Morad Roohi’s research focuses on the modern Middle East, with particular emphasis on stateless populations, especially Kurdish communities whose lands are divided between Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Under the supervision of Dr. Ariel Salzmann, Morad explores how European-driven infrastructure projects supported the Persian ruling class in consolidating a centralized Iranian nation-state. Their work examines the role of modern infrastructure in marginalizing indigenous and local communities within Iran, eroding local agency, and consolidating power within a central elite.
This centralization has shaped an uneven political landscape, fostering both developed and underdeveloped regions and establishing a framework of political inclusion and exclusion that marginalized groups outside the national identity centered on Persian ethnicity and Shia Islam. With expertise in environmental history, spatial analysis, and historical geography, Morad utilizes Historical Geographical Information Systems (HGIS) to investigate the nuanced intersections of state-building, ecological impact, and marginalization within Iran and the broader Middle East.
Publications
Roohi, Morad. "Pre-Modern Kurdistan; The Genealogy of the Experience of Constitutional Revolution in Iranian Kurdistan." In The Peripheries of the Constitution; three Articles on Vilayat and Centralism, Critical History, no.3, edited by Ebrahim Towfiq. Tehran: Gam-e-Nao Press. 2021.
Roohi, Morad. "Problematizing the Historical Rupture in Iranian Kurdistan; a Reflection on Premodern/Modern Rupture." Iranian Journal of Sociology 14, no. 5 (2004): 65-98.
