The Kurdish Political Studies Program (KPSP) will host a panel event for UCF students, faculty, scholars, and members of the KPSP advisory board. Our invited guest speakers, Murat Somer (Koç University) and Costantino Pischedda (University of Miami) will discuss Iraqi Kurdish politics and more specifically energy issues and factional conflict from a theoretically informed perspective. The event will be moderated by Güneş Murat Tezcür, Jalal Talabani Chair & Professor at UCF.
Somer is a professor of Political Science and International Relations at Koç University specializing in Comparative Politics and Political Economy. His research addresses questions of democratization and autocratization, social and political polarization, ethnic conflicts and nationalism, and religious and secular politics, with emphasis on political Islam and secularity, the Turkish and Kurdish question, and the politics of Turkey, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. His writings appeared in books, book volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Pischedda is an assistant professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Miami. His research interests cover a broad range of topics at the intersection between International Relations, Security Studies, and Comparative Politics: civil war dynamics (in particular infighting and cooperation among rebel groups), counterinsurgency, civilian victimization and terrorism, coercion theory, non-violent resistance, natural resources and conflict, and the psychology of preventive war. He has publiched academic works in Security Studies, International Security, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Middle East Policy, Parameters, The African Security Review, and others.
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