American Research Institute of the South Caucasus - ARISC

09/23/2026

The Center for Armenian Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, invites proposals for works in progress to be presented at its 16th Annual International Graduate Student Workshop (April 16–17, 2027). This workshop will be held in person on the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, campus.

Peopling the Past and Present: Social Turns in Armenian Studies

In recent decades, many fields have seen a “social turn,” or an insistence on asking what life was like for people who rarely appear in the dominant historiographic corpus. Armenian studies has also begun to grapple with these approaches “from below,” with more and more scholars asking what Armenian life has looked like from the vantage points of ordinary people rather than from the vantage points of elites.

We invite graduate students and early career scholars (those within three years of earning their PhDs) to present works in progress that center the lived experiences of everyday men, women and children in the Armenian past and present. We welcome work that relies on insights from disciplines including (but not limited to) history, anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, gender studies, human geography, social archaeology, education and migration studies. How can we recover the agency of peasants, laborers and other groups so often written out of elite-focused grand narratives? What is gained when scholars explore the experiences of people at work, at home and at play? How has social stratification been experienced? How have family and kinship networks shaped lived realities? What can folk customs, rituals and religious practices reveal about the ways people have bound together and set themselves in opposition to others? How have language varieties come to mark and enforce social distinctions? Although this workshop is centered in Armenian studies, we welcome contributions from cognate fields and case studies—particularly those that raise fresh questions or propose theoretical interventions that resonate with the themes of the workshop.

Please submit an abstract of 250 words, title, and CV by Sunday, November 15, 2026, using the following form: https://myumi.ch/jVNQ4

Successful applicants will be notified in December and must submit their works in progress (no more than 3,500 words) by March 10, 2027. Works in progress will be circulated among the workshop participants. The workshop will prioritize first-time applicants.

Participants will have 15 minutes to present their work. There will be additional time for questions, discussion and feedback from the workshop participants. The Center for Armenian Studies will make every effort to cover travel expenses. Per donor guidelines, preference will be given to those traveling from the Republic of Armenia.

This workshop—sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Center for Armenian Studies and funded by the Manoogian Foundation—is organized by Jennifer Manoukian (Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow in Armenian Studies).

For questions, please email [email protected].

09/19/2026

Meet the Instructors for “An Archaeological Journey through the South Caucasus: A Nexus of Interaction”

Dr. Hannah Lau

Hannah Lau is an assistant professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College. She is an anthropological archaeologist whose research uses animal bones and biogeochemical data within them to examine the relationship between ancient peoples’ animal management practices, the environment, and sociopolitical organization. She works primarily in Southwest Asia and the South Caucasus. She and colleagues collaboratively run the Southeastern Highlands Archaeological Research Project which examines the occupation of highland zones in the south of Azerbaijan over the longue durée.

The joint ARISC-ISAC course, "An Archaeological Journey through the South Caucasus: A Nexus of Interaction" will begin online September 23rd. ARISC members and students of the first join ARISC-ISAC course “A Grand Tour” are eligible for a discount. More information and link to registration is in the first comment.

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

09/17/2026

Meet the Instructors for “An Archaeological Journey through the South Caucasus: A Nexus of Interaction”

Ruth Portes

Ruth is a Ph.D. Candidate in Classical Archaeology at Cornell University. Her research centers on the central Caucasus and the wider Black Sea during the first millennium BCE. In particular, her work examines how the convergence of Greek colonization and Achaemenid hegemony during the mid-first millennium BCE transformed settlement and burial in modern-day Georgia. Ruth is interested in theories of community, practice, landscape, and memory in contact zones; interactions between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea; and applying interdisciplinary and holistic approaches towards Black Sea and Caucasus studies. Most recently, she served as the Ceramics Analysis Head of the Archaeological Research in Kvemo Kartli (ARKK) Project at the Late Bronze - Iron Age fortress-settlement of Dmanisis Gora, led by Dr. Nathaniel Erb-Satullo and Dmitri Jachvliani.

The joint ARISC-ISAC course, " An Archaeological Journey through the South Caucasus: A Nexus of Interaction " will begin online September 23rd. ARISC members and students of the first join ARISC-ISAC course “A Grand Tour” are eligible for a discount. More information and link to registration is in the first comment.

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

09/15/2026

Meet the Instructors for “An Archaeological Journey through the South Caucasus: A Nexus of Interaction”

Dr. Lara Fabian

Lara Fabian is an assistant professor of archaeology in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA whose work focuses on the South Caucasus and Iran in the Iron Age and later. Her current book project considers the material imprint of empire in its afterlife through an examination of the post-Achaemenid world. Her scholarship is informed by historiographic and reception studies on the development of thought about antiquity and the question of Iran and the Caucasus in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and post-Soviet Eurasia. As part of this wider research, she has co-directed collaborative Azerbaijani-American fieldwork in Azerbaijan since 2016. Before starting at UCLA, she worked on the “Beyond the Silk Road” ERC project at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.

The joint ARISC-ISAC course, " An Archaeological Journey through the South Caucasus: A Nexus of Interaction " will begin online September 23rd. ARISC members and students of the first join ARISC-ISAC course “A Grand Tour” are eligible for a discount. More information and link to registration is in the first comment.

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

09/14/2026

TODAY is the last day to register! Registration will close at 11:59pm Pacific time (UTC-7) on September 14, 2026.

"Celebrating 20 Years of ARISC: Approaches and Directions in the Study of the South Caucasus"

ARISC Virtual Conference
September 17-19, 2026
9:00am - 2:00pm US EDT

This conference is an opportunity to reflect on the scholarship produced by ARISC members and friends of ARISC over the past two decades, and to provide a platform to showcase new research by senior researchers, early career scholars, and students alike. At a time when rapidly shifting political circumstances have made research in the South Caucasus challenging, ARISC is providing an open forum for posing new questions, exchanging ideas and methodologies, workshopping works-in-progress, and outlining new research agendas that will propel regional scholarship forward. With this conference, ARISC strives to deepen our understanding of the South Caucasus and renew our commitment to sustaining the ARISC community. The conference language is English.

Keynote:
"The Caucasus: Sovereignty Beyond the State"
Harsha Ram (University of California at Berkeley)
Saturday, September 19, 2026
12:30pm EDT

See links to conference website and registration in first comment.

This conference is generously supported by:

Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn; Center for Armenian Studies, University of Michigan; UCI Center for Armenian Studies; Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies; Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies, Harvard University; Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies- REEES; The Arthur H Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art + Architecture at Tufts University; Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute; Ohio State Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies; USC Institute of Armenian Studies; USF Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies

09/10/2026

Last day to register is Monday, September 14th!

"Celebrating 20 Years of ARISC: Approaches and Directions in the Study of the South Caucasus"

ARISC Virtual Conference
September 17-19, 2026
9:00am - 2:00pm US EDT

The conference will host 16 panels by 78 presenters over three days, and a keynote address by Dr. Harsha Ram on Saturday, September 19 starting at 12:30pm US EDT.

Full schedule is available on the conference website. See links in first comment.

This conference is generously supported by:

Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn; Center for Armenian Studies, University of Michigan; UCI Center for Armenian Studies; Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies; INSITE-Eastern Europe (UNC); Institute for the Study of the Ancient World; Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies, Harvard University; Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies- REEES; The Arthur H Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art + Architecture at Tufts University; Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute; Ohio State Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies; USC Institute of Armenian Studies; USF Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies

09/08/2026

Dr. Harsha Ram (UC Berkeley) will be delivering the keynote talk at the ARISC Conference, "Celebrating 20 Years of ARISC:
Approaches and Directions in the Study of the South Caucasus" on Saturday, September 19th starting at 12:30pm EDT.

"The Caucasus: Sovereignty Beyond the State"

The South Caucasus is a region where state sovereignty has been more the exception rather than the rule, something gained when national independence was wrested from empires in a state of disintegration or - at the very least - distraction. At the same time, the politics of the region have long been distinguished by such acts as gift-giving, oath-taking, lavish feasting, the custodianship of sacred sites, the capture of prisoners for ransom, raiding, and the seizure of hostages to secure pledges of fealty. The pervasiveness of such practices would thus point to the coexistence of multiple régimes of sovereignty, some consistent with the formal logic of modern statehood, others manifested by a range of local or non-state actors as a means of asserting agency or mounting resistance. While classical political theory defined sovereignty as the apex of state power, we might also ask how competing actors — state and non-state, national and regional, cultural and political — have claimed or enacted authority even during those prolonged periods when statehood was absent or only nominally present. I provide some examples from the literary archive.

Registration will be open until September 14:
https://site.pheedloop.com/event/ARISC20thConference/home

See the full conference schedule at https://site.pheedloop.com/event/ARISC20thConference/scheduleweb

Conference sponsors: Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn; Center for Armenian Studies, University of Michigan; UCI Center for Armenian Studies; Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies; INSITE-Eastern Europe (UNC); Institute for the Study of the Ancient World; Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies, Harvard University; Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies- REEES; The Arthur H Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art + Architecture at Tufts University; Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute; Ohio State Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies; USC Institute of Armenian Studies; USF Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies

09/03/2026

Registration open until September 14!

Celebrating 20 Years of ARISC:
Approaches and Directions in the Study of the South Caucasus

September 17-19, 2026 | Virtual Conference
https://site.pheedloop.com/event/ARISC20thConference/home

This conference is an opportunity to reflect on the scholarship produced by ARISC members and friends of ARISC over the past two decades, and to provide a platform to showcase new research by senior researchers, early career scholars, and students alike. At a time when rapidly shifting political circumstances have made research in the South Caucasus challenging, ARISC is providing an open forum for posing new questions, exchanging ideas and methodologies, workshopping works-in-progress, and outlining new research agendas that will propel regional scholarship forward. With this conference, ARISC strives to deepen our understanding of the South Caucasus and renew our commitment to sustaining the ARISC community. The conference language is English.

Conference sponsors: Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn; Center for Armenian Studies, University of Michigan; UCI Center for Armenian Studies; Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies; INSITE-Eastern Europe (UNC); Institute for the Study of the Ancient World; Mashtots Chair of Armenian Studies, Harvard University; Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies- REEES; The Arthur H Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art + Architecture at Tufts University; Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute; Ohio State Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies; USC Institute of Armenian Studies; USF Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies

09/03/2026

CfP: Paths Not Taken: Forgotten (?!) (Non-)Territorial Entities in the Early Soviet Union

International Conference, Tbilisi, 25–27 February 2027

Organizer: David Jishkariani (Max Weber Foundation – Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (MWNO)
Co-organizer: Jörn Happel (Helmut-Schmidt-Universität/Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg)

Submission Deadline: 20 October 2026

https://mwsgeorgia.hypotheses.org/13941

During the early decades of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union undertook a massive project of defining, institutionalizing, and mapping nationality. Grounded in the structural principles of territoriality, economic viability, and demographic/ethnographic composition, this era witnessed the creation of numerous territorial entities across the vast expanse of the early Soviet Union. Centered on the idea of nativization/indigenization (korenizatsiia), Soviet nationalities policy encouraged diverse ethnic groups to develop their own administrative, political, and cultural institutions. These formations varied significantly, reflecting distinct linguistic, cultural, geographic, and economic realities.

This conference seeks to move beyond the vantage point of the Soviet Union’s eventual, successful establishment/institutionalization of nationality to explore these “forgotten” alternatives. The organizers invite papers that examine not merely why these territorial and nonterritorial entities were dismantled, but how they functioned as sites of social and political experimentation. The organizers ask: What did these structures mean to the officials who built them and the diverse populations who inhabited them? By recovering these projects, this conference challenges the teleological view of the USSR as a predetermined “communal apartment” of nations, revealing instead a period of possibility and contingency in Soviet state and nation-building.

International Conference, Tbilisi, 25–27 February 2027 Organizer: David Jishkariani (Max Weber Foundation – Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (MWNO)Co-organizer: Jörn Happel (Helmut-Schmidt-Universität/Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg) Submission Deadline: 20 October 2026 Magazine „Niangi....