Experts on countries of origin by country

A social anthropologist (Ph.D. Cambridge 2002), Dr Daryn brings over three decades of hands-on and academic experience in anthropology, human rights, politics, and refugee policy across South Asia. This includes 18 years of living in Nepal and India, doing prolonged spells of fieldwork and research, as well as work in various international organisations. During  his British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London, 2003-6) Dr Daryn also taught the MA course: “The Anthropology of South Asia”. He became closely acquainted with asylum seekers, including Bangladeshis, Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Burmese, and Tibetans, while working in UNHCR’s Kathmandu office (Nepal) during 2008-9 as an Associate Durable Solutions Officer. In this capacity, Dr Daryn became familiar with the RSD process and UNHCR’s Country of Origin information on South Asian countries, read in detail many private refugee files, and conducted focus group discussions and interviews with many refugees. Since then, he has focused on the study of human rights in South Asian countries. From 2005 onwards, Dr Daryn has served as an Expert Witness in asylum appeal cases and has written over 230 Expert Reports for court cases mainly in the UK,… Read more

The Expert is an academic researcher with expertise in studying Nigeria and also Chad, Cameroon and Niger – they primarily focus in their research on politics and religion in Nigeria. The Expert has more than a decade’s worth of experience in conducting research in West-Central Africa.

Olga Demetriou is Professor in Political Anthropology at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs, and Director of the Durham Global Security Institute. Before joining the School and DGSi in 2018, she was affiliated with PRIO, the University of Cyprus, and Amnesty International, where she was the organisation's researcher on Greece and Cyprus. 

Her interests straddle anthropology and politics/IR. Previous work on citizenship, minorities, gender, and displacement in border locations in Greece and Cyprus has been published in two monographs, Capricious Borders (Berghahn, 2013) and Refugeehood and the Postconflict Subject (SUNY, 2018) as well as various journals across the two disciplines. She supervises doctoral projects across these domains with cross-disciplinary foci. 

Her current work focuses on activism in refugee reception sites in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus. The project "Contesting Migration", which she leads, explores the point of view of activists at key reception sites in these countries, employing political ethnography to study comparatively pro- and anti-migrant contestations over migration and refugee reception. 

Dr. Walker DePuy is an anthropologist specializing in political ecology, human rights, science and technology studies (STS), environmental justice, climate change, and conservation/development studies. He earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Integrative Conservation from the University of Georgia and an M.S. in Environmental Justice from the University of Michigan. He is currently an affiliated researcher with the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia, Kenya, and the United States and has worked as a consultant for the World Wildlife Fund and Center for International Forestry Research.

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

Precious Diagboya, Philosopher by training, from University of Ibadan and is also a Senior Research Fellow of IFRA, Nigeria. Her research focuses on migration policies, gender based violence, and human trafficking from Nigeria to Europe. She has been involved in several international research projects, including with IFRA, but also with UNODC, African Union Commission, Global initiative for transnational organized crime, and the European Commission, on human trafficking practices. She conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork, both in Nigeria and in Europe. Her current work focuses on the aftermath of human trafficking from Nigeria to Europe and the understanding of migration and mobility patterns in Nigeria.

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. 

Dr Haian Dukhan is a Syrian-British political scientist specialising in the contemporary politics of Syria and the wider Middle East. A Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Teesside University and a Fellow of the Centre for Syrian Studies at the University of St Andrews, he completed his PhD in International Relations at St Andrews in 2017.

His research addresses state–society relations, tribal and kinship networks, sectarianism, and ethno-religious and minority communities in Syria, grounded in original Arabic-language fieldwork. He is the author of State and Tribes in Syria (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of Spoils of War in the Arab East (Bloomsbury, 2024), and provides country-of-origin information on Syria to European refugee councils.

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.

Elizabeth Durham is a medical and political anthropologist who has been working in the Republic of Cameroon since 2012, and providing refugee and asylum support through country-of-origin expertise since 2013. She specializes in expert reports on HIV/AIDS and mental illness in Cameroon, and on the conflict commonly known as the Anglophone Crisis. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Princeton University and is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and a Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

I hold a Masters degree in Human Rights and have sixteen years experience living in the Middle East working for national and international human rights and humanitarian organisations in legal, policy and research roles. I have authored numerous in-depth legal and policy reports covering human rights and humanitarian issues in Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq.

I have experience of submitting legal reports to UN human rights treaty body mechanisms and the UN Human Rights Council as well as the Goldberg Committee (Israel).

I have written for many news outlets and contributed to books analysing the conflict, political, social and cultural developments in Syria.

Fazle Elahi is a solicitor specialising in immigration, nationality, human rights and public law, with over 16 years’ legal casework experience. His country expertise relates to Bangladesh, supported by his legal education at the University of Dhaka and his continuing professional focus on immigration, nationality and human-rights issues.

He is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales in 2019 and in Northern Ireland in 2025. He is also an OISC Accredited Level 2 Immigration Adviser. His UK practice includes complex immigration and human-rights applications, asylum-related matters, family migration, nationality, administrative review, appeals, pre-action protocol work and judicial review. He has experience of preparing detailed legal representations, witness evidence and instructions to counsel, and of liaising with the Home Office, courts and tribunals.

Fazle is Co-Founder, Director, Training Principal and a practising solicitor at Square Mile Solicitors. He also provides pro bono immigration advice as an Immigration Solicitor at East Greenwich Legal Advice Clinic and has supervised student advisers in immigration law at Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre. He currently works as a Lecturer and Supervising Solicitor at the University of… Read more

Barrister-at-Law (Lincoln’s Inn) and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, with over 18 years’ experience in legal practice and country expertise on Bangladesh, specializing in political, religious, ethnic, and social group persecution, human rights, and rule of law issues.

I am a Barrister-at-Law of England and Wales and a Practising Lawyer in the Courts of Bangladesh with tact and expertise in International Law or Treaties, Human Rights Law, Immigration Rules and Regulations of the United Kingdom, Asylum, Convention Rights International Relations between Bangladesh and other nations.

C. Christine Fair is a Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at the United States Institute of Peace.  Her most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2018/2019).  She has authored, co-authored and co-edited several books, including Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (Oxford University Press); Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Policing Insurgencies: Cops as Counterinsurgents (Oxford University Press, 2014); Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh (Routledge, 2010); Treading on Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (USIP, 2008), and The Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008), among others.  

She is a member of Women in International Security, International Studies… Read more

Dr. Daanish Faruqi is a Visiting Researcher at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.  A scholar of migration and mobility in the Middle East and North Africa, he has leveraged his expertise both in academia and in international development. At Georgetown he researches democracy promotion and conflict resolution through transnational religious humanitarianism. His latest writing deals with the viability of religious humanitarianism in effectively managing refugee crises.  He has a recent interview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on this project and its potential for peace building. A specialist on contemporary Syria, he also writes regularly commentary on post-Assad Syria, for popular venues like TRT World, al-Jumhuriyya, and others.

He completed his Ph.D. from Duke University, where he wrote his dissertation on the role of Syrian Sufi religious scholars in joining the 2011 uprising against Bashar al-Assad. Through several years of ethnographic and historical fieldwork in Morocco, Turkey, and Jordan, conducting hundreds of Arabic-language interviews, his work revealed the role of 19th century migration… Read more

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. 

The Expert is currently working as a Researcher in Human Rights at the University of Hull and as a consultant for human rights organizations. 

They have wide-ranging knowledge of historical and ongoing human rights violations globally, involving both civil & political and economic, social & cultural rights. 

The Expert’s current academic specialism focuses on the role of climate change and natural disasters in undermining the human rights of refugees and migrants. Her countries of expertise include Vietnam, and Caribbean nations.  

Associate Professor of Anthropology, Associate Chair of the Department of Cultural/Applied Anthropology Wake Forest University, USA

Steve Folmar is an Anthropologist on faculty at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He launched his ethnographic research in Nepal in 1979 and continues to do so today. For the past 24 years, he has concentrated on the life experiences of Dalit people, mainly in Lamjung District, but also in Lalitpur, Syangja and Kaski. His work has included investigations of the contribution of Dalit people to Village Tourism, Dalit identity and livelihood, Dalit identity politics, mental health and the effects of the 2015 earthquake on Dalit lives. Most recently he has attempted to illuminate the health seeking challenges facing Dalit and other marginalized people in Lamjung and the barriers to healthcare facing them. That project has evolved into a modest but significant effort to raise funds to support their efforts to improve their health, livelihood and other aspects of life. Folmar's publications include: Identity Politics among Dalits in Nepal; Being, Becoming, Belonging: Revisiting the Effects of Caste and Disaster on the Mental Health of Dalits in Nepal and; Addressing Dalit Wellbeing through Counter Ritual (forthcoming)… Read more

Professor Joost Fontein is an independent scholar based in South Africa and Kenya, a research associate with the University of the Free State, and recently (February -June 2026), visiting professor at the University of Pretoria. He previously held a chair at the University of Johannesburg (2018–2025), and before that was director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Nairobi (2014–2018). He received his PhD in Social anthropology from the University of Edinburgh in 2003, where subsequently held a postdoctoral research position and then a lectureship, from 2004 to 2014. He has carried out long periods of ethnographic research in Zimbabwe and Kenya, as well as shorter periods in Tanzania, South Africa and elsewhere across the region. He is a former editor (2023-2026) of AFRICA (International Africa Institute) and is now an editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies (since 2026, was previously editor of JSAS in 2008-2014). He also cofounded Critical African Studies and serves on the editorial advisory boards of Anthropology Southern Africa and Human Remains and Violence. Among numerous special issues and articles, he has published three monographs on Zimbabwe, the most recent being The Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe 2000–2020: Bones Rumours and Spirits (James… Read more