Wendy Hamelink

Monograph
Hamelink, A.W. (2016). The Sung Home. Narrative, morality, and the Kurdish nation. Leiden: Brill Publishers.

Peer reviewed articles and book chapters
Hamelink, A.W. and H. Baris. (2014). “Dengbêjs on borderlands. Borders and the state as seen through the eyes of Kurdish singer-poets." In: Kurdish Studies Journal. 2 (1).

Forthcoming. (2017). Kuruoğlu, A. and A.W. Hamelink. “Sounds of resistance. Performing the political in the Kurdish music scene.” in: eds. L. Karakatsanis and N. Papadogiannis. The politics of culture in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus: performing the Left since the 1960s, New York: Routledge. (https://www.routledge.com/The-Politics-of-Culture-in-Turkey-Greece--Cyprus-Performing-the-left/Karakatsanis-Papadogiannis/p/book/9781138914452).

Forthcoming. (2016). Hamelink, A.W. “A landscape of silence. The Dengbêj folk poets of Turkey." In: eds. Gabrielle van den Berg, Theo Krispijn and Anne Oostrom. Musical traditions of the Middle East, reminiscences of a distant past. New Jersey: Giorgias press.

Other articles and reviews

Hamelink, A.W. (2016). Review of Kurdistan on the global stage: kinship, land, and community in Iraq. (2014). Diane King, Rutger University press. American Anthropologist, vol. 118 (4.)  

Hamelink, A.W. (2016). “Songs crossing borders. Musical memories of a family on the run.” Ed. C. Santacana. Many voices of oral history. Barcelona: Icaria.  

Review: Hamelink, A.W. (2007). Review of God and Sheikh Adi are Perfect. Sacred Poems and Religious Narratives from the Yezidi Tradition. Kreyenbroek, P.G. and K.J. Rashow (2005). (Iranica 9). Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.

Weiss, N., A.W. Hamelink, H. Zheng and A.B. Djuve. Et liv på vent. Oslo: Fafo policy report.

• Hamelink, Wendelmoet; Bochenska, Joanna; Wiktor-Mach, Dobroslawa; Kaczorowksi, Karol; Hanoglu, Hayal & Skupinski, Marcin [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2025). Chapter 1. Enacting Citizenship: Kurdish Women’s Resilience, Activism, and Creativity. In Weiss, Nerina (Eds.), Enacting Citizenship: Kurdish Women’s Resilience, Activism, and Creativity | SpringerLink. Palgrave Macmillan. ISSN 9783031835377. p. 1–35. doi: https:/link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-83537-7#toc. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This introductory chapter discusses what citizenship means for Kurdish women by reviewing existing literature on citizenship, activism, nationalism, and minoritized groups within the nation-state. It also discusses the methodology, research questions, and central arguments that form the groundwork of this book. In cases where citizenship is not a given, acts of citizenship (Isin 2008) can take different forms that disrupt the status quo of the nation-state, often through everyday practices and performances that have the ability to transform existing structures into a new political reality. For women, who not only operate in a politically restrictive environment but are also limited by a highly patriarchal society, access to public spaces in which citizenship can be produced is often even more challenging. It is therefore that this book uses more recent alternative theories of gendered, affective, and intimate citizenship to shed light on the creative actions with which Kurdish women forge changes in their communities, often in violent contexts and precarious conditions. It also examines indigenous claims of Kurdish people who in recent years have asked attention for neocolonial programs of the states they live in in which these states aim at managing, controlling, and appropriating Kurdistan’s environment, including its natural resources.

• Hamelink, Wendelmoet; Bocheńska, Joanna; Hajiagha, Azad Rahim & Kaczorowski, Karol (2025). Performing Citizenship by “Doing Art” Women, Art, and Negotiations in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat). TDR: The Drama Review. ISSN 1054-2043. 69(1), p. 36–53. doi: 10.1017/S1054204324000492. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The murder of Jîna Aminî by the Iranian police in September 2022 led to wide-scale demonstrations. Women in Iranian Kurdistan have developed tactics for creating art and literature that empowers them to fi ght for their rights as women and as Kurds. “Doing art” invites them to cross the border between fictional and real, private and public, and to create negotiations with the patriarchal society and legal system that oppresses them.

• Hanoğlu, Hayal; Wiktor-Mach, Dobrosława; Hamelink, Wendelmoet & Skupiński, Marcin (2025). Resistance in a “sacred geography”: Critical perspectives on land, ecology, and activism among Dersimi Alevis in Turkey. Geoforum. ISSN 0016-7185. 161. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104263. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Environmental actions related to sacred geographies have recently intensified, leading to growing research interest. Many studies have explored indigenous struggles to defend the land, its ecosystems, culture and identity, especially in the Americas. This article employs the concept of sacred geography in Dersim (Tunceli), Turkey, to investigate the unique relationship between the indigenous Alevi population and their land and natural environment. Dersim is also unique for its internal politics and left-wing identity politics, which are rooted in a history of state violence, discrimination and coloniality of nature. Focusing on environmental resistance and women’s initiatives within contemporary Kurdish socio-cultural, environmental and political activism, this article explores the relationship between land and identity and how this connection motivates environmentalist actions in Dersim. Based on ethnographic findings and analysis of secondary sources, we argue that the territorialised Dersimi Alevi identity, rooted in the physical and imaginative realms of the natural landscape, its representations, and its sacredness, is intertwined with widespread resistance to state hegemony, coloniality, and neoliberal and neo-extractivist policies. Social struggles exist in multiple forms, such as protests in defence of a sacred geography; affective relations with the land; and cross-border engagement and social mobilisation through cultural initiatives, for example, the Munzur Festival where culture, environmentalism and politics come together.

• Hamelink, Wendelmoet; Sen, Besime; Bocheńska, Joanna & Kaczorowski, Karol (2025). Challenging the Gender Regime through Small-scale Activism: Alternative Citizen-Led Projects in Kurdistan/Türkiye. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society. ISSN 1072-4745. 32(4), p. 903–925. doi: 10.1093/sp/jxaf004. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article investigates local initiatives among women in Kurdistan/Türkiye and labels them “small-scale activism,” and reports that they offer an alternative to state and party feminism, as well as to civil society organizations. We argue that, through small-scale political acts, women work on several levels simultaneously. First, their actions grow out of a dissatisfaction with the existing gender regime created by an interplay between various macro- and micro-forces (such as state structures, societal norms, economic opportunities, violence), producing structural inequalities. Second, the projects can be seen as political acts that simultaneously challenge or evade state oppression and Kurdish alternative politics. These micro-interventions grew in importance with the implementation of the Trustee system after the 2016 failed military coup. Theoretically, we position small-scale activism between social movement and social non-movement and show how it challenges the gender regime in the context of an authoritarian state and violent conflict.

• Hajiagha, Azad Rahim & Hamelink, Wendelmoet (2024). Kurdish women’s activism in Iran: struggle for re-conquest of the public sphere. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. ISSN 1070-289X. doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2024.2424700. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Ayatollah Khomeini’s concept of ‘Islamic government’, and the 1979 Iranian revolution, sought to exclude women from the public sphere and introduced a new hegemony of the Islamic public sphere. For a variety of cultural and political reasons, many Kurds in Iran refused to accept the religious government’s policies. Using the concepts of public and counter-public, the article discusses Kurdish women’s activism and investigates what motivated them to challenge their marginalization. We argue that in confronting centralist-religious power and traditional Kurdish society, Kurdish women have created new counter-publics that could promote democracy and improve gender equality in both Kurdistan and Iran.

• Wiktor-Mach, Dobrosława; Hajiagha, Azad Rahim & Hamelink, Wendelmoet (2024). Decolonising Environmental Justice. Grassroots Perspectives from Iranian Kurdistan/Rojhelat on Water Rights and Ecological Activism. Kurdish Studies Journal. ISSN 2950-2306. p. 151–181. doi: 10.1163/29502292-00202006. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores the practices and discourses of environmental justice in Iranian Kurdistan/Rojhelat. In the face of unprecedented destruction of the natural environment, Kurdish people, including a significant number of women, organise themselves to defend ecosystems, lakes, rivers, and forests, making them part of the global environmental justice movement. Local communities face growing challenges such as water scarcity, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, exploitation of natural resources, and pollution, which directly affect their lives and health. Drawing on decolonial and critical perspectives of environmental justice studies, we ask how Kurdish activists understand the concepts of “justice” and “environment” in the context of discriminatory practices of the capitalist, patriarchal, and authoritarian Iranian state. Based on interviews and fieldwork in the region, this article argues that the global environmental justice movement should pay closer attention to the contextual realities of the subaltern, their aims and ideas related to nature, justice, and women empowerment.

• Bocheńska, Joanna; Hamelink, Wendelmoet; Salih, Kaziwa & Keskin, Hüseyin Rodi (2023). Small Circles of Empowerment: Kurdish Women Claiming Citizen Rights and Agency through Language Revitalisation. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights. ISSN 1385-4879. 31(1), p. 133–162. doi: 10.1163/15718115-bja10113. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract This article investigates the activities of Kurdish women aimed at protecting and revitalising Kurdish language, which include collecting and publishing folklore, translating into Kurdish, and writing literature in Kurdish. Throughout the 20th century, countries like Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, in varying degrees, imposed restrictions on the use of Kurdish. Our primary focus is on Turkey because this country has been most repressive toward Kurdish language since the establishment of the Republic in 1923, but also due to a recent increased visibility of women language activists and folklore collectors. According to Fishman, language revitalisation does not only pertain to caring for a language but brings about a complete, self-defining way of life. Through language revitalisation, Kurdish women not only build an alternative to the state policy of denial, they also win respect and freedom within their communities. Drawing from Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach and from Sara Ahmed’s understanding of how emotions function through language and its circulation, we demonstrate how collecting and publishing Kurdish language and culture in ‘small circles’ enables Kurdish women to assert their citizenship rights.

• Hamelink, Wendelmoet & Sophie, Essmat (2023). Literature, Feminism, and Activism in Rojhelat and the Diaspora. A conversation with Essmat Sophie. Kurdish Studies Journal. ISSN 2950-2306. 1(1-2), p. 285–299. doi: 10.1163/29502292-00101006. Full text in Research Archive
• Karami, Sonya & Hamelink, Wendelmoet (2023). The effect of home ownership on the independence and participation of Kurdish women in society. A quantitative study of Sanandaj in Iran. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. ISSN 1473-8481. 23(3), p. 369–388. doi: 10.1111/sena.12405. Full text in Research Archive
• Hamelink, Wendelmoet & Gungor, Rusan (2022). A narrative approach to displacement, gender and conflict: motivations of Kurdish women to leave Syria in times of lawlessness. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. ISSN 1369-183X. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2022.2131511. Full text in Research Archive
• Begikhani, Nazand; Hamelink, Akke Wendelmoet & Weiss, Nerina (2018). Theorising women and war in Kurdistan: A feminist and critical perspective. Kurdish Studies. ISSN 2051-4883. 6(1), p. 5–30. doi: 10.33182/ks.v6i1.432. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this introductory article to the special issue Women and War in Kurdistan, we connect our topic to feminist theory, to anthropological theory on war and conflict and their long-term consequences, and to theory on gender, nation and (visual) representation. We investigate Kurdish women ́s victimisation and marginalisation, but also their resistance and agency as female combatants and women activists, their portrayal by media and scholars, and their self-representation. We offer herewith a critical perspective on militarisation, women ́s liberation, and women ́s experiences in times of war and peace. We also introduce the five articles in this issue and discuss how they contribute to the study of women and war in two main areas: the wide-reaching effects of war on women’s lives, and the gendered representation and images of war in Kurdistan.

• Kuruoglu, Alev & Hamelink, Wendelmoet (2017). Sounds of Resistance. Performing the Political in the Kurdish Music Scene. The Politics of Culture in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. Performing the Left since the Sixties.. Routledge. ISSN 9781138914452. p. 103–121. Full text in Research Archive
• Hamelink, Wendelmoet & Baris, Hanifi (2014). Dengbêjs on borderlands: Borders and the state as seen through the eyes of Kurdish singer-poets. Kurdish Studies Journal. ISSN 2950-2306. Full text in Research Archive

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• Hamelink, Akke Wendelmoet; Greve, Martin & Ozdemir, Ulas (2018). Diversity and Contact among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern Anatolia. Ergon Verlag. ISBN 9783956502866. 253 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Hamelink, Wendelmoet (2016). The Sung Home: Narrative, Morality, and the Kurdish Nation. De Gruyter Brill. ISBN 9789004690288. 436 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Hamelink, Wendelmoet & Mahmoud, Houzan (2022). Kurdish women’s life stories, feminism, and activism: A conversation with Houzan Mahmoud. [Journal]. Kurdish Studies. doi: 10.33182/ks.v10i2.719. Full text in Research Archive

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