Aram Arkun
Hrag Papazian, a Lebanese-Armenian
graduate student in his late 20s, is studying the Armenians of Turkey.
He came to the United States recently to give a series of lectures at
the Institute of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern
California. On his way back across the Atlantic, he stopped by in Boston
to give a lecture on the Nor Zartonk movement of Istanbul (see https://mirrorspectator.com/2018/10/11/hrag-papazian-to-speak-at-inaugural-zoravik-event/) and gave an interview on his work.
Papazian graduated from Hamazkayin’s Melankton and Haig Arslanian
College (formerly called Hay Jemaran) in Antelias, Lebanon, in 2010 and
then attended American University in Beirut, from which he received a
bachelor’s degree in communication arts. Deciding to switch his focus to
anthropology, he went into a master’s program at the University of
Oxford in 2013. He wrote on the Christian Armenians citizens of Turkey
living in Istanbul for his thesis, but upon starting the doctoral
program at the same university in 2015, decided to broaden his topic to
include two other types of Armenians, migrants from the Republic of
Armenia to Istanbul who came beginning in the 1990s due to the collapse
of the Soviet Union, and Muslim Armenians, who began to come to media
attention in the early 2000s.
