The TISHK Center for Kurdistan Studies is pleased to announce its eighth seminar in the 2025 series, entitled: "Sovereignty, State, Citizenship, Statelessness and the Kurds: A Preliminary Reading".
The seminar will be presented by Dr. Khalid Khayati, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Linköping University, Sweden, and member of the Advisory Board of the TISHK Center.
Dr. Khayati is a renowned scholar in the fields of diaspora studies, Kurdish society in Europe, and transnational relations. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Linköping University, where he is currently affiliated with REMESO – the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society. His research, published in Kurdish, English, Swedish, and Persian, explores key questions on Kurdish identity, diaspora, statelessness, and belonging, particularly in France and Sweden.
In his most recent contribution to the TISHK Magazine (Vol. 71), Dr. Khayati addressed the topic of sovereignty in his article entitled "Sovereignty, State, Citizenship, Statelessness and the Kurds: A Preliminary Reading." Drawing on political theory and the historical context of the Kurdish question, he offers a critical reading of sovereignty, highlighting its political, legal, and national dimensions. He argues that the Kurdish issue should not only be understood as the struggle of a stateless nation, but also as the struggle of stateless individuals confronting the limits of modern statehood and citizenship.
The seminar will be moderated and led by Dr. Fateh Saeidi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the Advisory Board of the TISHK Center for Kurdistan Studies.
Scheduled for Sunday, April 27, 2025, at 6 PM (Berlin time), the seminar will be conducted in Kurdish. The session includes a 10-minute introduction, a 30-minute presentation, a 25-minute Q&A session, and a 10-minute panel discussion and conclusion. Participants can join via Zoom using the provided link.

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