Norian Youth Connect program announces speaker lineup

WATERTOWN, Mass.— Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey (co-founder and executive director, Lemkin Institute), Prof. Paul Boghossian (silver professor of philosophy, NYU), Garine Boghossian (architect and urbanist), Dr. Nora Lessersohn (visiting fellow, Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University) and Dr. Khatchig Mouradian (lecturer, Columbia University) will serve as speakers for the Spring 2024 Norian Youth Connect Program.

The event will commence on the evening of Friday, February 23, at Columbia University in New York and conclude on Sunday, February 25 at noon.

“We extend a warm invitation to Armenian university students ages 18-27 to participate in this enriching weekend of workshops, discussions and networking,” said ARS of Eastern USA chairperson Caroline Chamavonian.

To secure a spot, students can register here. The application fee is $50 and covers the program plus breakfast, lunch, dinner and the evening social. Overnight accommodations will be provided exclusively to out-of-town students. The registration deadline is February 15, 2024.

Elisa von Joeden-Forgey is executive director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. She was formerly the endowed chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College and director of the Master’s Program in Genocide Prevention and Human Security. Before this, she was the Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, where she also directed the master’s program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and founded the world’s first academic, graduate-level Genocide Prevention Certificate Program. She is the former president of Genocide Watch, former first vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and co-founder of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. She received her master’s and doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania and her bachelor’s degree from Columbia University.

Paul Boghossian is silver professor of philosophy at NYU’s Philosophy Department and distinguished research professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK. He is the director of the New York Institute of Philosophy and the director of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study. He was chair of philosophy from 1994-2004. His research interests are primarily in epistemology, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. He has written on a variety of topics, including self-knowledge, a priori knowledge, analytic truth, realism, relativism, the aesthetics of music and the concept of genocide. He has served on the Global Citizenship Commission headed by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and currently on the University of London’s School of Advanced Study Strategic Advisory Board.

Garine Boghossian is an architect, urbanist and researcher based in New York. She has extensive experience in large-scale urban and regional planning projects worldwide. She is currently working on a decolonial mapping project retracing the Armenian neighborhoods of modern-day Turkey based on mental maps produced by genocide survivors. She was an adjunct lecturer in architecture at Northeastern University and the Boston Architectural College in Massachusetts. Garine received her master’s degree in architecture and urbanism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her bachelor of architecture with a minor in art history from the American University of Beirut.

Nora Lessersohn is a historian of U.S., Ottoman and Armenian history with a focus on the lives of Armenian Americans. She earned her doctorate in history from University College London in 2023, supported by a Calouste Gulbenkian Armenian Studies Scholarship. In 2021-22, she was a predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of American History. She earned her bachelor of arts in the study of religion at Harvard College and her master’s in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where she is currently a visiting fellow. Dr. Lessersohn has published articles on the memoir of her great-grandfather, Hovhannes Cherishian, and is now preparing a manuscript on the life and work of Christopher Oscanyan, who she will discuss at Norian Youth Connect.

Khatchig Mouradian has served as the director of the ARS Youth Connect Program since 2014. He is a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University and the Armenian and Georgian Area Specialist at the Library of Congress. He also serves as co-principal investigator of the project on Armenian Genocide Denial at the Global Institute for Advanced Study at New York University. Dr. Mouradian is the author of the award-winning book The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918 and the co-editor of After the Ottomans: Genocide’s Long Shadow and Armenian Resilience. His co-edited volume The I.B.Tauris Handbook of the Late Ottoman Empire: History and Legacy is forthcoming in 2024.