Join us for the launch of Marouf Cabi's latest book Iranian Kurdistan Under the Islamic Republic: Change, Revolution, and Resistance published by I.B. Tauris.

Cabi presents a social, political, cultural, and socioeconomic history of Iranian Kurdistan since the 1979 Revolution.

In this study, Marouf Cabi shines a spotlight on the modern history of Iranian Kurdistan – an area of Greater Kurdistan understudied in comparison to its regions in Syria and Iraq. The book provides a historical narrative and analysis of Kurdistan since the Revolution. It addresses key changes and events in detail, such as the participation of the Kurds in the Revolution, the reinvigoration of the Kurdish movements and the emergence of the women's movement, the armed struggle of the 1980s, socioeconomic and political change of the 1990s, and the emergence of civil society since 2000. Cabi draws on extensive primary sources, including oral history, various newspapers, journals, and books published during the period.

Read an extract of the book here.

Meet our speakers and chair

Marouf Cabi is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. He received his PhD in History from the University of St Andrews, UK, and is a social and cultural historian of modern Iran. He has published in academic journals, including articles for Middle East Studies, Middle East Critique, and Contemporary Review of the Middle East. He is author of The Formation of Modern Kurdish Society in Iran: Modernity, Modernization, and Social Change 1921-1979, (2022). He taught Middle Eastern history at the University of St Andrews for several years.

Kamran Matin is a Reader in International Relations in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex where he teaches international history, international theory, and Middle East politics. He is the author of Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change (Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of Historical Sociology and World History: Uneven and Combined Development over the Longue Durée (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016), and several articles and op-eds on Kurdish politics. Kamran is also the co-editor of Palgrave’s Minorities in West Asia and North Africa (MWANA) series.

Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Co-editor of the Kurdish Studies Series, published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria.