The evening will feature Vicken Cheterian in conversation with Laurence Broers and Armine Ishkanian (LSE). Together, they will explore how the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was fought and lost, and what it reveals about power, geopolitics, and the fragile architecture of peace in a rapidly changing international order. Vicken has recently published two books about the war and will help us reflect on a conflict that reshaped the South Caucasus and reverberated far beyond it.
The 44-Day War: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Struggle for Nagorno-Karabakh (February 2026), offers a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination of the causes, conduct, and consequences of the war. This volume, edited by Cheterian and bringing together chapters written by multiple experts, interrogates the collapse of the 1994–2020 ceasefire regime, the failures of diplomacy and mediation, Armenia’s strategic miscalculations, and the consolidation of authoritarian power in Azerbaijan. It probes the roles of external actors before turning to the war’s aftermath: stalled peace processes, the dramatic failure of the Russian peacekeeping mission, and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh. It was published open access by Bloomsbury Publishing and can be accessed in full online.
Defeat: Documenting the Karabagh War of 2020 (March 2026) edited by Ashot Voskanyan, is a rigorous investigation of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Based on extensive interviews with senior Armenian political, military, and civil figures, Vicken Cheterian attempted to reconstruct in detail the developments during the war. In collaboration with five specialists, the book provides an unprecedented documentary account of decision-making, responsibility, and defeat. It was published by the Gomidas Institute, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
The books will be available for sale at the event.
This event is held in partnership with The Gulbenkian Foundation.
Speakers
Vicken Cheterian is a lecturer in History and International Relations at the University of Geneva. He is a former journalist, having published extensively in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Die Wochenzeitung, Al-Hayat, Le Monde diplomatique, etc. He is a regular contributor to Agos. He is the author of War and Peace in the Caucasus, Russia's Troubled Frontier (2009), Open Wounds, Armenians, Turks and a Century of Genocide (2015), and he is currently writing a book on the Armenian diaspora.
Laurence Broers is a scholar-practitioner with three decades of experience as a researcher of conflicts in the South Caucasus and practitioner of peacebuilding initiatives in the region. He has edited three volumes on regional history and politics and published several journal articles on the South Caucasus, as well as extensive policy and current affairs analysis including for Chatham House, where he serves as associate fellow in the Russia & Eurasia Programme. He is also the founding editor and editor-in-chief of the academic journal Caucasus Survey. He is currently completing a second edition of his monograph, Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
Armine Ishkanian is a Professor in Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics (LSE), as well as the Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) programme based at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. Professor Ishkanian’s research examines how civil society organisations and social movements engage in policy processes and transformative politics. She is currently co-convening the Politics of Inequality research programme.
