Morad Roohi鈥檚 research focuses on the modern Middle East, with particular emphasis on state-building, infrastructure, and the sociopolitical and spatial marginalization of minoritized communities. He completed his PhD in History at 黑料吃瓜资源 in 2026, where his dissertation, under the supervision of Ariel Salzmann, examined the role of infrastructure in transforming a fragmented and confederal polity into a territorially centralized Iranian nation-state from the early 1860s through the postwar period. His dissertation was selected for the Department of History鈥檚 2025鈥26 PhD Dissertation Prize.
Morad鈥檚 broader research interests include state formation, territorial governance, critical border studies, and the production of political and spatial inequalities in the Middle East. His work examines how infrastructure is deployed to reshape relationships between states and society, often producing uneven landscapes of development, inclusion, and exclusion. He also uses spatial analysis and Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) to investigate the intersections of state-building, spatial transformation, and political marginalization in Iran and the broader Middle East.
Publications
Roohi, Morad. 鈥淔ractured Geographies: Roadbuilding and State-Making in Interwar Kurdistan.鈥 Kurdish Studies Journal4, no. 2 (September 2026): 1鈥32. https://doi.org/10.1163/29502292-bja10026.
Roohi, Morad. "Tabar Shenasi-ye Tajrobeh-ye Enqelab-e Mashruteh dar Kurdistan-e Iran" [Pre-Modern Kurdistan; The Genealogy of the Experience of Constitutional Revolution in Iranian Kurdistan]. InPiramun-e Mashruteh: Se maqale darbare-ye velayat va markazgarayi [The Peripheries of theConstitution; three Articles on Vilayat and Centralism]. Tarikh-e Enteqadi, no.3, edited by Ebrahim Towfiq. Tehran: Gam-e-Nao Press. 2021.
Roohi, Morad. "Problematizeh Kardan-e Gosaste Tarikhiye Kurdistan-e Iran; Ta鈥檃molaty bar Shekaf-e Modern/Pishamodern [Problematizing the Historical Rupture in Iranian Kurdistan; a Reflection on Premodern/Modern Rupture]." Iranian Journal of Sociology 14, no. 5 (2004): 65-98.
