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Dr Gil Daryn
Email: darynsasia@gmail.com
Dr Gil Daryn is a social anthropologist (Ph.D. Cambridge 2002) and published scholar with expertise on the culture, society, history and politics of South Asia. Since 1989, he has visited, conducted research, worked and lived in the region for a total of over thirteen years, and currently resides in the region. In addition, he became professionally involved with asylum seekers and refugees while working in UNHCR’s Kathmandu office as an Associate Durable Solutions Officer during 2008-9. In this capacity, he went through UNHCR’s archives, read in detail many private refugee files, and became familiar with Pakistan’s Country of Origin information and the RSD process. In addition, he also conducted focus group discussions and interviews with many refugees and held detailed discussions with them. Since 2005, Dr Daryn has served as a consultant and expert on asylum and human rights and has written over 170 Expert Witness Reports. In recent years he also contributed information about specific issues to ACCORD (Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation).
Among the issues Dr Daryn often writes about are: the justice system, gender issues including so-called ‘honour killing’ and gender minorities, sectarian violence, criminal and terrorist groups, land disputes, the health including mental health systems, minority groups, political parties, and other aspects of culture, society and history of the countries in South Asia.
Dr Carole McGranahan
Email: carole.mcgranahan@colorado.edu
Dr. McGranahan is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado (USA). She holds a PhD in Anthropology and History from the University of Michigan (2001). She conducts research and teaches courses on Tibet and the Himalayas, political anthropology, and refugees and immigration among other topics. She has provided expert witness testimony for U.S. political asylum cases for Nepali and Tibetan nationals since 2005.
Rebecca Novick
Email: achosenlife@gmail.com
Tel: +44 (0) 7587214876
Rebecca Novick is a writer for the Huffington Post on issues in Tibet and China. Over the years, she has conducted hundreds of interviews with exiled Tibetans. She has written and edited six books on Tibetan Buddhism and culture and has produced and edited numerous radio documentaries. She founded The Tibet Connection, the first radio program about Tibet. She co-founds a video production company dedicated to creating promotional films for NGO’s. She is currently based in the Tibetan community of Dharamsala, India.
Dr Tsering Shakya
Email: tshakya@exchange.ubc.ca
Dr Shakya is the Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Colombia. He is a widely published scholar, on both historic and contemporary Tibet. He has acted as an expert for Tibetan asylum cases in the UK, EU, and the US Department of Homeland Security for many years. Among his many published texts, his most expansive work to date The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 (Pimlico, London 1999) is a world-renowned text on the modern history of Tibet. Dr Shakya attended London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) with a B.A. Honours in Social Anthropology and South Asian History. He received his M.Phil. in Tibetan Studies in 2000 and PhD in Tibetan Studies in June 2004. Dr Shakya has also taught at the Centre of Refugee Studies at Oxford University, England.
Dr Richard W Whitecross
Email: R.Whitecross@napier.ac.uk
Richard Whitecross is a Lecturer in Law at Edinburgh Napier University. He has conducted research on law, human rights and political change in Nepal and Bhutan. A former practising lawyer, Richard has experience of providing Expert reports and is a member of the Law Society of Scotland Immigration and Asylum Committee. He has written and published extensively on Bhutan and the Himalayas.
Dr Ulrich Pagel
Email: up1@soas.ac.uk
Dr Pagel’s areas of expertise are Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhist Monasticism. He has published and edited several books, including Buddhist Monks in Tax Disputes: Monastic Attitudes towards Revenue Collection in Ancient India (2014), Dhondup, Yangdon and Pagel, Ulrich and Samuel, Geoffrey, eds. (2013) Monastic and Lay Traditions in North-Eastern Tibet. and Pagel, Ulrich and Skorupski, Tadeusz, eds. (1994) The Buddhist Forum III: Papers in honour and appreciation of Professor David Seyfort Ruegg’s contribution to Indological, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies. He held the position of General Secretary at the International Association of Buddhist Studies (2011), and the Editor-in-Chief at the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (2010).
Prof Nancy Levine
Email: nelevine@anthro.ucla.edu
Nancy Levine is a Social Anthropologist, the Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Levine has conducted numerous field projects, including research on Tibetan societies in Nepal and in China where she explored the rationale in various systems of kinship and marriage, parenting, and demographic change. Her current research focuses on studying the impact of transitions to a market economy and government-sponsored land privatization and sedentarization on family and society among ethnic Tibetan nomadic pastoralists in China’s Gansu Province, Sichuan Province and Qinghai Province. Professor Levine is currently working on a manuscript titled: Living on the Margins: Family and Economy in Northwest Nepal.
Sienna Craig
Email: Sienna.R.Craig@dartmouth.edu
Sienna Craig is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. At Dartmouth, Sienna teaches courses on Health and Illness, Global Health, Asian Medical Systems, Tibet and the Himalaya, and other segments of the department’s cultural anthropology curriculum. She has also conducted research on women’s and children’s health, migration and social change, and the impacts and politics of health-development interventions. Sienna received her BA in religious studies from Brown University in 1995. She first visited Nepal in 1993, through a college semester abroad program. Upon completion of her BA, Sienna was granted a Fulbright Fellowship to return to Nepal and continue the ethnographic research and writing she had begun while studying abroad. Sienna lived in Nepal from 1995-1998, working as a freelance writer, editor, experiential educator, trekking guide, and development consultant. Although she no longer lives in Nepal, she has continued to return to Nepal at least once a year. Sienna co-founded DROKPA, a non-profit organization whose mission is to partner with pastoral communities in the Himalaya and Central Asia to implement grassroots development and catalyze social entrepreneurship. DROKPA currently funds projects in Nepal, Ladakh, India, Bhutan, and the Tibet Autonomous Region, China, in the following areas: alternative energy, education and training, community health and Tibetan medicine, and social entrepreneurship. Sienna is currently the co-editor of Himalaya, the journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. She is also the Chair of the Medical Advisory Board for One Heart World-Wide. She has published widely in both academic and popular venues.
Tibet Justice Center
Contact person: Iona Liddell, Executive Director – tjc@tibetjustice.org
Drawing on our expert research and knowledge, three of TJC’s board members are able to provide Country of Origin Information on the conditions for Tibetans in Tibet, India and Nepal. TJC’s policy is to request a donation of $500 to TJC per the affidavit.