National Academy of Sciences of Armenia
Dr Harutyun Marutyan
(National Academy of Sciences project lead)
Head Researcher, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography & Director, Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation
Harutyun Marutyan holds an MA in History (1978) from Yerevan State University, a PhD from the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow (1984), and a second PhD from the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (2007). His research interests include Armenian genocide memory, national identity transformation, modern national movements, iconography, traditional Armenian culture, and poverty. He has authored more than a hundred scholarly articles, is co-author of five collective monographs, and author of three monographs including Iconography of Armenian Identity. Volume 1: The Memory of Genocide and the Karabagh Movement (Yerevan, 2009) and The Role of Memory in the Structure of Identity: Questions of Theory (Yerevan, 2006). He is an alumnus of IREX/RSEP (1998), Fulbright (2003-2004) and DAAD (2013). In 2009-2010 he was research fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Dr Vahe S. Boyajian
Research Fellow, Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography
Vahe Boyajian gained a PhD in Modern and Ancient Languages of Asia (Linguistic Peculiarities of the Balochi Dialects) from the Department of Iranian Studies at Yerevan State University in 2001, and spent the following academic year on a postdoc at the Department of Anthropology at Boston University, USA. Since 2010 he has embarked on a second PhD in the Department of
Social Anthropology at the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland, concurrent with his role in the National Academy of Sciences in Yerevan. His research interests include Balochi language, history, culture and the anthropology of Iran and Afghanistan.
Dr Arsen Hakobyan
Senior Research Fellow, Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography
Arsen Hakobyan received his PhD in Social & Cultural Anthropology from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute, and also Associate Professor at Yerevan State University. He has received several scholarships and fellowships (DAAD, ASCN) and has conducted research at the Universities of Cambridge, Fribourg, Marburg, Tubingen and Angers. His research interests include the anthropology of violence, refugee studies, memory and diaspora studies, ethnicity, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is co-author of Beyond The Karabakh Conflict: The Story Village Exchange (with S. Huseynova & S. Rumyantsev).
Hranush Kharatyan
Leading Scientific Researcher, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography
Hranush Kharatyan is an Armenian ethnographer whose research interests include Caucasian studies, ethnic, lingual, social and other minorities, the social culture of transitional societies and Armenian folk culture. She graduated from Yerevan State University with a history degree in 1975 and subsequently earned the degree of Candidate of Sciences from the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography in Moscow in 1979. Between 1979 and 1989 she worked as a researcher at the Oriental Studies Institute of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences. During 1989-92 she was a research fellow at the Department of Ethnography at Yerevan State University, and headed the same department between 1994 and 2000. In 1992-93 she was Deputy Mayor of Yerevan, Armenia's capital. She was appointed head of the Department of National Minorities and Religious Affairs in the Armenian Government in 2004, a position she held until 2008.
Nelli Manucharyan
Junior Researcher, Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies
Nelli Manucharyan joined the Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies in 2014 and is also a Ph.D. student at the Academy’s Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. Her research interests include the processes of identity construction in Soviet Armenia in the period of 1920-1953. Her publications refer to: the re/naming of places as a strategy of reconstructing the symbolic infrastructure of a society; nation-building and state formation in Soviet Yerevan (1921-1939); the main forms and methods of peasant anti-kolkhoz resistance in Soviet Armenia in the era of mass collectivisation, and also as an instrument for peasant identity preservation; the practices and notions of folk religious rites, particularly of secret baptism (knunk) rituals in the midst of state atheism in Soviet Armenia. In 2016- 2017 Nelli was Carnegie Fellowship NCEEER holder at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
Ruzanna Tsaturyan
Research Fellow, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography
Ruzanna Tsaturyan’s main research interests are in the scope of cultural heritage, nationalism, gender studies and food anthropology. She has several publications on transformations of Armenian food ways, ethnic perceptions of food, connections of food and memory, and food and migration. She is also an expert in educational and gender policy and has issued policy papers on education, gender and school governance in Armenia.
Lusine Tanajyan
Senior Researcher, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, and Co-founder of the "Concept" Centre for Social Research and Policy-Making
Lusine Tanajyan received her BA and MA in Sociology from the Armenian State Pedagogical University after Kh. Abovyan. She received her PhD degree in history (ethnology) at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia in 2020. Her dissertation was on the Social Changes in the Armenian Diaspora. She is currently a senior researcher at the Department of Diaspora Studies of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, and is a lecturer at the Armenian State Pedagogical University. She has conducted fieldwork and analytical work on comparative studies among Armenians in Diaspora, Syrian-Armenians in Armenia, etc. Her scientific interests includes Diaspora studies, migration, repatriation, social changes in the Diaspora, and Diaspora investment studies. She is the co-founder of the “Concept” centre for social research and policy-making.
Sona Nersisyan
Senior Researcher, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, and Executive Director and Co-founder of the "Concept" Centre for Social Research and Policy-Making
Sona Nersisyan received her BA and MA in Sociology at the Armenian State Pedagogical University after Kh. Abovyan. She received a PhD degree in history at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia in 2019. Her dissertation topic is “The Role of Social Networks in the Armenian Diaspora.” She started her work career as a Researcher at the Department of Diaspora Studies of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, then as a lecturer at the Armenian State Pedagogical University, and Scientific Advisor to the Director of the National Institute of Labor and Social Research at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of Armenia. She is the executive director and co-founder of the "Concept" centre for social research and policy-making. Her scientific interests include Diaspora studies, migration, repatriation studies, social network analysis, and investment studies.