KHALILI, Mostafa

Positions, degrees

Assistant Professor

Research Keywords

Ethnicity and Nationalism, Political Anthropology, Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies, Comparative Minority Politics

Email

khalili[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp

Research on identity politics and minority belonging in the Middle East

My research lies at the intersection of political anthropology, ethnicity, and nationalism, with a focus on minority politics in conflict-affected and politically unstable regions of the Middle East. I examine how communities negotiate power, belonging, and identity amid structural inequalities and state violence. I have conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Kurdish communities in the tri-border regions of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, exploring cross-border networks and the everyday negotiation of belonging in contested spaces. My work challenges essentialist paradigms of ethnonational conflict by foregrounding local agency, ambivalence, and the relational dynamics of identity.