SYDNEY: The Deputy Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute, Suren Manukyan will join a stellar line-up of international scholars at the Armenian National Committee of Australia's (ANC-AU) Panel Discussion in Sydney tonight (Friday, 14th July).

Manukyan joins the newly elected President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Professor Henry Theriault, Pulitzer Prize Winner and New York Times Bestseller, Professor Peter Balakian, Professor Armen Marsoobian, and sisters Doris and Arda Melkonian to discuss "Armenian Genocide Studies 2.0".



With some of the world's brightest genocide scholars currently in Australia for the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) Conference, ANC-AU has organised this event, where the audience will be introduced to the evolution of Armenian Genocide study, as explored by the distinguished panellists.

Suren Manukyan is a Ph.D from Yerevan and Chair of Department of International Relations at Gladzor University, as well a lecturer at the departments of History and Oriental Studies of Yerevan State University and American University of Armenia. He is a member of IAGS Resolutions committee, and has just been named on the Board of the Association, which is headed by an Armenian for the first time in Henry Theriault.

Manukyan's current research focuses on the social-psychological dimension of the Armenian genocide. It is based on my Fulbright research project “The Sociology of Armenian Genocide: Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Rescuers vs Victims, Survivors, and Betrayers” done at the Centre for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University of New Jersey, USA.

Theriault is Professor in and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Worcester State University in the United States. From 1999 to 2007, he coordinated the University’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights. His expertise is in genocide and human rights studies, and his research focuses on reparations, victim-perpetrator relations, genocide denial, genocide prevention, and mass violence against women and girls.

Since 2007, he has chaired the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group and is lead author of its March 2015 final report, Resolution with Justice. He sits on the Board of the Armenian Legal Centre for Justice and Human Rights.

Balakian is the author of seven books of poems, four books of prose, and two collaborative translations. Ozone Journal won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry; Black Dog of Fate won the PEN/Albrand Award for memoir; and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response won the Raphael Lemkin Prize and a New York Times bestseller. He is Donald M and Constance H Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English at Colgate University.

Marsoobian is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University. He has lectured and published on topics in aesthetics, pragmatism, and genocide studies. He is the author of the highly praised, Fragments of a Lost Homeland: Remembering Armenia and two recently published companion books, Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home: The Dildilian Photography Collection and the bi-lingual, Dildilian Brothers – Memories of a Lost Armenian Home: Photography and the Story of an Armenian Family in Anatolia, 1888-1923.

He is a descendant of the Dildilian family and has organised exhibitions in Turkey, Armenia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. based upon his family’s Ottoman-era photography collection.

Doris Melkonian is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She conducts research at Armenian private schools in Southern California, examining the impact of the Armenian Genocide on Armenian students’ identity formation. She also applies an interdisciplinary approach to analyse Genocide survivor narratives, examining topics such as sexual violence, cultural maintenance, resistance, and Islamised Armenians.

Arda Melkonian is a doctoral candidate at UCLA. Her research also focuses on Armenian private schools in the diaspora, examining cross-generational transmission of Genocide trauma. Arda Melkonian has presented her research on gender-based survival options, resourcefulness of Armenian women, and types of intervention during the Armenian Genocide, at scholarly conferences in Armenia, Israel, Turkey, and the United States.

The Panel Discussion, which will be held TONIGHT (Friday 14 July), 7PM at The Urban Hotel in St Leonard's, will be moderated by the Managing Director of ANC-AU, Vache Kahramanian.

Professors Balakian and Marsoobian will also be delivering lectures in Sydney on Saturday, 15th July. For more information on this event, organised by the AGBU, please click here.