Citizenship, Migration and Women’s Activism in Kurdistan and the Diaspora

At the turn of 2024 and 2025 we undertook the new initiative entitled Citizenship, Migration and Women’s Activism in Kurdistan and the Diaspora which is part of the project Science and Society: Bilateral initiative in Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities financed from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism (2014-2021) and the EEA Financial Mechanism (2014-2021) and operated by National Science Centre – Poland (NCN).

Involved Institutions: Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland), Andrzej Wajda Centre for Film Culture (Warsaw, Poland), the Centre for Advanced Studies of Population and Religion (CASPAR) at Krakow University of Economics (CUE, Kraków, Poland), The Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo (Norway), Fafo, Institute of L abour and Social Research in Oslo, Kurdish Institute of Brussels (Belgium), Kurdish Academics and Professionals Network (Kurd- Akad UK) & Halkevi Kurdish and Turkish Community Centre (London, UK), Kurdystan.Info, Spółdzielnia Ogniwo/Ogniwo Cooperative (Kraków), Dom Kultury i Zabawy Persepolish.

Aims: Our project focuses on conveying the results of the ALCITfem project through a cycle of discussions, workshops and an exhibition organized in collaboration with Polish and Kurdish institutions in Europe. We are going to study and address questions arising from migration for both Kurdish migrants and receiving communities especially in Poland, where the Polish-Belarusian border crisis revealed many urgent needs. Our focus will be on Kurdish women, their representation, artistic activity and small scale activism which we studied in the ALCITfem project. We will use Polish and Kurdish films as departing points of discussion. People will be encouraged to use their moral imagination to think about (migrant) women’s positions and how they would act in similar circumstances. This will enable exchange of knowledge and experience.

Events:

Kurdish film festival: Kurdish Sun in Winter Warsaw (7-9.02.2025): Polish and Kurdish documentaries will be screened in cooperation with the Andrzej Wajda Centre for Film Culture offering an insight into the Kurdish reality and its difficult conditions that impact Kurdish migration to Europe. Our festival is addressed mainly to the Warsaw audience including youth, students, activists, journalists and academics. We will also organize a workshop for children and the film Winners is addressed to teenagers too. The feedback from the participants will be collected through the “Open Mic” form of podcast. The podcast will be prepared by a group of youth film directors who collaborate with the Andrzej Wajda Centre for Film Culture and who will thus add their perspective to the event. The podcast will be later published on the VOD Warszawa Platform.

The four selected films Silent trees by Agnieszka Zwiefka (2024), Heskif by Elif Yiğit (2021), Winners by Soleen Yusef (2024) and Sonne by Kurdwin Ayub (2022) are close to the themes we studied in ALCITfem research project and which are discussed in our book Enacting Citizenship: Kurdish Women's Resilience, Activism, and Creativity that is going to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025. These themes include small- scale activism of Kurdish women, family, ecology and Kurdish cultural heritage. Therefore the workshops that will follow the screenings will provide the audience with direct insights into the current challenges and their wider contextualization with the help of the project participants and other invited experts. Hence, we aim to challenge dehumanization of Kurds and women and build knowledge capacity that may enable better understanding of the reasons behind migration and better communication between the migrants and hosting society.

Exhibition Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (Women, Life, Freedom): The film festival will be accompanied by a street exhibition (Ujazdowski Park, Warsaw) of the works by Rounak Rasoulpour who is a Kurdish artist from Rojhelat, currently based in Sweden. She is known for her beautiful posters, illustrations and covers for books, and is the designer of our festival’s poster.

in Collaboration with Kurdish institutions

Along with the Kurdish Institute of Brussels (12-13.02.2025), the Kurdish Academics and Professionals Network (Kurd- Akad UK), and the Halkevi Kurdish and Turkish Community Centre in London (28.02-01.03.2025) we organize two 2-days events in Brussels and London. During the workshops we will present our research and the book Enacting Citizenship: Kurdish Women's Resilience, Activism, and Creativity, screen and discuss the films: On the Roads of Freedom (2023) by Maria and Shiva Ghalvazi (in Brussels) and Angels of Sinjar (2022) by Hanna Polak (in London). Both films resonate with the research topics studied in the ALCITfem project and presented in the book. Additionally, we will discuss building bridges between international academia, Kurdish diaspora and cultural institutions. Our experience shows that there is little exchange and collaboration between the above- mentioned institutions and researchers. The institutions are often important community centres and provide access to Kurdish diaspora, their rich archives, and their cultural and social initiatives. Bridging researchers and Kurdish cultural institutions in Europe seems an apt idea to stimulate the exchange of experience and approaches and build up the still lacking knowledge capacity about the Kurds, their society and culture which, today, forms an inseparable part of Europe.

In collaboration with the Institute of Oriental Studies JU, Spółdzielnia Ogniwo (Ogniwo Cooperative), Kurdystan.Info and Dom Kultury i Zabawy Persepolish

Thanks to some savings in the project we were able to organize another event in Kraków: Nouruz-Newroz Festival (20-23.03.2025). Nowruz is the traditional Iranian New Year, widely celebrated across the Middle East and Central Asia, including Iran, Kurdistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan (except the Pashto-speaking communities), by many ethnic groups and communities. It typically falls on the spring equinox, around March 20–22, and is marked by a variety of celebrations, rituals, myths, and performances. In our festival, organized as an accompanying event to the Day of Oriental Languages at the Institute of Oriental Studies and in collaboration with Ogniwo Cooperative, Iranian Studies Students Club, Kurdish and Iranian Kraków Diaspora and the project Citizenship, Migration and Women’s Activism in Kurdistan and the Diaspora financed by National Science Centre – Poland from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism (2014-2021) and the EEA Financial Mechanism (2014-2021) we would like to draw attention to the linguistic and cultural diversity of this tradition.

Known among Iranian ethnic groups as “A New Day,” by Persians it is called Now Ruz, and Newroz by the Kurds for whom it symbolizes not only the New Year and the beginning of Spring but also the liberation from oppression. However, there are also plenty of other linguistic variants signifying the name of the festival that represent the richness and diversity of the Iranian world which extends far beyond Iran. During our festival, we will invite you to film screenings and discussions, musical performance, Persian and Kurdish language lessons, and meeting with Kurdish women artists and activists, book launch, workshops and many others. More info.

Feel invited to the podcast from the Kurdish Sun in Winter Warsaw Festiwal and the short film from Nouruz-Newroz Festival, available under the link.