On Tuesday 28 January 2025, the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (UKH) and the Nishtiman Strategy Institute jointly organised a lively discussion for Prof. Dr. Nicole Watts, on her recently published book titled “Republic of Dreams: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan”.
Nicole Watts is a writer and a professor in the San Francisco State University Department of Political Science. She specializes in comparative politics, narrative nonfiction writing, social movements, nationalism, and politics of the Middle East and North Africa.
The Republic of Dreams is a harrowing portrait of Iraqi Kurdistan and its history, as it weathers Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurds, a civil war, the US invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, and the sustained neglect of the city of Halabja.
Based on over a hundred in-depth interviews with Iraqi Kurdish activists, journalists, elected officials, and community organizers, and hundreds of hours of conversations with Peshawa Ahmed and his family, Republic of Dreams brings to vivid life the story of modern Kurdistan, and the Kurdish national dream to have their own homeland.
