GDC is supporting an graduate-student-led event titled "Teach-In: War, Empire, and Entanglement in Iran and Gaza."
The GDC is supporting an ILCAA-hosted international workshop titled, "Kurdish Worlds Across Time and Space: Boundaries, Belonging, and the Making of History."
To download the event program in PDF, click
https://ars.aa.tufs.ac.jp/static/uploads/events/e9fb348b-11bc-4cac-a797-714c41c34356.pdf
For more details, see
The second meeting for the AY 2026 of the ILCAA Joint Research Project "Everyday Forms of Ethnicity and Religiosity in Kurdistan: Comparative Inquiries into Social Organization of Cultural Difference and Crossborder Interaction in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey" (Project Website) will host Dr. Marouf Cabi, a researcher at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Dr. Marouf Cabi, a PhD in history from the University of St Andrews, has published two books, most recently Iranian Kurdistan Under the Islamic Republic: Change, Revolution, and Resistance (I.B. Tauris, 2024), and multiple journal articles.
See his profile at:
https://www.lse.ac.uk/people/marouf-cabi
The GDC will host renowned American University of Beirut sociologist and former president of the International Sociological Association, Dr. Sari Hanafi, on the topic of his most recent book, Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology (Liverpool University Press, September 2025). Professor Hanafi will examine, among others, how social scientists often reproduce the very injustices they seek to challenge, taking entrenched positions while dismissing alternative perspectives. He also discusses the crisis of liberal democracy in the time of extreme polarization.
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We unfortunately ended up cancelling the planned lecture below for logistical reasons a while ago. Dr. Khalil Dahbi now let us know that he has new publications. Please check them out.
1. He wrote on the new protest movement in Morocco:
"From Hospital Outrage to a Digitally-enabled Protest Movement: GenZ212's Emergence and Organization" October 2025
2. He also co-"guest editted" a special issue of Third World Quarterly titled:
Third World Radicals: Revisiting Scholarship on the Radical Left in Latin America and the MENA. Guest Editors: Thiago Prates and Khalil Dahbi.
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ctwq20/46/11
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GDC Lecture Series: "Elections as a Catalyst of Political Alliances: the Case of the Moroccan Left after the 2021 Elections" (July 24, 2025)
The GDC will host a presentation by one of its former associates, Dr. Khalil Dahbi currently with GIGA, Hamburg, with a title "Elections as a Catalyst of Political Alliances: the Case of the Moroccan Left after the 2021 Elections." The presentation will be based on a co-authored paper recently presented at the IPSA conference in Seoul.
Lecturer Profiles:
The first meeting for the AY 2025 of the ILCAA Joint Research Project "Everyday Forms of Ethnicity and Religiosity in Kurdistan: Comparative Inquiries into Social Organization of Cultural Difference and Crossborder Interaction in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey" (Project Website)..
Project members, Yasuyuki Matsunaga, Mostafa Khalili, and Sohrab Ahmadian will present and discuss some of the findings from their recent fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan.
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Panelists:
Roschanack Shaery-Yazdi (Associate Professor, University of Antwerp / Visiting Scholar at TUFS)
Makiko Nambu (Adjunct Research Fellow, Institute of Global Studies, TUFS)
Discussant:
Yasuyuki Matsunaga (Professor, Institute of Global Studies, TUFS)
Chair:
Keiko Sakai (Professor, Chiba University)
JSPS Kakenhi Project 25K03337 (AY 2025-2028)
Non-state Armed Actors in the Middle East: Their Transnational Networks and Conflict Dynamics
Principal Investigator: Yasuyuki Matsunaga (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Co-Investigators: Kota Suechika (Ritsumeikan University), Dai Yamao (Kyushu University)
Dr. Hasan Deniz Pekşen, a visiting scholar at TUFS from İstanbul Okan Üniversitesi, will present his paper "Armed Non-State Actors in Syria and Turkiye: How the Interaction Shaped The Civil War?" at the project kick-off seminar.
The presenter profile:
https://www.okan.edu.tr/en/cv/hasan-deniz-peksen/
The book is out from Springer!
