Dr. Bayar Mustafa is the Dean of School of Social Sciences at University of Kurdistan Hawler (UKH). He holds PhD in Contemporary History from Mosul University in 2009 and granted his Post- doctorate research in 2015 from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Istanbul Bilgi University. Dr. Bayar served as a diplomat in “Turkey Division” at the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2013. He worked for the American University of Kurdistan (AUK) as an Assistant Professor and researcher at the College of International Studies from (2014 to 2019). He is also AHDA fellow at the Institute of the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. and since November, 2019, he is a Non-Resident Scholar, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. Dr. Bayar’s wider research interests are history, regional and international politics of the Middle East with a focus on Kurdish politics in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, as well as Kurdistan region domestic politics and the relations between diverse groups. He published four books, and lately pushed a book entitled “Beyond ISIS: The Future of Religious Minorities in Iraq” with a colleague. Dr. Bayar has extensive research experience on the domestic, regional and international consequences of the emergence of IS in Iraq and Syria. He conducted and engaged to numerous of research projects on Yazidi’s genocide and another minorities status in the Kurdistan Region, Iraq and Syria. He is also principle investigator in ongoing projects focusing Yazidi and other religious groups in the Middle East in collaboration with LSE and UCF.

E-mail: bayar.mustafa@ukh.edu.krd ♦ ORCID iD:  0000-0002-8966-5759