We are pleased to offer for review ‘African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights’ edited by Iris Berger, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Benjamin N. Lawrence, Joanna T. Tague, and Meredith Terretta (Ohio University Press, 2015). Expressions of interest are welcome from across the medical humanities.
African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights examines the emerging trend of requests for expert opinions in asylum hearings or refugee status determinations. This is the first book to explore the role of court-based expertise in relation to African asylum cases and the first to establish a rigorous analytical framework for interpreting the effects of this new reliance on expert testimony.
Over the past two decades, courts in Western countries and beyond have begun demanding expert reports tailored to the experience of the individual claimant. As courts increasingly draw upon such testimony in their deliberations, expertise in matters of asylum and refugee status is emerging as an academic area with its own standards, protocols, and guidelines. This deeply thoughtful book explores these developments and their effects on both asylum seekers and the experts whose influence may determine their fate.
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