This year, we will be commemorating the 110th anniversary of the Armenian genocide with an evening of talks and music, kindly hosted by the Wiener Holocaust Library. Judging by the number of publications that have appeared in the past few years, from monographs to journals and edited volumes, we can say that scholarly research around the topic of the Armenian genocide is an ever renewed field. On Thursday, April 24th, two scholars who are active in this field will present their work and enlighten us on the most recent directions that this research has taken. The second part of the evening will be dedicated to Armenian music by Lucine Musaelian.

Dr Peter Morgan will discuss his recent book, British Representations of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-23, which examines how British politicians, national and local newspapers, writers and commentators discussed the mass killing and deportation of Armenians as they were happening. Morgan found that the news was widely circulated in the provincial press and not just in major contemporary titles.

Dr Becky Jinks will discuss how, in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide, Armenian networks and international relief organisations mounted efforts to rescue Armenians who were being kept in Turkish, Kurdish, or Arab households. Most of the published or well-known sources we have, though, are about male rescuers. Her brief talk will begin to explore the efforts of women rescuers – those who rescued other women, and those who trekked to find their own children.

Moderated by Tatiana Der Avedissian.

This event is held in collaboration with the Wiener Holocaust Library, as part of the Holocaust and Genocide Research Partnership.

About the Speakers and Musician

Dr. Rebecca Jinks is a historian specializing in comparative genocide and humanitarianism. She completed her PhD at Royal Holloway in 2013 and has taught at the University of East Anglia and the University of Exeter. Her book, Representing Genocide: The Holocaust as Paradigm? (Bloomsbury, 2016), examines how Holocaust representations shape understandings of other genocides, focusing on Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.
Her recent work explores women’s experiences during the Armenian and Yezidi genocides and the humanitarian responses that followed. She held an AHRC Fellowship (2022–2024) for her project Genocidal Captivity, which compares the stories and representations of Armenian and Yezidi women survivors. The project included a photography exhibition held at the Wiener Holocaust Library last year.

Peter Morgan graduated from the University of Leeds with a history degree in 1989. After working in residential childcare, he taught history in secondary schools for 21 years, leaving to do a PhD at the University of Brighton in 2014. His thesis on British Representations of the Armenian Genocide 1915-23 was published as a monograph by Routledge in February. He is currently working as a volunteer on the Armenian Institute’s Heritage of Displacement Project and since January 2024 has been the Education Officer at the Wiener Holocaust Library.

Lucine Musaelian is an Armenian-American viola da gamba player, singer, and composer from New Jersey. She studied music at Yale, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Lucine’s main project is with her duo Intesa, where early music, Armenian music, and contemporary music come together through the art of self-accompaniment and storytelling. Intesa performs internationally and will be releasing new music very soon. Lucine has also performed with Phantasm, the Dunedin Consort, the Tallis Society, La Nuova Musica, the BBC Philharmonic, and regularly performs with the Bellot Ensemble and the Idrisi Ensemble.

The Armenian Studies Group (ASG) is beginning a new season, now meeting at the Armenian Institute. We come together to provide a safe space where researchers in Armenian Studies in all fields present work in progress and receive stimulating, encouraging feedback. ASG meetings are open to people directly involved in research on any aspect of Armenian studies. The ASG includes students, teachers, journalists, writers, graphic artists, photo-essayists and others.

Contact Susan Pattie if you wish to present your work (susanppattie@gmail.com)  

The Armenian Institute is the host and home base for the ASG. 

Next meeting:  April 15, 2025 at 6:00 with Tsovinar Kuiumchian, Oxford University

“My house is full of ghosts”: the textile archive as a transgenerational communication zone”.

This ethnographic paper examines a family textile archive as a relational space where the legacies and presences of several generations of Armenian textile artists intersect. It argues that the affective and material qualities of the archive have enabled a family of Armenian artists to engage in a shared act of cultural preservation, from before the Armenian genocide to the present day. The ethnography follows contemporary American Armenian textile artist Deborah Valoma on her creative journey exploring traditional Armenian textile craft -- from the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles to her home studio in Berkeley, California, and ultimately to New York City, where her contemporary artwork found its place. Alongside her artistic exploration, a parallel narrative unfolds: an inherited collection of family heirlooms is transformed into an archive through Deborah’s practice, then brought into the world, where it continues to evolve beyond the artist’s control. By tracing the life of this archive, the paper opens the possibility of viewing it not just as a repository of information and knowledge, but as a dynamic space for intergenerational contact, politics, and sociality, collectively shaped across time and space. The paper suggests that in this case, ancestral relationships — mediated by the textile archive — can be understood as 'transgenerational communication' that defies the genocidal erasure of Armenian heritage and the rupture of familial and communal ties.

Tsovinar Kuiumchian is a doctoral candidate at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford. Combining visual, material and museum anthropology with political anthropology, her research examines the social and political significance of contemporary art and creative practices in the global Armenian community. She conducts her multi-sited ethnography online and offline in the US, Europe, Turkey and Armenia. Part of the Armenian diaspora, she was born and raised in Ukraine.

Join us for a vibrant gathering of Armenian creatives—a chance to reconnect, reflect on past collaborations, and share exciting new projects.

Whether you're an actor, director, writer, designer, poet, painter, composer, musician, choreographer, producer, or craftworker, we welcome you to join us for coffee and conversation. This event is exclusively for those of Armenian heritage who are actively working in the arts and entertainment industries.

As always, the gathering will be hosted by theatre director Ed Stambollouian and playwright Abi Zakarian, with the generous support of the Armenian Institute.

Have you ever wanted to write your family history? This workshop series will help you get started, under the guidance of Nick Barlay, a writer and teacher experienced in writing the history of his own family throughout twentieth century’s war-torn Eastern Europe.

Not merely a writing practice, this workshop will help you reflect on the meaning and importance of family history, and on how to overcome the challenges associated with writing about “home” and “displacement." You will learn how to include artefacts or photos in your narrative and what they may be able to reveal about people and places. Story-telling techniques will be approached, to bring to life lived experience, for example 'creating characters', evoking the places and worlds of family members, and using dialogue and scenes to narrate life-stories.

Nick Barlay’s workshop will be an opportunity to share ideas, complete short writing exercises, get advice on your own project of preserving your family history, and have fun experimenting.

This workshop is proposed in complement to the Armenian Institute’s Heritage of Displacement oral history project, aimed at documenting and preserving stories of Armenian diaspora heritage in the UK. The project is funded by a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, thanks to National Lottery players.

Workshop is limited to 12 participants. Anyone is welcome to register: tickets are £14 (£8 for students) and free for all the volunteers involved with the Heritage of Displacement project, interviewers and interviewees.

This event is part of Heritage of Displacement: Oral Histories from the UK Armenian Communities (2023–2026), funded by a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, thanks to National Lottery players.

About the Speaker

Nick Barlay is the author of four acclaimed novels and one book of non-fiction. He has written award-winning radio plays, contributed to short story anthologies, and his journalism has appeared in many publications. He was named one of Granta’s 20 best young British novelists in 2003, until it was discovered he was too old to be young. Barlay was born in London to Hungarian Jewish refugee parents. Scattered Ghosts, the story of his family over 200 years, is available in the UK, Hungary and the USA. It was longlisted for the 2015 Wingate Prize. He is currently writing a non-fiction book, The Suicide of Eva Izsak, supported by an Arts Council England award.

Co-Curator of the exhibition “New Matter: Sergei Djavadian’s Collection of Armenian Abstraction,” with Vigen Galstyan at the National Gallery of Armenia (31 July – 15 December 2024), Choghakate Kazarian joins us to discuss the early years of the art collection of Sergei Djavadian, focused on abstract and conceptual works by Achot Achot, Kiki, Offenbach, Martin Petrosyan, Armén Rotch, and Sev, who were key members of the famous 3rd Floor group (1987–1994), considered the first movement of contemporary art in Armenia. The collection, formed primarily during the early 1990s, and thus synchronous with the movements it represents, reflects the important ideological conflicts within the 3rd Floor group, starting with the “plus minus” exhibition in 1990, and the consequent formation of the Bunker group. The presentation will also be an opportunity to bring up methodological issues regarding historicising contemporary art in Armenia.

Co-organised by the Armenian Institute and Dr Klara Kemp-Welch, Reader in 20th Century Modernism, The Courtauld.

About the Speaker

Choghakate Kazarian is an art historian and curator specialised in modern and contemporary art. She holds a Master degree in art history from the Ecole du Louvre (Paris), a Master degree in philosophy from La Sorbonne (Paris) and a PhD in art history from The Courtauld Institute of Art (London). She was curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and taught at the Ecole du Louvre. She has curated exhibitions on artists such as Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Karel Appel, and Henry Darger. Her latest exhibitions include Immersion. Les Origines: 1949–1969 at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (Switzerland), “Mood of the Moment: Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloé” at The Jewish Museum (New York), and “New Matter: The Sergei Djavadian Collection of Armenian Abstraction” at the National Gallery of Armenia.

Book your 30-minute slot to come and experience a virtual reality work by Madeleine K., Stories from My Grandmother's House, which tells the story of the artist's Armenian and Palestinian family over several centuries.

Growing up in the diaspora, Madeleine has designed this project to experience her heritage as if it were a memory. She has combined archival research and first-person interviews with digital technologies to explore how we can reconnect communities with lost spaces and cultures. How can VR offer us spatial memories of places that are no longer accessible?

Set foot in a room in the artist’s grandmother’s house in Haifa in the 1930s, full of her grandfather’s paintings and decorative elements reconstructed from online and family archives, celebrating the rich cultural heritage of both sides of the family. Through different objects, you will access scenes from the family story, from a shipwreck off the coast of Akka in the 1780s to the adoption of her grandfather in Aleppo during the Armenian Genocide in 1915, through to her grandparents meeting by chance in Palestine in 1932.

Tickets are free for all the volunteers involved with the Heritage of Displacement project, interviewers and interviewees.

This event is part of Heritage of Displacement: Oral Histories from the UK Armenian Communities (2023–2026), funded by a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, thanks to National Lottery players.

About the Speaker

Madeleine K. is an artist and experience designer from London. Her work uses immersive technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality to create portals – interventions in physical and digital environments designed to hold space for under-represented stories from human and non-human worlds. Powerful and empathetic, her work focuses on knowing through feeling. She is dedicated to engaging audiences with alternative ways of understanding the world through rich, multi-sensory experiences. She has exhibited at Breeze Film Festival, the London Festival of Architecture, Brompton Cemetery Chapel and London Design Festival. She has over 10 years of experience in the creative technology sector, designing and delivering immersive projects for clients including The Smithsonian, Bestival, IKEA & Amazon. She holds a BA in Textile Design from Central Saint Martins and was the recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship at the RCA.

In September 2023, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh succumbed to a political conflict without precedence. As a result, the people residing in these mountainous lands have been compelled into exile, leaving behind a treasure trove of traditions whose fate remains uncertain. Among the most significant of these traditions is the art of carpet weaving. The rugs originating from Nagorno Karabakh stand as unparalleled marvels, encapsulating within their threads a plethora of stories and enduring traditions.

Join expert Hratch Kozibeyokian in this enlightening presentation to explore the captivating world of symbols and motifs concealed within the intricate knots of these carpets. He argues that this part of Armenian culture too is subjected to cultural appropriation and, ultimately, cultural genocide. This session promises to unveil the richness of these artistic creations and delve into the profound narratives and cultural significance woven into each rug.

This event will be solely online.

We invite you to meet Politico foreign policy reporter Gabriel Gavin, on the occasion of the publication of his most recent book, Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is the first major book to be published on the region since the 2020 war.

Through the eyes of ordinary Armenians and Azerbaijanis, it charts how a decades-long conflict exploded into one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time. Based on years of unique access and on-the-ground reporting from both sides of the front line, Gabriel Gavin charts how Nagorno-Karabakh went from an ancient home shared by both peoples to a battle-scarred land of empty houses and untended graves — as the world watched on.

His presentation will be moderated by the Armenian Institute’s Chair Tatiana Der Avedissian and will be followed by a drinks reception. Copies of the book will be available to purchase afterwards with a 25% discount, and Gabriel Gavin will be available to sign your copy.

This event is held in collaboration with Hurst Publishers.

About the Speaker:

Gabriel Gavin is a journalist and writer from Oxford, England. He has covered the politics and foreign affairs of the former Soviet Union and Turkey as a reporter for Politico, as well as for outlets including Time, Foreign Policy and The Spectator.

Come join us as we gather to commemorate the epoch-making journalist and peacemaker Hrant Dink. The Armenian Turkish editor of the weekly AGOS and human rights champion stirred the conscience of Turkish people so profoundly in his writing and TV appearances that he was murdered in broad daylight outside his office by a 17-year-old nationalist on January 19, 2007. The court case has not seen justice done on the hidden perpetrators, yet Dink continues to be the recipient of major peace prizes and honours even after his death. The Hrant Dink Foundation continues to educate and inspire Armenians and Turks on equal rights for all and the democratization of the country. It fosters dialogue towards empathy and understanding of diversity in different peoples.

This year, we invite you to a screening of Hrant Dink: Heart of Two Nations, a moving 40-minute documentary film directed by Nouritza Matossian, from their private conversations. It is the only film showing Hrant Dink speaking in Armenian about his life and struggle for justice and human rights, made in 2008, after his death. The free screening will take place at the Armenian Institute and online and will be followed by an open discussion with the director, Nouritza Matossian. We hope you will join us to keep his memory alive and celebrate his achievements together.

About the speaker:

Nouritza Matossian, friend and documentarist of Hrant Dink has memorialized his life every year since his death in 2007. She recorded his innermost thoughts and feelings in conversations editing them later for the award winning video portrait, Hrant Dink, Heart of Two Nations.

Her acclaimed biographies on Iannis Xenakis, composer and Black Angel, A Life of Arshile Gorky, Armenian American artist were both made into films. She performed the story of Gorky in a one-woman show internationally in three languages and 100 productions. She is a founder and former director of the Armenian Institute in London. Wife and partner of composer Rolf Gehlhaar.

Building Culture in Armenia brings together four creative agents working with communities in Armenia to develop sustainable craft and construction. Three short presentations of their work will be followed by a panel discussion touching on the exciting recent developments within this geographical crossing place of social and political forces.

Architect and Academic Guillaume Othenin-Girard works with local people, archaeologists, and students from the University of Hong Kong to update the traditional Armenian house typology, the glkhatun, to meet modern climate challenges in the Vedi River Valley. Curator Nairi Khatchadourian works with contemporary artists within rural settings to revitalize local heritage. Architects Aram Mooradian and Shant Charoian work with international and local architecture students to identify and protect heritage in the face of growing development and mass tourism. Together, they represent a sample of the flourishing creative energy developing within Armenia’s burgeoning economy.

This event is organized in parallel to a three-week exhibition at the Architectural Association showcasing work carried out by students of The Oshakan Project 2024, the summer school organized by Mooradian and Charoian. The Oshakan Project works with students and the local community to document heritage in Oshakan, an ancient rural village in the Aragatsotn region, and imagines ways of unlocking heritage sites as potential nodes of social, economic, and cultural activity.

The work on show will be accompanied by a specially commissioned series of photographs of Oshakan by the artist Piruza Khalapyan. The exhibition opens on the 14th of January and runs until the end of the month.

The British Council’s Architecture Design and Fashion Biennales & Festivals Grant provided a wonderful opportunity for Armenian architects and creatives to showcase their work at a UK festival.

The event was held in association with the Architectural Association. This event was part of the Armenian Institute's festival of architecture and culture, Living | Building | Together.

About the Speakers

Nairi Khatchadourian is a Paris-born art historian, curator, and placemaking advocate. She relocated to Armenia in 2015 and managed institutional projects in museums in Yerevan and Armenia’s regions. By bringing together artists, photographers, architects, designers, and researchers under the roof of AHA collective, a curatorial practice she founded in 2019, Khatchadourian has been engaged in commissioning new works and rethinking exhibition formats to open up the contemporary artistic landscape to different audiences in Armenia. Khatchadourian recently directed the creation of the first contemporary red carpet for the Golden Apricot International Film Festival and opened AHA collective’s gallery in Yerevan. Khatchadourian is the editor of a number of catalogues and collective monographs and curator of over 20 exhibitions on Armenian contemporary art, design, and cultural heritage, among which Pieces (2019, Komitas Museum-Institute, 2020 President Prize of the Republic of Armenia); Hanging Garden: Dadivank and Beyond (2022, Cafesjian Center for the Arts); Living Portals: Settlement Fabrics of Khndzoresk, Tegh, and Verishen (2023, House of Culture, Verishen Village); Conversations with the Reed (2024, Komitas Museum-Institute). Khatchadourian is the co-curator of the Armenian Pavilion of the upcoming 2025 International Design Biennale in St Etienne, France. 

In her talk, Nairi Khatchadourian will explore the new dynamics in Armenia’s contemporary art scene through the various curatorial projects she has undertaken with the AHA collective. She will delve into the intersection of contemporary art and placemaking, focusing on curatorial approaches that engage with local contexts, resources, and know-how. She will highlight the transformative power of contemporary art in revitalising heritage and territories and fostering a meaningful sense of place. 

Shant Charoian is an architect based in Yerevan, Armenia. A graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a post-professional Master of Architecture, he also holds a BA in Architecture from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he earned the Outstanding Senior Project prize. In 2024, he founded Jardar NGO to foster new architectural thinking in Armenia, launching initiatives like The Oshakan Project and the Line Armenian Architecture Biennial, aimed at addressing community challenges. He advocates for transformation through thoughtful work with Armenia’s public spaces. 

Shant has led workshops at the TUMO Center and Harvard, contributing to impactful exhibitions and design products. His published works include articles in the DISC Journal, Utzonia: To/From Denmark with Love, and the AMPS Press, with exhibitions at the Kirkland Gallery and the Komitas Museum. Built installations include Fruiting Columns at the Harvard Yard and Churches, Cardboard, and Cultural Erasure: Traces of Artsakh at Berlin's Kiezkapelle.

Aram Mooradian is the director of Mooradian Studio, a London-based architectural practice specialising in sustainable residential, arts and retail projects. Aram graduated from the Architectural Association (AA) in London, where he subsequently taught between 2019-2023 and was a trustee of the AA from 2011-2015. He is the Director of Studies in Architecture at Downing College, Cambridge, and taught the graduate design studio in Architecture & Urban Design at the University of Cambridge between 2015-2022. Aram previously worked for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel and 6a architects in London on projects including the Juergen Teller Studio, which was nominated for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2018. In 2022, Aram established Building Ways, an education and research group interested in heritage and the circular economy, which runs programmes in the UK and Armenia.

Shant Charoian and Aram Mooradian will present The Oshakan Project, an architectural summer school and research project aimed at documenting existing heritage assets in Armenia and imagining ways of unlocking their potential as hubs for social, economic and cultural activity. It began in response to Armenia’s rapid development and the growth of international tourism, both key threats to undocumented architectural heritage. The two speakers will discuss the successful pilot summer school in July 2024, which taught students surveying techniques and held a series of community mapping workshops in the village.

Guillaume Othenin-Girard is an architect and assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. His teaching and research focus on the cross-disciplinary potential between archaeology and architecture. In 2018 he led the design and fabrication of A Room for Archaeologists and Kids for the Museum of Pachacamac, Peru and is the co-author of Pachacamac Atlas (2022). In 2019, the project received the Dezeen Award for Architecture Project of the Year, and was exhibited at the Design Museum in London as part of the Beazley Designs of the Year show. Guillaume is interested in the transformative agency of drawing, and shares a vision that considers the landscape as a source of heritage in itself. He is the co-founder of Architecture Land Initiative, a cooperative that works closely with political actors and NGOs at the local and national scale to enact sustainable and equitable transformations of landscapes, public spaces, and architecture.

In his talk, Guillaume will discuss the ongoing interpretive planning strategy for the Vedi River Valley in Armenia, and the collaborative design of an archaeological field laboratory for the Ararat Plain Southeast Archaeological Project (APSAP). Part of this research project is to develop the potential of the Armenian glkhatun – a traditional, half-buried house typology – from a thermal and environmental perspective, shedding light on its suitability in the face of rapid climate change in the Vedi River Valley. Guillaume's fascination with this type of traditional dwelling found in the Caucasus region is reflected in his recent article From Hearths to Volcanoes: The Armenian glkhatun (DMJournal–Architecture and Representation – No 1: The Geological Imagination, 2023).