December 7, 2022 (Wednesday, 10:30-11:30 AM JST)
About the Webinar
Kurdish is an Indo-European language from Iranian family. Kurdish is spoken in various regions, such as the west and northeast of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Caucasus, and Russia. There is also a large diaspora in the EU, the US, Canada, and Central Asia and large pockets of migrants in far east Asia such as Japan. In this talk, I will give an overview of the Kurds and Kurdistan, its territory and topography, and its cultural and linguistic diversity. After the introduction, I will focus on the issue of identity and standardization by touching upon conflicting zones related to Kurdish. I will discuss further several linguistic examples of how linguistic fieldwork and linguistic data can be used for the purpose of sustainability and peace in a geopolitically conflicted region.
About the Speaker
Dr. Hiwa Asadpour is an associate researcher at the Department of English and American Studies at Goethe-University Frankfurt. Hiwa Asadpour completed his PhD at the Comparative and Empirical Linguistics Department of Goethe-University Frankfurt. For his PhD, he worked on word order variation and its typology of languages in the Northwest and West of Iran. In particular, he discussed various factors which trigger word order variation, such as contact-induced change, discourse-pragmatic, semantic, and morphosyntactic factors.
About the NERPS Webinar Series
The Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) at Hiroshima University in Japan is hosting a series of webinars on the relationship between peace and sustainability in the context of environmental, socio-political, economic, and technological transformations. This series is situated within the urgent need to deal with the implications of global change, including the COVID-19 pandemic, for peace and sustainability. The webinar sessions serve as a platform for rethinking and updating the current discourse on peace and sustainability amidst these global challenges and transformations. Leading experts will discuss the role of resources, digital technologies, migration, governance, and education in peacebuilding, conflict mitigation, humanitarian aid, and capacity-building, among other components that contribute to the achievement of the Sustainability Development Goals, particularly that of Goal 16 on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Check out our previous webinars here.