This workshop brings together scholars working on different parts of Kurdistan to explore
how borders and boundaries are made, contested, crossed, and transformed in everyday life.
Moving beyond conventional understandings of borders as fixed lines of division, the workshop
examines the multiple ways in which Kurdish actors navigate fragmented political landscapes
while sustaining various forms of connectivity across state frontiers. Particular attention will be
given to the intersections of political borders, religious networks, ethnic boundaries, mobility,
memory, and everyday practices of cross-border interaction.
Program
15:00‒15:10 Opening remarks and introduction
15:10‒15:35 Paper I: Critical Geography and Borderlands Studies: An Alternative
Framework for Studying Kurdistan? ‒ Yasuyuki Matsunaga (TUFS)
15:35‒15:50 Comments and discussion
15:50‒16:15 Paper II: When Borders Are Not Margins but the Heart of the Homeland:
Division, Connectivity, and the Making of Kurdistan as a Multi-Layered
Suturescape ‒ Mostafa Khalili (ILCAA- TUFS)
16:15‒16:30 Comments and discussion
16:40‒17:05 Paper III: The Unmaking of Political Borders in Kurdistan: Sufi Genealogies,
Mobilisation, and the Khaznawi Tariqa across the Turkish‒Syrian Frontier ‒
Mashuq Kurt (Royal Holloway, University of London)
17:05‒17:30 Comments and discussion
This workshop is co-organized by:
• TUFS-ILCAA Core Project (History / Area Studies) "Field Archiving of Memory: Dynamics of
Cooperation in Muslim Society" and
• TUFS-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"
This workshop is co-sponsored by:
• JSPS Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research (Fostering Joint International Research), "Across Borders, Between Boundaries: The Ambivalent Nationhood of Transnational Minorities" (25KK0018).
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Date: Thursday, July 2, 2026
Time: 15:00-18:30
Place: Seminar Room (Room 301), ILCAA.
(Building #6 on this campus map)
Language: English
Registration:
https://forms.gle/47ugC5858TyycHBM8
Please register by July 1, 2026, 10:00 AM JST.
Inquiry: gdc@tufs.ac.jp
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