Survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 took refuge across the globe. Traumatized by unspeakable brutalities, the idea of returning to their homeland was unthinkable. But decades later, some children and grandchildren felt compelled to travel back, having heard stories of family wholeness in beloved homes and of cherished ancestral towns and villages -and even houses- once in Ottoman Armenia. Today their homeland is in the Republic of Turkey, which they also perceive as a living trauma-scape, and a place of injustice where their history is actively denied.

Between 2007 and 2015, Carel Bertram joined scores of these pilgrims, and amassed accounts from hundreds who made these journeys. In telling their stories, she uncovers their soulful and creative resilience when their genocide-inflected histories of trauma, separation, and exile meet on-the-ground realities. Come and hear her speak at the Armenian Institute in London about her profound experience and the resulting award-winning book, A House in the Homeland: Armenian Pilgrimages to Places of Ancestral Memory, published by Stanford University Press in 2022. The book was awarded a Middle East Studies Association Award in 2023.

This event is part of the Armenian Institute's current National Lottery Heritage Fund funded project, Heritage of Displacement, Oral Histories from the UK Armenian Communities (2023–2026), which aims to help British-Armenian communities to take part in preserving their heritage of displacement, migration, and resettlement, thanks to National Lottery players.

About Dr. Carel Bertram

Dr. Bertram is Professor Emerita of in Middle East and Islamic Studies, Dept. of Humanities, San Francisco State University. She holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Islamic Art History from UCLA. Focusing on the visual culture of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman eras, she studies how we use space and place to represent ourselves, and to create historical consciousness.