Centre for Kurdish Studies

Professor Christine Allison (BA Oxon, PhD SOAS, London) is Ibrahim Ahmad Associate Professor of Kurdish Studies and Director of the Centre for Kurdish Studies.

Her research concerns the relationship between oral and written, oral literatures, discourses of memory and popular culture, especially in Kurmanji-speaking areas. She also has a strong interest in minority religions especially Yezidism. She is currently writing on discourses of memory.

Dr Hashem Ahmadzadeh is (BA Zahidan, BA MA PhD Uppsala) is Ibrahim Ahmad Senior Lecturer in Kurdish Language and Literature.

His research interests range across the humanities and social sciences. In the field of language and literature, he works upon the emergence and development of the Kurdish novel, and he also teaches history and politics courses. As a social scientist, Dr Ahmadzadeh is particularly interested in constructs of nationalism among the Kurds, and undertaking comparative analyses of the Kurdish situation across different states.

Professor Gareth Stansfield (BA MA PhD Durham) is Professor of Middle East Politics.

His research interests with regard to Kurdish Studies fall within the disciplinary areas of political science and international relations. His recent work has focused upon the political development of the Kurds of Iraq in the 1990s; the formation and activities of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq; and the wider position of the Kurds in the Iraqi state following regime change in 2003, with a particular focus upon the discourse regarding federalism. He is currently researching the political development of post-2003 Iraq and particularly the interaction of religious and ethnic groups and conceptions of nationalism and federalism. He recently served as a Senior Political Advisor to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq with particular focus on the ‘disputed internal boundary’ between the Kurdistan Region and the rest of Iraq. He has also briefed the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Cabinet Office and Home Office on Kurdish politics in Iraq.

Dr Clémence Scalbert Yücel (BA Toulouse Le Mirail, BA, PhD Paris IVSorbonne) is Lecturer in Ethnopolitics.

Her PhD focussed on the relationship between language and nationalism, the emergence of a Kurdish national language and the development of a field of Kurdish literature. She is now working on issues surrounding minority cultural production in Turkey, and, in collaboration with Professor Stansfield, on the formation and organisation of transborder territories.

Dr Yiannis Kanakis (BBA Athens, MA Paris, MA Paris) is a Research Fellow.

A geopolitical analyst and ethnomusicologist, his main research interests include: issues of orality and representations of identity; music (from religious musics to lullabies to pop musics etc) in the creation/evolution of notions of identity; music and national movements (especially the Kurdish movement in Turkey); music as religious, political and economic code; urban and non-urban, orthodox and heterodox, mainstream and alternative music/culture networks. Geographically he focuses on parts of the Near/Middle East and the Balkans, in particular Turkey, Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Dr Sarah Keeler (PhD Kent) is a Research Fellow.

Her postgraduate research looked at the ways in which Kurdish young people construct discourses and embodied practices of cosmopolitanism and identity, thus creating alternate political spaces which challenge prevailing nationalist discourses within Kurdish politics, and was awarded a BIAA/British Academy research grant to carry out fieldwork in south-eastern Turkey. In 2006/07 she was a Marie Curie Fellow in the Centre for Conflict Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Following fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan, her interests have focussed on gendered forms of violence, and women’s health and embodied forms of resistance. Her current research relates to collective trauma in post-conflict Iraqi Kurdistan, with a particular focus on social practices and healing.

Professor Tim Niblock is Professor of Arab Gulf Studies.

His research interests cover domestic Middle East politics, international relations, and political economy. He is currently focusing upon issues relating to the formation of civil society in the region, and processes of democratisation.

Dr Sajjad Rizvi is Lecturer in Islamic Studies.

He has particular research interests in Islamic thought, philosophy, and mysticism, and particular in relation to the Naqshbandi and Qadiri orders found in Kurdistan.

Dr Ruba Salih (BA Bologna PhD Sussex) is Senior Lecturer in Gender and Middle East Studies.

She has published extensively on the broad areas of Islam and modernity, Transnational migration and gender across the Mediterranean, Multiculturalism and Citizenship; Gender and Islam in Europe.

Professor Gerd Nonneman (BA MA Ghent PhD Exon) is Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics at Exeter, having previously served as Professor of International Relations at Lancaster University – although he started his career in the commercial sector in Iraq. Born in Flanders and educated at Ghent and Exeter Universities, he obtained his PhD in Politics from Exeter. He is a former Executive Director of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, and has published extensively on the politics, political economy and international relations of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Gulf region and Yemen.
Among his books are Iraq, the Gulf States & the War; Analyzing Middle Eastern Foreign Policies; and Saudi Arabia in the Balance.