Laboratory for Contemporary Iranian Studies

Publications

• Book

  Ravandi-Fadai S.

  Slavery in the Modern Middle East and North Africa Exploitation and Resistance from the 19th Century - Present Day

  What is the nature of slavery as practiced and at times reintroduced over the past two centuries in the Middle East and North Africa? In spite of the rich regional diversity of the areas studied – from Morocco to the Indian Ocean to Iran – this anthology demonstrates clear commonalities across the super-region. These include the regulation of slavery by Islam and local traditions, the absence of a rigid racial hierarchy as in North American slavery, the management of the sexuality and reproductive capacity of female slaves, and views on identity and heritage among descendants of slaves. Authors also examine the economic and theological underpinnings of contemporary slavery and human trafficking.
  
  The book is among the first to focus on slavery across the Islamic world from the 19th century to the present – a period constituting the endgame of institutionalized slavery in the region but also the persistence of forms of de facto enslavement. Each chapter scrutinizes from a different vantage point – institutions, economics, the abolitionist movement, literature, folklore, and the moving image – creating a multi-dimensional picture of the phenomenon.
  
  The authors have mined government archives and statistics, memoirs, interviews, photographs, drawings, songs, cinema and television. Not only are Arabic, Persian and Turkish sources leveraged, but a variety of materials in minor and endangered languages, such as Soqotri, Balochi and Sorani Kurdish, in addition to European languages.

  
  
  
  
  

  L.: Bloomsbury, 2024.

• Article

  Chedia A.

  The Development of Entrepreneurial Competencies among Students of Various Age Groups within the MOOCs Environment

  This article is dedicated to exploring the peculiarities of developing entrepreneurial competencies among students of different age groups in the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) environment. A model for teaching entrepreneurship in the MOOC environment has been developed. Additionally, the model involves the implementation of pedagogical approaches to the development of entrepreneurial competencies using digital platforms and tools. An educational experiment involving 150 students aged 16 to 60 from Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Romania, and Bulgaria was conducted on the open educational platform Coursera. The study\u2019s results indicated that the correlation of learning outcomes for the older generation was significantly lower than that for the younger generation, regardless of the training type. It was concluded that online courses are effective for both young and elderly respondents, but their learning perception differs. This article can be useful for developers of educational business courses in the MOOC environment that aim to expand the age characteristics of students.

  International Journal of Information and Education Technology. 2024. Vol. 14. No. 10. P. 1335-1343.

• Book chapter

  Lana Ravandi-Fadai.

  'Ask Her, She is Not Afraid To Tell You': Sexual Enslavement of Yezidi Women by ISIS: causes and aftermath

  In bk.: Slavery in the Modern Middle East and North Africa Exploitation and Resistance from the 19th Century - Present Day. L.: Bloomsbury, 2024. Ch. 10.