Bakhtiar Sadjadi received his PhD from the English Department of the University of Exeter in the UK in 2010. He has also a PhD in Philosophy, which he obtained from University of Pune in 2006. A Visiting Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa in 2022, he is Associate Professor of English and Literary Criticism at the University of Kurdistan. He was the Founding Head of the first Department of Kurdish Language and Literature in Iran from 2015 to 2020. Focusing on literary and cultural theory and criticism, he has authored books and papers in Kurdish, English, and Persian. Sadjadi conducts researches in Literary Criticism, Cultural Theory, English Literature, and Kurdish Language and Literature. His main interest is the study of language, ideology, the unconscious, subjectivity, and identity as represented in literary, artistic, and cultural practices. He is the author of A Dictionary of Critical Terms (English-Central/Northern Kurdish-Persian). His latest publication is Indexing and Citation Metrics for Kurdish Academic Writing.

Professor Serdar Sengul received his PhD from Hacettepe University and completed post-doctoral studies at Harvard University, CMES, in 2013. His doctoral thesis is on Knowledge, Society, Power: Encountering Ottoman and Republican Modernisation in Eastern Madrasas. From 2010 to 2017 he worked at Mardin Artuklu University, Department of Anthropology. He is now a professor at Kırşehir Ahi Evran University. During his postdoctoral period, he intensively worked in the area of postcolonial criticism and comparative literature, gave lectures and published articles in this field. A founder of Peywend Publications, Professor Sengul is a major advisor of the project “The Main Written Sources of Kurdish History”, supported by the BAN Foundation. He regularly contributes to the journals articles and prepares podcasts on literary discourse in the Middle East situating it within a broader world literature. In the academic year 2025-2026, he is a Visiting Professor at McGill University working on a research project called "Comparative Analysis of Kurdish-Turkish and Persian Literatures: From the Legislative Monarchies to the 1960s".

Dr. Jaffer Sheyholislami is a Full Professor of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University, Canada, where he completed his higher education. With over twenty years of experience, his teaching and research cover general linguistics, discourse studies, English as a second language, and language policy and planning. He has published works in both English and Kurdish, focusing on sociolinguistic issues in Kurdistan. Dr. Sheyholislami has presented at more than 70 conferences, supervised over 30 graduate students, and serves on the advisory boards of more than 10 academic journals. His latest publication is the co-edited volume Oxford Handbook of Kurdish Linguistics (in print).

Michiel Leezenberg is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, where he chairs Philosophy of Science and coordinates the Research Master's program. His research focuses on comparative philosophy, the intellectual history of the Islamic world, Kurdish society and politics, and non-Western thought. Notable publications include Contexts of Metaphor (2001) and works on Islamic ideologies and Foucault. He contributes to the M.A. program Islam in the Modern World and has held visiting positions in Paris and elsewhere.

Professor Abdurrahman Adak received his doctorate in Ottoman Literature from Ankara University. Conducting researches in Diyarbakır’s Dicle University from 2002 and 2009, he moved to Mardin Artuklu University and served as the Head of the Department of Kurdish Language and Literature for approximately ten years. He is fluent in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, English, and the Kurdish dialects Kurmanci, Zazaki, and Sorani. He has published dozens of books and scores of articles in the fields of literary history, classical poetry, and Islamic literature. His work Destpêka Edebiyata Kurdî ya Klasîk (Introduction to Classical Kurdish Literature), the first of its kind in the field in Turkey, filled an important gap in the academic discourse. His work Teşeyên Nezmê di Edebîyata Kurdî ya Klasîk de (Form Aesthetics in Classical Kurdish Poetry) has recently won the highly prestigious Hejar Pen Award.

Dr Mohsen Ahmad Omer is Professor of General and Comparative Literature. An active Member of the Kurdish Academy on Erbil, he is the editor-in-chief of the journalof the Kurdish Academy. He received his BA in Kurdish Language and Literature from the University of Baghdad in 1986. He received his French Language Diploma (in CAREL institute- France), Master and PhD from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III in 1990-1996. From 2006 to 2014, he headed the French department in Salahaddin University. His research focuses on comparative literature, literary theory, literary history, and French literature. He taught modern French and Kurdish literature for twenty years, translating most of Albert Camus's work from French into Kurdish. He also translated Edward Said's Orientalism and the Anthology of Two Hundred Years of French Poetry into Kurdish.

Dr Hemdad Hussen Bakir is a Professor of Kurdish Literature at the Kurdish Department of the College of Education of Salahaddin University. Born in 1964 in Erbil, he received his M.A. in Kurdish Literature from Salahaddin University in 1995. The M.A. thesis is titled “The Role of Hewa Magazine in the Progress of Kurdish Literature Techniques”. He obtained his Ph.D in Kurdish Literature from Sulaimania University in 2001 with a Dissertation on “Kurdish Journalism during the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan”. Professor Hemdad has published a score of books in Kurdish including Kurdish Tales and Myths (Australia, 1998), An approach to Kurdish Literary Criticism, (Erbil, 2008), and Journalism and Modern Kurdish Literature, (Sulaimania, 2008). Known for a number of academic and cultural activities, Professor Hemdas has published more than 40 original reseach papers. He is the Head of Kurdish Writers Union.

Dr. Yadgar Rasool Hamadameen is a Professor at the University of Soran, Iraqi Kurdistan, specializing in the philosophy of literature. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Language and Literature at the University of Salahadin with first-class honors in 1999, and subsequently completed his Master’s and Doctoral degrees at the same university in the field of literature. In 2020, he attained the academic rank of Professor. He has a valuable experience of teaching and conducting researches for 25 years. He has authored over 40 scholarly research papers and books, has participated in dozens of academic conferences, and has served as supervisor, chair, and member of numerous Master’s and Doctoral committees.

Dr. Qais Kakil Tawfiq is a Professor of Kurdish Linguistics who received his PhD in 2002 with a specialization in Halliday’s functional approach to linguistics. His academic career spans more than twenty-five years, during which he has taught courses in Kurdish syntax, pragmatics, and applied linguistics. Dr. Tawfiq has held several academic and administrative positions, including Dean of the Faculty of Arts (2012–2020), Chairman of the Kurdish Department at Soran University, and Concessionaire of Twezhêr, the academic journal of Soran University. He has authored four books on language planning, culture, and nationality, and has published over twenty scholarly articles in regional and international journals. In addition, he has participated in more than twenty academic conferences and workshops devoted to Kurdish language planning, digitalization, and language pedagogy. Supervising several MA theses and PhD dissertations, he is currently doing research on Kurdish language planning and regionalization within sociolinguistic and applied linguistic frameworks.