Mostafa Khalili: Speaking Across Borders of an Anthropologist’s Journey Through Kurdish Worlds

Mostafa Khalili is an Iranian assistant professor of anthropology at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He was born in Tabriz, Iran, where Azeri was his mother tongue, Persian his national language, and Arabic his language of religion. Growing up among these languages—and the worlds they opened—profoundly shaped his thinking about identity, belonging, and the complex negotiations people undertake across cultural and political boundaries. This early experience of living between languages and identities laid the foundation for his intellectual curiosity. He earned both his MA and PhD in Japan in 2015. His research focuses on Kurmanji-speaking Kurds in the tri-border regions of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. Between 2017 and 2020, he conducted extensive fieldwork in these areas, examining how ordinary people navigate overlapping loyalties, ethnic identities, and state structures, sustaining coexistence and ambivalence amid ongoing tensions. This research forms the basis of his forthcoming book, Everyday Ethnicity and Nationalistic Politics of Kurmanji-Speaking Kurds in Iran. Khalili has held visiting fellowships at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Oxford, where collaborations in Kurdish and borderland studies continue today.