Thomas Schmidinger is a Political Scientist and Cultural Anthropologist, Associate Professor and Program Director at the Department for Politics and International Relations at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (UKH). He also teaches at the University of Vienna and the University of Applied Sciences Oberösterreich in Linz. He is Secretary General of the Austrian Association for Kurdish studies. He is the author of Rojava, which received the Mezlum Bagok award.