The TISHK Center for Kurdistan Studies is organising the sixth seminar entitled The Racial Policies of De-development in East Kurdistan (Rojhelat) .

The seminar will be presented by Dr. Ahmad Mohammadpour, an Assistant Professor of Sociology of Race and Ethnic Relations at Bentley University, USA.
Dr. Ahmad Mohammadpour is a sociologist and anthropologist from Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat). He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Shiraz University and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bentley University. His research focuses on topics such as racism, statelessness, sovereignty, colonialism, Orientalism, and ethnic and racial studies.
Dr. Mohammadpour has published in various international academic journals, including Current Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Asian Studies Review, Critical Sociology, Asian Ethnicity, Gender, Work & Organization, Nations and Nationalism, Security Dialogue, The British Journal of Sociology, Third World Quarterly, Ethnicities, Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, among others.
In his most recent co-authored work, The Racial Policies of De-development in the Middle East: A Comparative Study of Palestine and Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan) in Current Anthropology, Dr. Mohammadpour examines how the Iranian state exploits de-development—a strategy designed and implemented to deliberately hinder economic and social progress—as a tool of racial and ethnic subjugation. Through a comparison between Palestine and Rojhelat, his research not only highlights the limitations of classic developmental studies in addressing the ethno-racial and religious dynamics of economic disparities but also reveals the underlying ethnoracial and religious forces shaping economic inequalities in Rojhelat and the broader Middle East.
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, March 15, 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.

.