Biography 

I hold two Master degrees in the Middle Eastern, Arabic studies from the Yerevan State University, received in 2008; and in the European Political Studies from the College of Europe, received in 2011.

In 2004-2005, I spent a year in Damascus, Syria, studying classical Arabic language. In 2008–2010, I worked with the Arabic, Armenian and Russian-speaking refugees at the Belgian Red Cross. In 2011–2017, I worked in the field of international development, good governance and human rights at the European Commission and in the German Development Agency in Brussels.

Since September 2017, I am a PhD student in the Department of History under the supervision of Prof. Jordi Tejel. My research contributes to the research project BORDER - “Towards a Decentred History of the Middle East: Transborder Spaces, Circulations, Frontier Effects and State Formation, 1920-1946”, which is funded by the European Research Council

Research

My current research interests are refugees, state formation, nationalism and identity construction.

My current research seeks to explore how and to what extent Armenian refugees played at once a direct and indirect role in shaping the state building processes in Syria, in terms of defining national identity, expanding state authority and consolidating state borders during the French mandate (1920-1939).

Until now, refugee issue in Syria in the timeframe in question has been mainly studied from the state-centered perspective, where refugees have been often reduced to mere historical outcomes or victims with no agency on their own. Therefore, less is known about how refugees contributed to the processes of state formation, the delimitation of new boundaries and the imaginings of new territorialities. My research seeks to recover the agency of the Armenian refugees using less studied Armenian and Russian language sources.

My previous research interests include studies on political Islam and activities of Hezbollah in Lebanon.    

Teaching

SUJET :  Les mobilisations dites « islamistes » dans le cadre du cours de Prof. Jordi Tejel, ‘Résistances et protestations au Moyen-Orient : une perspective socio-historique’. Cours dispensé avec César Jaquier, destiné à des étudiants en bachelor. (Novembre 2018 ; Novembre 2019)

Publication

Profil LIBRA, profil ResearchGate, profil academia