Call for papers for a workshop / edited volume on contested expertise and evidence in asylum-related decision making

Brief description 

Asylum-related adjudication is a particularly challenging form of legal decision-making due to the combination of a difficult evidentiary situation and a prevailing climate of suspicion’ surrounding the category of asylum seekers. Increasingly decision-makers rely on expert knowledge to assess asylum seekers’ identities and the credibility of their asylum claims.  Different forms of expertise have been developed or refined for this purpose, including country-of-origin information (COI), age and language assessments, forensic document examinations and consular document verifications, and more recently automated facial recognition and speech biometrics. At the same time, expert knowledge is not shielded from critique but contested both inside and outside court rooms. Academic, medical and religious forms of expertise have been mobilized by asylum seekers and their allies to challenge decisions. Similar controversies related to expertise are also found in other asylum-related decision-making processes, such as cases involving revocation of refugee status, applications of permanent residence and family reunification involving refugees, or persons with subsidiary or humanitarian status. 

This edited volume will offer a critical and comprehensive examination of the role of expert knowledge as evidence in asylum-related decision-making through an interdisciplinary and ethnographically oriented approach, bringing into dialogue perspectives from anthropology, socio-legal studies, and Science and Technology Studies.  

Chapters in this book may focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics and questions: 

• The contestation and constitution of specific forms of expertise as evidence in asylum-related decision making (e.g. Country of origin (COI) and cultural expertise, forensic science, biometrics (finger, face, voice), linguistic expertise, religious expertise / theology, medicine and DNA). 
• The interplay between different types of evidence and the emergence of specific hierarchies of knowledge in asylum decision making. How boundaries between common and expert knowledge are drawn in practice and when/how these forms of knowledge intertwine. 
• How knowledge claims attain meaning, value, and authority through the relational dynamics between actors in a field of asymmetric power relations, including the multiple ways in which differently situated actors in the legal process construct or contest the credibility of expert knowledge before and during trial, inside and outside of courts. 
• How questions of place, embodiment and materiality intersect in the conversion of expert knowledge into evidence in different contexts 
• Pay attention to the kinds of knowledge that are not inscribed with sufficient credibility or relevance to be mobilized or appear before the court.  

Practicalities and Envisaged Outcomes 

We aim to publish selected papers in an anthology after the workshop. Those interested in participating in the workshop and authoring a chapter for the edited volume are invited to submit a brief abstract (up to 750 words) by October 15^th  2026. The abstract must  specify the topic of their contribution as well as the theoretical perspective and empirical data that inform it.  

We will send out our decision by the end of October 2026. We want to submit the book proposal (with selected chapter abstracts) by January 2027, preferably to Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies.  

Full draft papers will be prepared and discussed during a workshop in February 10-12, 2027. Subsequently, participants will have the opportunity to revise their draft chapters prior to submitting them for publication. Deadline for final draft is May 3^rd 2027.  

The workshop will be hosted by the ERC-funded ASYKNOW-project at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen. The organisers will cover the costs for travel, accommodation and board for all participants. The project will also cover open access expenses for the edited volume. 

Abstracts should be sent to: emma.solheim@uib.no