Dr Jessica Bates (Senior Lecturer), Janet Peden (Director of Library Services) and Professor Kelsey Shanks (UNESCO chair), Ulster University Libraries are recognised as having a crucial role for societies and communities emerging and recovering from conflict. Their importance for peace building cannot be underestimated, yet the significance of their role in this regard is often overlooked. Free access to information and knowledge is a requisite for a stable and innovative...
By Sherko Kirmanj This blog explores the politics of education in Iraq and the Kurdistan Federal Region through a critical examination of the history and societal studies textbooks for school years four to twelve students in both regions. The analysis focuses on how public-school textbooks represent Kurds, an ethno-national group, within Iraq’s broader narrative and how Kurdish-authored textbooks emphasise Kurdish national identity. By analysing these textbooks, we gain insight into how...
The following segment is from a forthcoming working paper from EPP researcher, Roua Al Taweel Positioned within the nexus of conflict and justice, education assumes a dual nature- functioning both as a weapon of conflict and as a beacon of hope for reconstructing fractured communities and tending to wounds brought about by the conflict. EDUCATION AS A SPACE FOR CONFLICT, AND A CONFLICT-INDUCED SOCIOECONOMIC INJUSTICE: The emergence of schools as a space for conflict, both symbolically...
In this blog, Adnan Majeed Mohammed, PhD student in the IR Department at Soran Universtiy, Erbil, and author of Civic Education and Political Socialisation in KR, analyses the impact of Civic Education's inclusion on the curriculum. After the 1991 Kurdish Uprising in Iraq and the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in 1992, the KRG has tried to improve and modernise its educational system, beginning with eradicating the fascist Arab Baath Socialist Party (the Baath)...
The dramatic rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2014 attracted hundreds of young people in the region and across the world, including young Kurds from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). In response to this threat, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began to introduce many countering and preventive measures, with a great emphasis on curriculum reform in schools and higher education institutes. In this blog, EPP researcher Kamaran Palani examines the key changes in...
