The so called 'Mozaïekbeurs' (Mosaic Grant) has been initiated by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to stimulate doctoral research by young and talented graduates from ethnic minorities. This year, 24 candidates passed the major selection procedure and were chosen to join the programme. For the greater part, their origins lie in Iran, Surinam, Turkey and China. One of them is Peyman Jafari:
Peyman Jafari (Iran, 1976) will be working on his PhD at the IISH for the next four years, supervised by Touraj Atabaki. His subject will be "Political liberalization and de-liberalization in Iran". Between 1997 and 2005, Iran witnessed a process of political liberalization and de-liberalization. This research explores the role of class, state-society and international power structures, and the role of social actors such as civil society organizations and movements in the transformation and maintenance of authoritarian rule.