Dr. Christian is a psychoanalytical anthropologist with a doctorate in violent ethnic & cultural conflict. He has spent the past 36-years researching and practicing in Eurasia, Southwest Asia, Middle East, Central and South America, West Africa, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. His field work was in support of military, diplomatic, and humanitarian interventions in violent intra-state conflicts. He is a member of the American Anthropological Association’s Society for Psychological Anthropology and the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, Race, Conflict, & Violence.
Dr. Christian’s expertise is derived through a combination of academic training and extensive field work and is best described as the ‘application of psychoanalytical sociological analysis using anthropological methodology to curate the science to a specific subject community’s emic or lived/living experiences both mentally and emotionally.’ This level of analytical research allows him to illuminate the underlying psychosocial-emotional motivations of individual and collective behaviour post-mortem to, and predictive of, violent conflict.
- Clinical research, analysis, & training into the psychopathology of violent communal conflict, virulent-extremist ideologies and their psychosocial transmission & epidemiology.
- Conflict psychoanalysis (includes cognitive imprinting from psychogeography, geology, and climatology)
- Sociological ethnography (includes psycho-sociology of economics, political power, ethnic coherence/defection, and historical narrative memorialization)
- Cultural research into indigenous systems of conflict resolution & mediation
- Psychosocial Profiling of suicide attackers: psychological and emotional devolution
His areas of expertise include the psychosocial conditions of child abuse; sexual abuse/assault; gender-based violence/domestic violence; child soldiers; forced marriage; human trafficking; FGM/FGC; trafficking; forced conscription/refoulment; ex-combatant reintegration; likelihood of destitution or homelessness; land tenure disputes/issues; ethnic, religious, or tribal discrimination or persecution; risk of torture or political persecution; risk from state actors, risk from non-state actors; risk of retaliation; sufficiency of protection; possibility of safe internal relocation; healthcare access; health systems capacity; mental illness
His areas of expertise include the psychosocial conditions of child abuse; sexual abuse/assault; gender-based violence/domestic violence; child soldiers; forced marriage; human trafficking; FGM/FGC; trafficking; forced conscription/refoulment; ex-combatant reintegration; likelihood of destitution or homelessness; land tenure disputes/issues; ethnic, religious, or tribal discrimination or persecution; risk of torture or political persecution; risk from state actors, risk from non-state actors; risk of retaliation; sufficiency of protection; possibility of safe internal relocation; healthcare access; health systems capacity; mental illness
Dr. Christian serves as the director of field research for the Valka-Mir Foundation, leading a 27-member research consortium of post-docs, PhD candidates, and students to collect and analyse data relevant to the psychosocial-emotional conditions of specific ethnic and cultural societies. He and the foundation are under contracts with the USA, UK, Canada, and NATO member states for research, development, and training of psychosocial cultural analysis. As an individual contributor, Dr. Christian has researched more than 94 country-of-origin reports for immigration courts in the USA, UK, Netherlands, and Canada, many of which required virtual testimony.
He is widely published in his field of praxis via peer reviewed journals, books, book chapters, and professional publications published within the USA, UK, Canada, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Hague. He is a member of ORCID.org ID: 0000-0002-8541-9155