Launch of the International Conference ‘Displacement and Memory: The Ongoing Crisis of Artsakh in Oral Histories

On October 16, the three-day international conference “Displacement and Memory: The Ongoing Crisis of Artsakh in Oral Histories” was launched at the conference hall of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (NAS RA). The event was organized by the Department of Cultural Anthropology and the Research Group of Applied Anthropology of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of NAS RA, in collaboration with the Armenian Center for Ethnological Studies “Hazarashen” and INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) of France.

The conference opened with welcoming remarks from Academician Yuri Suvaryan, Academic Secretary of the Division of Armenology and Social Sciences of NAS RA, and Arsen Bobokhyan, Doctor of Historical Sciences, and Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. Both speakers emphasized the thematic importance of the conference as a platform for the scholarly analysis of recent events in Artsakh and for the preservation of oral histories.

The first session was chaired by Professor Hamlet Petrosyan, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Head of the Research Group on the Historical and Cultural Heritage of Artsakh at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography. During this session, four speakers presented their papers. Hranush Kharatyan, Doctor of Historical Sciences, ethnographer and researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, delivered the first report titled “Information from Medieval Sources on the Names, Locations, and Meanings of Arran, Aghvank, Ran, Khachen, and Karabakh.”

Hakob Simonyan, Doctor of Art Studies, archaeologist, and Head of the Archaeology Department at the Research Center of Historical and Cultural Heritage, presented “Tsitsernavank in the Light of Excavations,” discussing the results of archaeological investigations and excavations carried out under his supervision in the Kashatagh region of Artsakh between 1997 and 2001. Lernik Hovhannisyan, ethnographer and researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, delivered a paper titled “The Forced Migration of the Armenian Population of Artsakh in the Late 18th – Early 19th Centuries in the Context of Regional Migration Processes.” The session concluded with a presentation by Nzhdeh Yeranyan, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Deputy Director for Research at the History Museum of Armenia, titled “Cultural Heritage as a Field of Conflict: The Case of Pre-Christian Culture in Artsakh.”

At the end of the session, a discussion followed during which participants asked questions and shared their observations.