TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES Graduate School of Global Studies 3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi Tokyo 183-8534 JAPAN

Yasuyuki Matsunaga

professor

Specialities
Education
Courses
Publications
Affiliations
Contact

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Contact

・Email: matsunaga@tufs.ac.jp

Please send all admissions-related queries to the university’s admission office [gao@tufs.ac.jp]. I will not respond to admission-related email queries, including requests for supervision. We do not give out pre-admission consent, and you won’t need any such consent from faculty members to apply for admission at TUFS.

・Office Hours: 12:00-12:30, Monday, Tuesday and Friday (Room 524 or otherwise indicated)

・Departmental Affiliation: Graduate Program in Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS)

・Research Center Affiliation: Interdisciplinary Research Unit for Global Democratic Change (GDC)

Teaching Interest*

・Conflict, Contentious Politics, and Political Change

・Comparative Political Regimes and Democratization

・Politics and Culture

・Qualitative Social Science Theories and Methodologies

*Please send all admissions-related queries to the university’s admission office [gao@tufs.ac.jp]. I will not respond to email queries.

*Please also note that I will not be able to supervise students who enter our doctoral programs directly.

Research Interest & Specialization

・Contentious Politics and Democratization in Iran and the greater Middle East

・Islam and Politics in Iran and the greater Middle East

・Dynamics of Sectarian Conflict in the greater Middle East

・Postrevivalist Reformist Islamic Trends and Thinkers

・Historical Trajectories of Desecularization and Resecularization in Iran and the greater Middle East

Education

・Ph.D. (political science), New York University, 2006. [dissertation]

・M.A. (international studies), University of South Carolina, 1994.

・B.A. (Islamic studies), University of Tokyo, 1987.

Courses [offered in English]

<graduate seminars>

・PCS Research Methodology: An Introduction to Conflict and Contentious Politics (Fall)

・Conflict and Social Change: An Advanced Seminar on Conflict and Contentious Politics (Spring) –2023 Syllabus

・Thesis Seminar: Thesis Structure and Research (Fall)

・Comparative Politics: PCS PhD Seminar (Fall)

Work in Progress

・Reforming Islamist Iran: Religion, Intellectuals, and Politics in the Rafsanjani-Khatami Years. Book Manuscript.

Upcoming/Recent Conference Presentations

・ (with Sohrab Ahmadian) “An Anatomy of Islamic Awakening in Iranian Ouramanat: the Case of Naser Sobhani,” Kurdish Studies Conference, University of Sheffield, 22-23 May 2024

・ “Dissecting Ethnonational Undertones in Minority Religious Movements in Iran,” The Nation as a Sacred Communion? Religion, Legacies, Conflict, IPSA RC14 & RC43 Colloquium, Queen’s University Belfast, June 1, 2023

・ “Dissecting Multilayered Insurgencies: A Relational, Genealogical and Decolonial Perspective,” Decolonizing Kurdish Studies Initiative Workshops, Brown University Center for Middle East Studies & Yale MacMillan Center Council on Middle East Studies, Online, April 8, 2022

・ (with Umut Azak) “The State Regulations of Minority Religions in Comparative Perspective,” 35ème SISR CONFÉRENCE BIENNALE: The Politics of Religion and Spirituality, BARCELONA, July 11-12, 2019.

・ “A Processual Sociological Perspective on Sectarian Insurgency in Iran's Two Border Areas,” the “Rethinking Nationalism, Sectarianism and Ethno-Religious Mobilization in the Middle East” Conference, St. Antony’s College and Pembroke College, University of Oxford, January 28, 2018 .

・ “Reconciling Islamic Constitutionalism with Pragmatic Governance: What Does the Iranian Experience Offer?” Conference on Religion and the State, hosted by The Arab Association of Constitutional Law, Tunis, Tunisia, March 24, 2017.

・ “Resisting Resecularization in Post-Khomeini Iran,” International Workshop “Imagining an Alternative ‘Post-Secular’ State: Historicizing and Comparing National Struggles over Resecularization,” Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, February 17, 2017. <program>

・ “Religion, Violence, and the Politics of Sanctified Punishment: A Case of Iran’s Islamic State,” 111^th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (Regular Session: Redefining the Public Sphere in the Middle East), Seattle, August 21, 2016.

・ “Khomeinism: the Non-Obvious Constraints on Political Reform in Iran,” Cultures of Freedom and Contending Visions of Justice and Governance in the Muslim World Symposium, University of Sydney, Australia, April 2015 (site).

・ “Theorizing Cross-National Conflict Non-Diffusion: Why Sectarian Violence Doesn't Spread Beyond National Borders in the Greater Middle East,” Fourth World Congress for Middle East Studies, Ankara, Turkey, August 2014.

Select Publications (also visit Google Scholar, Academia.edu, SSRN, and ORCID)

・“The Myth of Vertical Integration in Regional Conflict: Iran and the ‘Axis of Resistance,’” Chapter 8 of Gaza Nakba 2023–2024: Background, Context, Consequences, ed. Hiroyuki Suzuki and Keiko Sakai (Springer Singapore, January 2025). ISBN 978-981-97-4867-9 [full text] [Online]DOI: 10.1007/978-981-97-4868-6_8

・“Review Essay: (Theological and Institutional Soul-searching Aside) Will Re-problematizing Iran’s Islamic State à la ‘Religious Secularity’ Require Another Islamic State?” Journal of Religious and Political Practice 3, 1-2 (2017): 84-87. [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.1080/20566093.2017.1292173

・“Islamic Dissent in Iran’s full-fledged Islamic Revolutionary State,” in Between Dissent and Power: The Transformation of Islamic politics in the Middle East and Asia, ed. Khoo Boo Teik, Vedi R. Hadiz, and Yoshihiro Nakanishi (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014), 66-88. [publisher site] [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.1057/9781137408808_4

・“Iran’s Strategic Culture and the Hegemony Question,” International Relations, 167 (2012), 42-56.

[Online] DOI: 10.11375/kokusaiseiji.167_42

・“Human Rights and New Jurisprudence in Mohsen Kadivar’s Advocacy of ‘New-Thinker’ Islam,” Die Welt des Islams, 51, 3-4 (2011), 358-381. [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.1163/157006011X603541

・“The Secularization of a Faqih-headed Revolutionary Islamic State of Iran: Its Mechanisms, Processes, and Prospects,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 29, 3 (2009), 468-482. [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-2009-032

・“Popular Sovereignty and Republicanism in Iran’s Postrevolutionary Electoral Democracy,” in Development of Parliamentarism in the Modern Islamic World, ed. Sato Tsugitaka (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 2009), 134-153. [full text]

・“Revisiting Ayatollah Khomeini’s Doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih (Velayat-e Faqih),” Orient, 44 (2009), 77-90. [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.5356/orient.44.77

・“Political Parties,” in Iran Today: An Encyclopedia of Life in the Islamic Republic, ed. Mehran Kamrava and Manochehr Dorraj (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008), 390-394. [bookseller][full text]

・“Mohsen Kadivar, an Advocate of Postrevivalist Islam in Iran,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 34, 3 (2007), 319-329. [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.1080/13530190701388333

・“The Middle East in International Relations,” International Relations, 141 (2005), 1-9.

[Online] DOI: 10.11375/kokusaiseiji1957.141_1

・“Examining the Views of ‘Allamah Majlisi on Legitimate Political Authority (salatanat-i mashru‘ah) and the Guardianship of the Jurist (wilayat-i faqih),” Orient, 35 (2000), 12-22. [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.5356/orient1960.35.12

Reprinted in Faslnameh-ye Andisheh-ye Dini (Journal of Religious Thought), Vol. 2, Issue 5, Winter 2001, Pages 163-176.

・“L’État rentier est-il réfractaire à la décmoractie?,” Critique international, 8 (2000), 45-68. [full text]

[Online] DOI: 10.3406/criti.2000.1439

Short Analytical Essays (a.k.a., blog posts)

・“Is Iran Seeking Regional Hegemony?” Atlantic Council’s IranInsight (April 12, 2016)

Interviews

・“Power is notoriously unevenly distributed,” an interview with Tehran Times (March 15, 2021) [PDF]

・“From Tokyo to Tehran,” an interview in Persian with the staff of The Majles Library of Iran (May 7, 2016).

Associational Affiliations

・American Political Science Association (APSA) – section memberships: comparative politics, comparative democratization

・American Sociological Association (ASA) – section memberships: political sociology, comparative historical sociology, sociology of culture, middle east sociology working group (MESWG)

・International Political Science Association (IPSA)

・Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)

・Association for Iranian Studies (AIS)

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©2021 Yasuyuki Matsunaga. All rights reserved.