イベント
2026年11月12日
International Hybrid Workshop “Iran Through a Peripheral Lens: The Politics of Belonging”
開催日
2026年12月07日 (月) ～ 2026年12月08日 (火)How do people understand, negotiate, and contest belonging in Iran and across its borders?
Bringing together scholars from different disciplines, the workshop critically examines ethnicity, minority identities, and centre–periphery relations in Iran. Through twelve presentations across four panels, participants will explore how ethnic, religious, linguistic, regional, and national categories shape social and political life, drawing on historical research, contemporary case studies, and theoretical debates.
The workshop aims to foster critical conceptual engagement, comparative discussion, and future research collaboration.
| Date / Time | December 7–8, 2026, 14:00–19:00 JST (see the time in your time zone) |
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| Venue | Room 303 (3rd floor), Large Conference Room, ILCAA, TUFS |
| Registration | Please register by December 5. ( → Registration form) |
| Admission | Free |
| Language | English |
| Co-organized by | Hiroshi Wagatsuma Memorial Grant, UCLA Asia Pacific Center; ILCAA Core Project “Field Archiving of Memory: Dynamics of Cooperation in Muslim Society,” Tokyo University of Foreign Studies; JSPS Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research (Fostering Joint International Research) Grant no. (25KK0018) |
| Contacts | Kevan Harris kevanharris[at]soc.ucla.edu; Mostafa Khalili khalili[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp (Replace [at] with @.) |
Program
* Indicates an online presentation
Day 1 | Monday, December 7, 2026
| 14:00–14:10 | Opening remarks Convenors |
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| 14:10–16:10 | 【Panel 1】 Chair: Mostafa Khalili (ILCAA-Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) Unbundling Ethnicity in Iran Kevan Harris (University of California, Los Angeles) Re-reading ‘Minorities in Iran’ 13 Years Later Rasmus Christian Elling (University of Copenhagen) What Is Periphery in Iran? A Methodological Debate Marouf Cabi (ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) |
| 16:10–16:30 | Break |
| 16:30–18:30 | 【Panel 2】 Chair: Kevan Harris (University of California, Los Angeles) When Belonging Becomes Mobilizable: Kinship, Settlement, and Recurrent Protest in Dezful Jamshid Jamshidi (University of Oxford) Beyond Explicit Identity Politics: Everyday Ethno-Cultural Practices and Local Belonging on Iranian Instagram *Niloofar Oraee (Kharazmi University) and Mostafa Bostani (Bundeswehr University Munich) Educational Policies and Minority Identity in Pahlavi Iran: A Case Study of the Iranian Jewish Community *Giulia Navab Daneshmand (UNESCO-UNEVOC) |
| 19:00 | Workshop dinner |
Day 2 | Tuesday, December 8, 2026
| 14:00–16:00 | 【Panel 3】 Chair: Rasmus Christian Elling (University of Copenhagen) My Accent Has a Skin: Theatrical Somaticization and the Semiotics of Gilaki Ethnic Belonging in Iran *Zia Khoshsirat (University of California, Los Angeles) Dancing Across Ethnic Boundaries: The Handkerchief Dance and Shared Iranian Heritage in the United Arab Emirates Manami Goto (Akita University) Looking Next Door: Iranian Writers, Neighboring Cultures, and the Boundaries of Belonging, 1990 and the 2010s Elham Hosnieh (Doshisha University) |
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| 16:00–16:15 | Break |
| 16:15–18:15 | 【Panel 4】 Chair: Marouf Cabi (ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) Between National Belonging and Ethnic Assertion: The Resurgence of Azerbaijani Activism in Iran Mostafa Khalili (ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) The Making of Jash: Contested Belonging in Revolutionary Iranian Kurdistan *Dalir Barkhoda (Aarhus University) Gendered Perspectives on Everyday Experiences in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan Borderlands *Hessam Habibi Doroh (University of Public Service Budapest) |
| 18:15–18:30 | Break |
| 18:30–19:00 | Concluding discussion and closing remarks Chair: Kevan Harris (University of California, Los Angeles) |