Research fellow visits campus's Armenian Research Center for dissertation work

Asya Darbinyan, a graduate research fellow at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, Armenia, recently spent four days at the Armenian Research Center conducting research for her dissertation on Near East Relief orphanages.

Near East Relief (now called the Near East Foundation) was a major U.S. relief organization established during the First World War to assist the victims of the Armenian Genocide and other atrocities of the same period.

Darbinyan is a Carnegie Endowment fellow this term, based at UCLA, but also is visiting other academic and research centers in Washington, DC; New York; Boston; and Dearborn to conduct additional fieldwork.

Pictured above, from left: Darbinyan and Ara Sanjian, director of the Armenian Research Center. Behind them is a replica of one of Near East Relief's publicity posters. Between 1915 and 1930, Near East Relief raised some $117 million to aid Armenian orphans; in today's dollars that amount would be $1.580 billion.