KIMBERLY GAUDERMAN
SCHOLAR, ACLU SCHOLARS IN SOCIETY
ACLS/Mellon Scholars & Society Fellow, May 2019
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“Practicing Asylum” is an interdisciplinary, scholarly, and practical guide to expert witness testimony. As the scale and severity of violence in Latin America, and Central America in particular, has grown in the last decade, scholars and lawyers have collaborated to defend the due process rights of women, children, and LGBTQ persons who have experienced domestic, sexual and gang violence in their home countries to claim protection through the US immigration system. This volume brings together contributions from experienced expert witnesses, asylum attorneys, and immigration rights advocates to provide direct, practical guidance for current and prospective expert witnesses and their attorney colleagues, thereby disseminating best practices and facilitating the expansion of academics ready and willing to provide expert testimony for asylum cases.
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Gauderman is an Associate Professor in the History Department. She joined the History Department in 1998 and served as the Departmental Undergraduate Advisor for nine years. She served as the Director of the UNM Latin American Studies Program for three years and is currently a Faculty Affiliate of the UNM School of Law.
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Gauderman is also a Faculty Affiliate of the FLACSO-Quito. Since 2010, Gauderman has served as an expert witness for individuals seeking asylum from Andean nations and the Northern Triangle of Central America. She has also worked with attorneys across the nation to support those seeking asylum in the United States because of domestic, sexual, gang and political violence and threats to their gender identity and/or sexual orientation in their countries of origin.
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Because of her expertise as an educator and expert witness, she was chosen by consortium of law schools to teach in the Summer Law Institute at the Universidad de Guanajauto Facultad de Derecho in 2014. She regularly consults with and provides expert witness affidavits for law students in university immigration clinics across the country.