Dr. Kamaran Palani is a Lecturer in International Relations at Salahaddin University-Erbil. He obtained his PhD in 2021 from Leiden University in the Netherlands and completed his MA in Politics and International Relations (Global Security) at Keele University in the UK in 2014. Dr. Palani has extensive experience working with various academic and research centres, as well as local and international organizations, including the Middle East Research Institute, IOM, World Bank, UNAMI, UNDP, Al Sharq Forum, PAX, and Spark. His research interests are focused on peace and conflict dynamics in Iraq, statehood and sovereignty, and regional Kurdish politics. He has published in several reputable academic journals including International Peacekeeping, Third World Quarterly, Ethnopolitics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and International Migration. In addition, he is the author of Kurdistan's De Facto Statehood: A New Explanatory Framework, which was published by Routledge in 2022.[1]