ARC News
Sahakyan Featured in a Panel Discussion at the Global Armenian Summit in Yerevan, Armenia
September 22, 2024
At the 2024 Global Armenian Summit, held from September 17 to 20, 2024, in Yerevan, Armenia, Sahakyan participated in the panel discussion titled "Expanding Opportunities for Armenia-Diaspora Collaboration in Repatriation and Integration." The panel was moderated by Marina Ghazaryan, founder and CEO of M.A.M. Armenian Online School. Speakers included Hovhannes Aleksanyan, Head of the Repatriation and Integration Department of the RA Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs; Arman Yeghiazaryan, Director of Diaspora Studies Master's Program at Yerevan State University; Lusine Ohanyan, Head of the Strategic Programs Department at the Armenian Missionary Association of America; and Hrayr Torosyan, Repatriate Businessman.
The Summit was organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs of the Republic of Armenia. The recording of the "Expanding Opportunities for Armenia-Diaspora Collaboration in Repatriation and Integration" is available in the Armenian language.
ARC hosts a Meeting with H.E. Lilit Makunts, the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to the United States of America.
September 15, 2024
The Armenian Research Center hosted a meeting between H.E. Lilit Makunts, the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to the United States of America, and members of the local Armenian-American community in Southeast Michigan. During the event, the Ambassador provided a comprehensive overview of the recent developments in U.S.-Armenia bilateral relations, discussed Armenia's security situation, and outlined its foreign policy priorities. She also addressed the ongoing efforts of her government and others to secure the release of Armenian prisoners of war held in Azerbaijan, and discussed the peace agenda and the process of border demarcation between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Additionally, the Ambassador highlighted the "Crossroads of Peace" initiative of the Government of Armenia.
During a two-hour long Q&A session, which followed her opening presentation, the Ambassador responded to a wide range of other questions and concerns raised by community members.
Translation of Hovhannes Tumanyan's Short Stories From Armenian into Portuguese by ARC Visiting Scholar
September 10, 2024
Fernando Januario Pimenta, from the University of São Paulo (Brazil), spent three months at the ARC working on the translations of Hovhannes Tumanyan's short stories. During his stay, Dr. Pimenta utilized the ARC resources and expertise to understand Tumanyan's colloquial and dialectal Armenian, which helped him find similar equivalents in Portuguese.
Ara Sanjian Completes a Busy Trip to Armenia
September 5, 2024
In June and July 2024, Ara Sanjian paid a six-week visit to Armenia, during which he participated in several activities related to his duties as Director of the Armenian Research Center.
At the invitation of the Faculty of History at Yerevan State University, where he graduated in 1991, he conducted on June 14, 17 and 21 three seminar-discussions with its faculty and students. The three topics were all related to issues of theory and methodology in the writing of Armenian history. The first of these seminars investigated the challenges of writing Armenian history from the perspectives of National or State History, as well as Universal History, World History, Global History, Big History, Macrohistory, International History, Transnational History, and Comparative History. The second seminar gave attention to contemporary genres in history-writing internationally and analyzed the future of research in Armenian history in view of these relatively new avenues for historical research. The last seminar’s focus were the challenges of writing the history of the Armenian Diaspora in the twentieth century.
Sanjian’s last public event at Yerevan State University was a lecture organized by the Center for Continuing Education on June 26. He spoke about the notion of the “Ever-Changing Past” in history-writing and analyzed through this prism a series of changed perceptions in nineteenth and twentieth century Armenian historiography.
During his sojourn in Armenia, Sanjian also attended the sessions of the annual conference of the Armenian Society of Fellows (June 26-30) and the International Armenological Congress, held at the Mesrop Mashtots Matenadaran, the Institute of Ancient Armenian Manuscripts in Yerevan (July 19-21).
Finally, during his six-week stay in Armenia, Sanjian gave five separate interviews on topics in twentieth century Armenian history and current affairs to the media outlets Armenian Public Radio, 1in.am, and Civilnet, as well as to the podcast series Unfiltered History and Let’s Be Honest (Եկէք անկեղծ խօսինք).
Expanding International Collaboration: Vahe Sahakyan Co-Edits Diaspora Studies Collection at GWZO and Chairs MA Thesis Defense Committee at Pázmány Péter Catholic University
August 26, 2024
Vahe Sahakyan completed a residency as a guest scholar at the Leibniz Center for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig, Germany, where he collaborated with Dr. Hakob Matevosyan to co-edit a collection of articles from the 2021 GWZO conference Layers of Diasporic Belonging: (Re)Evaluating Armenianness in Historical, Contemporary and Comparative Perspectives. The collection has been submitted as a special issue proposal to Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies.
At the invitation of Dr. Bálint Kovács, Head of the Department of Armenian Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Sahakyan traveled to Budapest, Hungary, to chair the master’s thesis defense committee, a formal panel comprising faculty members of the Armenian Studies department and invited scholars from universities outside Hungary.
Sanjian Presents His Research on Armenians During the Years of the Cold War in an Online Talk
April 14, 2024
Ara Sanjian's online talk titled "Armenians During the Years of the Cold War" presented the interim results and conclusions of his ongoing research on the involvement of Soviet Armenia and the Armenians in the Diaspora in the global processes of the Cold War. It further outlined the issues that still need further research, which include, among others, the following questions: When exactly did the “Armenian Cold War” begin? How should its history, which lasted for more than four decades, be periodized? What changes did the attitudes and actions of the main protagonists of the “Armenian Cold War” undergo from the mid-1940s to the late 1980s? What new research directions can help us better understand and interpret this period of Armenian history?
The event was organized by the California-based Analysis, Research and Planning for Armenia (ARPA) Institute.
Full recording of "Armenians During the Years of the Cold War" is available in the Armenian language.
Michigan Public's "Stateside" episode on the findings of the Armenian Diaspora Survey in Michigan
April 12, 2024
Michigan Public's "Stateside" featured a discussion on the findings of the Armenian Diaspora Survey in Michigan with Dr. Vahe Sahakyan from the Armenian Research Center and Dr. Inna Mirzoyan from the Department of Sociology, Wayne State University.
"Transcultural Armenianness," presented by Vahe Sahakyan at the Diaspora(s) arménienne(s) en mouvement: espaces, pratiques et acteurs au 21ème siècle conference in Aubervilliers, France.
March 14-15, 2024
Sahakyan's paper presented at the "Diaspora(s) arménienne(s) en mouvement : espaces, pratiques et acteurs au 21ème siècle" conference, examined the lived experiences, practices and expressions of Armenianness that have evolved throughout the past century beyond the Armenian speaking communities and spaces in the US and France.
Full program of the conference: "Diaspora(s) arménienne(s) en mouvement : espaces, pratiques et acteurs au 21ème siècle", March 14-15, Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers, France
"New Armenian History Textbooks: Objective and Challenges" – panel discussion co-organized and moderated by Ara Sanjian.
January 29, 2024
This event was part of the regular online public lectures and panels series hosted by the Analysis, Research and Planning for Armenia (ARPA) Institute, based in California.
The need for a panel on teaching methods in Armenian history had emerged in light of the high-pitched polemic which had broken out in Armenia in the wake of the introduction to its public schools of a new textbook for Armenian history for the seventh grade in September 2023.
The participants of the panel were Tamara Sargsyan, the Head of the Department of Public Education at the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia; Lilit Mkrtchyan, the Head of the Department of Educational Innovation and Research at the National Center for the Development of Education and Innovations in Armenia and the chair of the committee which designed in 2019-2021 the new school standards in Armenia for the Social Sciences, including Armenian history; Smbat Hovhannisyan, lecturer in history at Yerevan State University and the author of the seventh-grade Armenian history textbook; and Stephan H. Astourian, a historian and the Director of the Turpanjian Center for Policy Analysis at the American University of Armenia.
Full recording of the "New Armenian History Textbooks: Objective and Challenges" panel is available in the Armenian language.
"Transnational Politics and Governmental Strategies in the Formative Years of the Post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora (1920s-1930s)" - new book chapter by Vahe Sahakyan.
December 20, 2023
Sahakyan's chapter titled "Transnational Politics and Governmental Strategies in the Formative Years of the Post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora (1920s-1930s)" was recently published in The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power: Collective Identity in the Transnational 20th Century (Talar Chahinian, Sossie Kasbarian, Tsolin Nalbantian, eds.) by Bloomsbury publishing (2023).
The chapter explores the transnational governmental efforts of the exiled leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and the Bolshevik government of Soviet Armenia in the period between 1920s and 1930s to propose an approach to diasporic governmentality that is multi-centered, involving both state- and diaspora-based agents with incompatible ideologies and governmental aspirations.
Ara Sanjian presents "Armenian Voter Preferences and the Armenian Political Parties in the Lebanese Parliamentary Elections of 2018 and 2022" at the Ethno-Social Changes in the Armenian Diaspora: Tendencies and Developments conference.
December 13, 2023
Dr. Ara Sanjian participated online in a two-day conference entitled “Ethno-Social Changes in the Armenian Diaspora: Tendencies and Developments,” co-organized by the Department of Diaspora Studies, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia and the National Museum of Armenian Ethnography and History of the Liberation Struggle.
Based on a careful analysis of the results of the Parliamentary elections of 2018 and 2022 in Lebanon, Sanjian outlined in his paper the preferences of Armenian voters who cast ballots either in Lebanon or at Lebanese diplomatic missions abroad. He focused on the current potential of the three traditional political parties active in the Armenian Diaspora – the Dashnaktsutiun, the Hunchakians and Ramkavars – to mobilize voters, both Armenian and non-Armenian, across Lebanon.
He also showed that other political organizations and social-political have recently made inroads into Lebanon’s Armenian community and now enjoy some level of Armenian support. Finally, he assessed the future potential of the three Armenian parties in Lebanon, considering the Armenian community’s diminishing size in the country and the acculturation process that it is undergoing.
Sahakyan's panel and interview in Armenia
August 10, 2023
Sahakyan was invited to participate at the Armenian National Youth Forum panel on "Candid Conversations: Determining Priorities & Defining Youth's Role in Strengthening Diaspora-Armenia Relations," hosted by the Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs on August 1-3, 2023, in Yerevan, Armenia.
Sahakyan was later invited to share his impressions and views on diaspora engagement policies in the interview with Sago Arian, August 6.
Sanjian's talks, panels and interviews in Armenia
July 10, 2024
While in Armenia, Dr. Sanjian delivered several lectures and participated in panel discussions and podcast interviews. These included:
- The interview with Nazeli Ohanyan (Public Radio of Armenia), June 23
- The podcast interview with Karpis Pashoyan and Gor Madoyan on Aliq Media, June 24
- The interview with Siranush Papyan on 1in.am, June 29
- The panel discussion on the "Pan-Armenian Science and Education" conference, hosted by EDU Armenia, July 3
- Lecture on "Relations between Soviet Armenia and Diaspora" (Part 1, 1920-1953, Part 2, 1953-1991) ANI Centre, July 5
- Lecture at the History Museum of Armenia on the challenges of the writing the history of Armenians in Lebanon, July 7
Collaboration with the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute of Armenia
July 14, 2023
In 2023, the collaboration between the Armenian Research Center and the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan was marked by book exchanges and a lecture that Dr. Sanjian delivered on July 13, 2023.
Collaboration with the National Library of Armenia (NLA)
July 8, 2023
On June 29, 2023, Dr. Sanjian and Dr. Sahakyan met with the Director of the National Library of Armenia (NLA) to the discuss scope and areas of future collaboration. The meeting was followed by an exchange of book donations.
Dr. Sahakyan was subsequently invited to give a talk at the NLA on current metadata cataloging practices in the United States. The presentation, which took place on July 7, 2023, engaged the audience in an interesting Q&A and discussion on the ways in which cataloging practices in America and in Armenia could be aligned for the benefit of global users of Armenian language resources.
The Armenian Society of Fellows Annual Conference in Dilijan, Armenia
June 25-26, 2023
The Armenian Society of Fellows (ASOF) is a non-profit organization, that connects Armenian scholars of various backgrounds to serve one mission: to help raise Armenia’s educational and research institutions to world-class levels and to network them globally. The ASOF holds annual conferences, bringing together scholars from various parts of the world, and the various task forces to report on their activities. Dr. Sanjian and Dr. Sahakyan attended the ASOF Dilijan conference, engaging in interdisciplinary dialogues and sharing insights. Dr Sahakyan shared his impressions from the ASOF Conference with CivilNet -- a major news reporting agency in Armenia.
"The Soviet Experience in Armenia and its Legacy -2" Conference
June 13-15, 2023
The Armenian Research Center co-organized the second leg of "The Soviet Experience in Armenia and its Legacy" in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the National Academy of Science of Armenia. Dr. Armen Zakarian, the UM-Dearborn Vice Provost for Research, Dr. Martin Hershok, the Dean of CASL, and Dr. Ara Sanjian, the director of ARC, welcomed in their opening remarks the participants of the conference, stressing the important collaboration between the two institutions. Dr. Sahakyan presented a paper on the second panel, sparking discussions on Soviet Armenia's complicated relations with the Armenian diasporic political parties and institutions