Graduate student Huseyin Rasit has been awarded a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Grant for his PhD research. Huseyin’s dissertation, entitled “State-Seeking, Ethnicity, and Religion: Emergent Political Formations in the 21st-Century Middle East,” examines competing state/society-formation projects emerging out of the political crises in Iraq and Syria. Specifically, it attempts to explain why we observe political projects as diverse as the Syrian Kurdish Revolution, Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, and the Islamic State rising out of the same time-space complex. Huseyin’s doctoral work will contribute to discussions about state-formations, revolutions, and political movements in general and the politics and future of the Middle East in particular. The competitive DAAD Grant will help the Germany leg of his research where he will be affiliated with the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and interview Kurdish refugees from Syria.