With the conflict ongoing in Syria since 2011, many Syrian Kurds have been forced to leave their homes to seek safety and security in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Their displacement to KRI is a distinctive experience of migration as it has happened within an intra-ethnic setting of Syrian Kurds, as refugees, encountering Iraqi Kurds, as hosts. Sharing ethnic identification and imagination of a historical homeland but holding different nationalities, has turned identity and belonging into sites of contestation between the refugees and the hosts. Within this intra-ethnic setting of displacement, the study has investigated the construction of home and politics of identity and belonging among the refugees in relation to protection regimes and forms of inclusion and exclusion. This has been done through a content analysis of relevant policy and regulations for refugees in KRI and Iraq and a thematic analysis of individual narrative interviews with the refugees themselves. Research results from the policy analysis have indicated the lack of a comprehensive protection regime in Iraq and KRI, and the deployment of the ‘guests’ rhetoric towards the refugees as a responsibility evasion mechanism. Results from the interviews have revealed that home for the participants is plural, and it connects to Syria and Kurdistan to varying degrees. Their identity as Kurds is contested when their Syrianness is evoked with boundaries limiting their recognition to be both Syrian and Kurdish. Similarly, their belonging is challenged with their social position as refugees and their legal belonging to Syria. With this, they get involved into a continuum of politics of identity and belonging ranging between the situational demonstration of their Syrian identity and the role of ‘the successful Syrian refugee’, and the accentuation of their attachment to Kurdishness through belonging to Rojava. These politics have been discussed as reflecting a process of reconstructing Syrian Kurdish identity in the light of the experience of displacement and the intra-ethnic encounter. Contextualizing the research results in a wider perspective, it is argued that they carry further implications related to the Kurdish struggle with identity and belonging, not only in KRI, but in all the other parts of Kurdistan.

This thesis aimed to report on the qualitative research conducted which identified the role played by international television soap operas in identity formation and cultural change in relation to Kurdish women. Currently, Kurdish women live in a cultural context where traditional values often conflict with modern values when it comes to behaviour deemed appropriate for their gender. Through the impact of international television soap operas, Kurdish women come to identify themselves as being ¿traditional¿ while at the same time they attempt to integrate non-traditional beliefs into their value system. This study looked at the relationship between Kurdish women¿s exposure to international television, soap operas and consumerism, as well as the problems which they create in terms of non-Western women¿s identity formation. This thesis has documented the lives and experiences of 21 female Kurdish participants, aged between 18 and 40, through in-depth interviews and observations. The thesis assumes that the views recorded are representative of the general viewpoint of viewers of the international soaps. Open-ended, in-depth interviews about women were used to explore viewing habits and preferences for various soaps. This thesis incorporates and expresses the ideas which were recorded with regards to the accepted ¿typical¿ characteristics of men and 4 women ¿ it is these characteristics which play an important role in selfformation. It became evident that these women had incorporated values from the traditional Kurdish culture and the modern way of life. The Kurdish women cannot be said to have a ¿modernist¿ outlook on gender-appropriate behaviour, as they are still endemically entrenched in traditional Kurdistan worldviews. The qualitative research analysed the level in which the soap operas act as a kind of medium between the values of modernity and those of tradition. This study, in addition, demonstrates the appeal that soap operas can have on the norms, and other aspects, in the Kurdistan Region, and therefore illustrates that the soaps have an active role as a mechanism of change in Kurdistan. Thus, the research demonstrates the power of the soap operas and their effects on the Kurdish people in this region. Furthermore, this research explored the current media environment in the Kurdistan Region by reviewing the dependency of Kurdish viewers, and the Kurdish television channels, on foreign and imported television programmes into the region.

Increasing of the oil recovery is an essential task of the reservoir engineers. Many highly fractured carbonate reservoirs with low matrix porosity and low matrix permeability in the world have been depleted with low ultimate recovery due to the improper management. To obtain higher oil recovery and an optimum oil production, a three dimensional geological model for the reservoir is needed. The reservoir model should be calibrated via the history matching process which makes the model reliable for forecasting and development planning. An investigation has been carried out to find the most sensitive parameter which affects the matching between the real production data and the simulated production data. After the calibration of the model, some prediction scenarios have been run to realize the future performance of the reservoir. Three wells have been suggested and included in the simulation as producers in some prediction cases and as gas injectors in another other case. The results show that the three producers with low production rate will assist in increasing the recovery and by converting those to gas injectors will assist more especially when the oil production rate is higher. An oil field in Kurdistan region has been selected for this research.

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