The expert is Full Professor of Social and Political Anthropology at the University of Konstanz (Germany). She has served as an expert since 2014.
Academic Degrees
2020 – now. Full Professor of Social and Political Anthropology
2004-2009. Dr. Phil. (Anthropology). Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology and Martin- Luther-University Halle/Wittenberg
1998-2004. M.A (Anthropology, Public and International Law, Slavonic Studies), Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen
Professional Activities (Selection)
since 2014. Country of Origin Expert (COI). Expert reports for asylum cases in the UK
since 2014. Member of the International Advisory Board for Central Asian Survey (CAS)
since 2014. Mentor for the MINERVA-FemmeNet of the Max Planck Society (MPG)
since 2015. Associated Member of the European Network on Statelessness (ENS)
since 2019. Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery Expert Directory (HTMSE)
since 2020. Co-Founder and Partner of the research association Die Bodenseher, GbR
since 2023. Mentor for the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)
since 2025. Mentor for the German Anthropological Association (DGSKA)
Legal and political anthropology of Central and Southeast Asia with a focus on questions of legal pluralism, constitutionalism, authority, state-making, statelessness and the role of (ethnic and religious) minorities.
Recent research in Europe on exile, asylum, statelessness and legal activism.
The expert specifically deals with (when concerning Bangladesh and India) Rohingya asylum cases on this ethnic group.
Books (selection):
2024. Rethinking Community in Myanmar. Practices of We-Formation among Muslims and Hindus in Urban Yangon. Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press.
Open-access pdf for download.
2020 (together with Peter Finke). Practices of Traditionalization in Central Asia. Central Asian Studies Series. London: Routledge.
2016. The Force of Custom. Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan. Central Eurasia in Context Series. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
2014. (together with Madeleine Reeves and Johan Rasanayagam)
Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia. Performing Politics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Journal Articles (selection):
2026. (with Samia Akhter-Khan, Nickey Diamond, Demo Lulin and Sarah Riebel). Exiled activists from Myanmar. Predicaments and possibilities of human rights activism from abroad. Journal of Human Rights Practice.
2025. Asylum interviews in the UK. The problem of evidence and the possibility of applied anthropology. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 33(3): 51-65 (open access)
2023. Community as a category of empire. ‘The work of community’ among Burmese Indians in Myanmar. History and Anthropology. (pdf here).
2022. The common sense of expert activists. Practitioners, scholars and the problem of statelessness in Europe. Dialectical Anthropology (open access).
2020. (with Felix Girke). The state of custom. Gerd Spittler’s ‘Dispute settlement in the shadow of Leviathan‘ (1980) today. For Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie – The German Journal of Law and Society. Special Issue. 41,1.pp. 3-20.
2018. Den Staat ver/fassen. Verfassungspolitik und Verfassungsglaube in Kirgistan und Myanmar. Verfassung und Recht in Übersee / Law and Politics in Africa, Asia, Latin America. 51,1. pp. 36-53. (pdf here).
2015. Finding the law in Myanmar. Anthropology Today. 31,4. pp. 3-7. (pdf here).
2015. Customizations of law. Courts of elders (aksakal courts) in rural and urban Kyrgyzstan. PoLAR. Special issue: edited by Melissa Demian. Volume 38,1. pp. 53-71. (pdf here).
2015. Constitutional faith. Law and hope in revolutionary Kyrgyzstan. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology. 80,3. pp. 320-345. DOI-Number: 10.1080/00141844.2013.841270. (pdf here).
Articles (selection)
2024. Unsicheres Wissen. Die asymmetrische Ko-Konstruktion von Plausibilität in britischen Asylverfahren. In Vorläufige Gewissheiten, edited by Thomas G. Kirsch and Christina Wald. Bielefeld: Transcript.
2023. Legal pluralism in Central Asia. The customization of state and religious law in Kyrgyzstan. In The Central Asian World, edited by Jeanne Feaux de la Croix and Madeleine Reeves. London: Routledge. pp. 409-421.
2021. Nationalismus oder Terrorismus? Das Beispiel des burmesischen Mönchs Wirathu. In Terrorismus im 21. Jahrhundert. Eine Bestandsaufnahme. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. In der Reihe “Zeitbilder”, edited by Jana Kärgel. pp. 332-333.
2019. Das Recht der Anderen. Rechtsethnologie zwischen Pluralität, Indigenität und Alterität. In Interdisziplinäre Rechtsforschung. Eine Einführung, edited by Christian Boulanger, Julika Rosenstock und Tobias Singelnstein. Wiesbaden: Springer. pp. 91-108.
2016. Houses of Islam. Muslims, property rights and the state in Myanmar. In: Crouch, Melissa (ed.): Islam and the State in Myanmar: Muslim-Buddhist Relations and the Politics of Belonging. Oxford University Press, pp.127-155.