Dilar Dirik

Researcher and writer Dilar Dirik creates a space for mutual learning to analyse the Kurdish women’s liberation movement and patriarchal violence within a framework of transnational, non-state, feminist justice seeking approaches.

As outlined in Dilar Dirik’s newly published book, The Kurdish Women’s Movement – History, Theory, Practice (Pluto Press, 2022), autonomy and self-defence are important themes in the political ideology of the Kurdish women’s liberation movement. In the context of recent political assassinations of women, this transnational, socialist movement developed the notion of ‘political feminicide’ to conceptualise the patriarchal ‘mentalities’ behind the systematic targeting of women’s activists and leaders.

Dilar Dirik is an activist, political sociologist, and writer. She currently researches and teaches at the University of Oxford. She is author of the book The Kurdish Women’s Movement: History, Theory, Practice (Pluto Press, 2022). Her research and teaching focus on stateless liberation, forced displacement, justice-seeking in the aftermath of violence, autonomy, resistance, revolution, feminism and women’s resistance struggles, and radical knowledge production.