[International Workshop] Kurdish Borders and Boundaries in Motion

※当ワークショップは、AA研共同利用・共同研究課題 “Everyday Forms of Ethnicity and Religiosity in Kurdistan: Comparative Inquiries into Social Organization of Cultural Difference and Crossborder Interaction in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey" の2026年度第2回研究会を兼ねます。

Workshop Outline

Kurdistan is often portrayed as a homeland fragmented by state borders and divided among multiple political jurisdictions. Yet borders do not merely separate. They also connect. Across the Kurdish regions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, as well as within the diaspora, social, religious, economic, and political ties continue to traverse and reshape the boundaries that seek to contain them. Far from being peripheral spaces located at the margins of states, borders have become central arenas through which identities, communities, mobilities, and forms of belonging are negotiated and reproduced.

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.

The workshop builds on the ongoing ILCAA Joint Research Project, Everyday Forms of Ethnicity and Religiosity in Kurdistan: Comparative Inquiries into Social Organization of Cultural Difference and Cross-Border Interaction in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey (Project ID: jrp000305), while serving as a platform for developing new collaborative research initiatives. It also constitutes a preliminary step toward a proposed special issue for the Journal of Borderlands Studies under the working title Borders and Boundaries in Kurdistan in Motion.

The first part of the workshop consists of three paper presentations addressing distinct yet interconnected dimensions of Kurdish borderlands, ranging from theoretical engagements with borderlands studies and critical geography to the role of religious networks and transnational mobilities in challenging, sustaining, and reconfiguring political boundaries. The second part brings the members of project and special issue contributes together in a closed planning session to discuss future collaboration.

Program

Program (PDF)