Chinese, Kurds, Iranians and the Silk Road

Shabnam Dadparvar is an Associate Professor of Caucasian Studies at Tianshui Normal University in Gansu Province, China. Originally from Iran, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science in 2008, followed by a Master’s degree in Regional Studies from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Tehran, Iran in 2011. She completed her PhD in International Relations at Central China Normal University in Wuhan in 2015. Her research focuses on Iran, the Kurds, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the Caucasus region, areas in which she has published extensively.

Ismail Shams holds a Master’s degree in History from the University of Tehran (1999) and a PhD in Iranian History from Tarbiat Modares University, Iran (2005). He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Allameh Tabataba’i University in Tehran and serves as the Director of Kurdish Studies at the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia.