Host and producer of the Kurdish Edition podcast.
Sardar Saadi is an awardee of the postdoctoral fellowship program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). He holds his postdoctoral fellowship tenure between 2020 and 2022 at the Rural Sociology Group of the Department of Social Sciences at Wageningen University. He recently graduated from his doctoral program in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His PhD research examines urban dynamics of the Kurdish struggle for self-determination in Diyarbakir, Kurdistan. This study looks at the shift of confrontation between the Kurdish movement and the Turkish state from rural areas to the urban centers of the Kurdish region of Turkey that has transformed Kurdish politics toward building an alternative hegemony, reclaiming urban social spaces, and appropriating an identity-oriented discourse of the right to the city against the Turkish states hegemonic rules, institutions, and practices. It further examines how the struggle for establishing a Kurdish democratic autonomy on municipal territory has been shaped historically by the challenge of coping with the influx of displaced Kurdish villagers, and chronic urban poverty and unemployment, within the context of everyday state violence.
Saadi's research interests include Kurdish culture and politics, self-determination, sovereignty, social justice, urban and political anthropology, and welfare politics. He has published in different journals and online publications, and he has been interviewed by Canadian, Kurdish and Persian media. Recently, Saadi has taken the position of directorship of the newly established Rojava Institute of Social Sciences at the university of Rojava. He is also the host and producer of a podcast called The Kurdish Edition.
