charities in India, and in the Indian Supreme Court.

Dr. Smith has been writing about Mexico for over twenty years. Currently, he specializes on twentieth-century politics, the narcotics trade and crime. His most recent book, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade was published by Ebury/Norton in 2021. As a historian of nineteenth and twentieth-century politics, he started my research in the archives, villages, churches, and markets of the predominantly indigenous state of Oaxaca. Since then he has branched out to write about about indigenous politics, Catholicism, conservatism, newspapers, journalism, censorship and civil society. He has regularly appeared on TV, radio and in the press to talk about issues of Mexican politics, crime, social movements, Catholicism, and narcotics.

Dr. Smith has served as an expert witness in asylum cases in the United States and the United Kingdom. He has written c. 180 export reports, predominantly for Mexican asylum seekers in the United States. Most have concerned persons fleeing criminal or cartel violence. He has also dealt with cases involving religious, political, and gender discrimination.

The Expert has completed over 3,000 expert witness reports on Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Malaysia since 2005, primarily for the UK courts but also in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.  This has also included cases on terrorism and extradition. Oral expert evidence in all recent Sri Lankan Country Guidance cases from LP (2007) to KK & RS (2020).

Most recent one month research visit to Sri Lanka in March 2022 (Northern and Eastern Provinces).  It is usual to visit Sri Lanka and select countries in Asia each year for at least a month.  Strong emphasis on fieldwork and interviews with officials and in-country experts and focus upon risk and vulnerability on return.

Also, expertise on India, especially Tamil Nadu and Khalistan and LGBTQ issues generally.  Recent expert witness on high profile extradition cases in Hong Kong, London and New York.  Research visits to India, Pakistan and Malaysia are planned for 2023. 

Extensive field work and publications record in India from 1983, including my PhD on India’s defence industry and security sector (1988) and two year tenure at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies/United Nations University (Delhi) (1983-85).

Expert witness research trip planned for… Read more

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.

Karen S. Rotabi-Caseres is Professor of Social Work at California State University- Monterey Bay. She has extensive international experience, with an emphasis on Guatemala, El Salvador and Somalia. Her practice in these countries is oriented to child protection as well as violence against women. She has worked as an expert witness, mainly for Guatemala, but recent work in Somalia has expanded her area of expertise.  She has an extensive publication history, with an orientation to human rights.

BBC journalist, film-maker and broadcaster with extensive experience of travelling to and investigating human rights abuses in Russia, including Chechnya, Belarus and other parts of the former USSR. Also considerable experience working with victims of human rights abuses in location in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Israel / Palestine, China, Turkey and Cuba.

Lecturer, researcher and country expert witness, with over 15 years of research and fieldwork experience examining armed conflicts, political violence, peace processes and post-conflict transitions, mainly in Colombia, and recently the Colombo-Venezuelan transnational conflicts. My expertise is grounded in extensive ethnographic research in conflict-affected regions, where I have conducted first-hand investigations into armed group activity, forced recruitment, internal displacement, and political and illicit economy-related violence.

Dr. Noelle Sullivan is a medical and sociocultural anthropologist who has done ethnographic (fieldwork-based) research since 2005 on the history and present of Tanzania’s health care sector. She is one of few scholars with expertise on how Tanzania’s health sector has changed through time in the postcolonial period, and what these changes have meant for the health care workers, patients, and families in Tanzania who provide or rely on this care. Sullivan has expertise on the sector’s capacities for certain kinds of care (reproductive and child health, mental health, preventive services, surgical capacity, HIV/AIDS, pediatric care, cancer care, cardiology, LGBTQ+ care, etc.) and how this capacity affects quality of health care delivery for prospective patients. She can also provide information on gender- and sexuality-related issues in Tanzania, including LGBTQ+ issues, traditional gender roles, some ethnic groups’ specific practices related to gender (including marriage practices, female genital cutting, relationships between families of married couples, polygamy, child rearing, etc.)