Kevork Bardakjian
Professor, University of Michigan
USA

Biography

Born in Beirut, Kevork Bardakjian received an undergraduate degree in Armenian Studies at Yerevan State University in 1969; and a Ph.D. in Armenian Studies at Oxford University, United Kingdom in 1979. He taught Armenian Studies at Harvard University, from 1974 to 1987; and at the University of Michigan, from 1987 to present. He is the Director of the Armenian Studies Program at the University of Michigan; and the Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. He has authored six books, including Hitler and the Armenian Genocide. His main interests are literature, history, church history, identity, and genocide. He is fluent in six languages and has a passive knowledge of five.

Ruth Barnet
UK Council of Psychotherapists
UK

Born in Berlin, Ruth Barnet is a Holocaust survivor who arrived in England at the age of four on the Kindertransport program. She worked as a teacher for nineteen years and then retrained as a psychotherapist. She has been a practicing psychotherapist for twenty-five years and for the last five years has been appearing at schools as a live witness in Holocaust education programs. She has worked with survivors, both as individuals and in groups. She has presented a number of papers and held seminars on the theme of genocide

Mrs. Barnet believes that the only possibility for containing violence is through education about the differences, prejudices and fears that lead to aggression and ultimately genocide. As a Jew I consider Jews to have an important part to play in insisting that the longest genocide in history should be ended by modern Turkey fully owning up to the genocide that their ancestors perpetrated on the Armenian community in 1915. I see this not so much as a problem of the Armenians but a problem of the whole family of nations, especially Turkey, to acknowledge and then mourn and memorialize this tragic loss to humanity.

Jussi Flemming Biorn
Armenian-Norwegian Cultural Organization
Norway

Born in Stockholm, Jussi Flemming Bjorn works as a sales manager at Hydro Texaco AS, a major energy resources company in Norway. He is active in the Armenian - Norwegian Cultural Organization.
Mr. Bjorn’s interest and search of his own origins propelled him to research the life of Bodil Catharina Bjorn (1871-1960), who had adopted his Armenian father. An active missionary, Bodil Catharina Bjorn had worked in Asia Minor, Armenia and Syria from 1905 to 1934. In cooperation with the young director Magnus Swärd Jordheim and producer Kjell Eriksen, they now are in the preparatory stage of making a film about this woman pioneer and missionary and her encounter with the first Genocide in modern times.

Vicken Cheterian
Program Director
CIMERA
Swiss

Biography

Born in Beirut, Mr. Cheterian is a journalist who since 1992 has been covering post-Soviet and Middle East affairs for various European newspapers and journals. He has focused on democracy and conflicts in the Caucasus (Karabakh, Abkhazia, both Osset wars and Chechnya), Russia and Central Asia. Mr. Cheterian is particularly interested in the phenomenon of mass trauma and national mobilization. In the case of Armenia, he has examined the role and legacy of the Genocide on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. He has established and is the Program Director for the Caucasus Media Institute in Yerevan.

Salpy Eskidjian
Consultant
Switzerland

Biography

Based in Geneva, Switzerland Salpy Eskidjian is an independent consultant on international affairs, human security, peace and reconciliation. From 1995 to 2004 she served as Program Executive for International Affairs, Peace and Human Security of the Commission of Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) within the World Council of Churches, where she was responsible for the Middle East region and peace building and disarmament globally. From 2001 to 2002 Ms. Eskidjian initiated and formed the WCC Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) and served as its International Executive Coordinator until February 2005.
She has a degree in Sociology and Criminal Justice from The George Washington University in Washington, DC, United States, a certificate on Diplomacy and Human Rights from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a Special Graduate degree on Development, Law and Social Justice from the Institute for Social Studies in the Hague, Netherlands. She is fluent in Armenian, Greek, English and knows basic French.

For 15 years Ms. Eskidjian has been working on human rights, impunity, peace and reconciliation issues in the Middle East and with the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. Within the WCC Programme to Overcome Violence, she has coordinated an international campaign on peace and reconciliation working with different groups against impunity, for truth, peace and reconciliation, drafted the framework and basis of the Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Peace and Reconciliation, given numerous lectures, commissioned international studies and books, run workshops on non-violence, disarmament, peace and reconciliation.

Marcello Flores
Professor
University of Siena
Italy

Biography

Marcello Flores is Professor of Comparative History and Contemporary History at the University of Siena, where he is also the coordinator of the Master’s Program in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action. He has organized four international conferences: "The Myth of the USSR" (Cortona 1989); "Collective Identity and Historical Memory" (Warsaw-Siena 1994); "The Totalitarian Experience in the Twentieth Century" (Siena 1997); and "History, Truth, Justice: the XXth Century and its Crimes" (Siena, 2000).
His latest publications include: Tutta la violenza di un secolo (All the Violence of a Century), 2005; Il secolo-mondo. Storia del Novecento (The Century-World. History of the XXth Century), 2002; and Verità senza vendetta. L’esperienza della Commissione sudafricana per la verità e la riconciliazione (Truth without Vengeance. The Experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa), 1999.

He is a member of the Scientific Committee responsible for the publication of the Italian diplomatic papers on Armenia. He is a member of the Scientific Committee and Editorial Board of the upcoming four-volume History of the Shoah, to be published by Utet, where he will also author an essay on genocides in the twentieth century. He is currently writing History of Armenian Genocide for il Mulino, an Italian publisher. He participates in seminars at the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and at the Genocide Prevention Seminar at Columbia University.

Gregorio Hayrabedian
Luisa Hayrabedian Foundation
Argentine

Biography

Gregorio Hayrabedian graduated from the Law School of the National University of Córdoba. He was Co-director of The Voice of Armenia at the Radio of the National University of Córdoba, and member of several Armenian youth organizations. Mr. Hayrabedian was the empowered lawyer and congressman of the Argentine Socialist Party. He was also candidate to Councilman and National Deputy Representative for the Argentine Socialist Party. I was Co Director of the Magazine Tribuna Latinoamericana (Latinamerican Tribune).
He currently provides professional services to the Association Madres de Plaza de Mayo and to the Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre.

Tessa Hoffman
PhD, Freie University Berlin
Germany

Biography

Tessa Hofmann studied at the Department of Slavonic Languages and Literature, as well as Armenian studies and sociology at the Freie Universitat Berlin. From 1974 to 1975 she carried out her post-graduate research at the State Universities of St. Petersburg, Yerevan and Tbilisi in the former Soviet Union; and completed her doctoral thesis in 1982.

Ms. Hofmann is the author of 13 books on Armenian history and culture. She is an honorary member of the Armenian community of Berlin (1992) and of the Central Council of Armenians in Germany (2000). She is an honorary professor at the Hrachia Ajarian University, Yerevan (2002). In 2003 she was awarded the Fridtjof Nansen Medal of the National Museum and Institute of the Armenian Genocide. She is the author of the book Persecution, Expulsion and Annihilation of the Christian population in the Ottoman Empire, 1912-22.

Ms. Hofmann is a member of the International Society for Threatened Peoples and co-founder of its Coordination Group Armenia since 1979. In 2000/2001 she was coordinator of the working group “Affirmation”, which appealed to the German Parliament for Recognition of the Genocide of the Armenians. She is chairperson of the reorganized Working Group “Affirmation” – Against Genocide, for Reconciliation. She is an active participant in the international initiative “Speaking with one voice!” that combines Armenian, Assyrian/Aramean and Greek efforts for the recognition of Genocide claims.

Dikran Kouymjian
Professor, Director of Armenian studies Program
California State University, Fresno
USA

Biography

Dikran Kouyumjian holds the Haig & Isabel Berberian Chair of Armenian Studies and is the Director of Armenian Studies at California State University at Fresno. He holds a Ph.D. in Armenian Studies from Columbia University. Professor Kouymjian has taught at Columbia University, the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo and the American University of Paris. In 1987 he was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Erevan State University. He has held the Armenian Chair at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) of the University of Paris, and the William Saroyan Chair of Armenian Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

His publications include a dozen books on Armenian history, art, and literature and scores of scholarly articles, most recently a vast and definitive Album of Armenian Palaeography. Mr. Kouymjian’s published works on the Armenian genocide have centered on the destruction of Armenian historical monuments and the confiscation of Armenian property, including "Destruction des monuments historiques arméniens, poursuite de la politique de génocide" (Destruction of Armenian Historical Monuments: Consequence of the Policy of Genocide), Le Crime de Silence, 1984.

Jirair Libaridian
Professor
University of Michigan
USA

Biography

Jirair Libaridian currently holds the Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He specializes in Armenia, the Caucasus, and the Near East. From 1991 to 1997, Dr. Libaridian served as adviser, and then senior adviser to the former President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian, as First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs (1993-1994). He taught previously at a number of universities, and has lectured and written extensively. His most recent works are Modern Armenia. People. Nation. State (2004) and The Challenge of Statehood. Armenian Political Thinking since Independence (1999).

Giro Manoyan
ARF
Armenia

Biography

Born in Lebanon, Giro Manoyan studied political science at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada. From 1982 to 1989 he served as Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada. From 1989 to 1991 he worked as Assistant Editor of the Canadian-Armenian Horizon Weekly, and from 1991 to 1999 as Editor of Horizon Weekly. Since 2000, he is the Director of the International Secretariat of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun Bureau.

Micheline Marcom
Writer
USA

Biography

Micheline Aharonian Marcom is the author of Three Apples Fell From Heaven which was a 2001 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times and Washington Post Best Book of 2001, and was Runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, was released in 2004 and was named a best book of 2004 by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. She was a recipient of the 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship.

She is working on a trilogy of novels that take as their subject the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath. Her first novel, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, attempted to represent the Genocide as it was occurring in the Anatolian towns of Kharpert and Mezre in Ottoman Turkey during the years 1915 – 1917. The second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, followed the life of an Armenian war orphan and refugee in Beirut, Lebanon in the post-war years and inquired into questions of memory, trauma, and exile for the second generation survivors of the Genocide. She is currently at work on the third novel which takes place in Los Angeles and Guatemala, and in part explores the themes of loneliness and violence in the Americas, and of being cut off from one’s origin and one’s history.

Levon H. Mkrtchian
National Academy of Sciences of Armenia,
Institute of HistoryPh. D.
Armenia

Biography

After receiving his Ph.D., Levon H. Mkrtchian began to work at the Yerevan State University as assistant lecturer, and later as assistant professor. From 1995-1997 he was the president of the Center for the Study of National Problem and Genocide. From 1998 to 1999 and from 2001 to 2003 he served as the Minister of Education and Science of the Republic Of Armenia. From 2000-2001 he worked as a deputy minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia. He is currently a member of parliament and head of the ARF faction. His scientific fields of interest include the history of Armenian Genocide, Eastern and Armenian Questions, history of Armenian political parties, history of Armenian national-liberation movement and nationalities problems.

Baskin Oran
Professor
University of Ankara
Turkey

Biography

Baskin Oran graduated in 1968 from the Faculty of Political Science, at Ankara University. Since 1969, Mr. Oran works as a Professor of International Relations at Ankara University. He has authored fourteen books. His main subjects of interest are nationalism and minorities, and Turkish foreign policy.

Giancarlo Pagliarini
Member of Italian Parliament
Italy

Biography

Giancarlo Pagliarini studied in Catolica University, where he earned a degree in economics. He is an independent auditor since 1967, first with Arthur Andersen and then with Giancarlo Pagliarini & Partners. Since 1992, he is a member of the Italian parliament since 1992. In 1994, Mr. Pagliarini served as Italy’s Finance Minister.

Mr. Pagliaraini is actively engaged in the issue of recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Italy and in Europe. On March 30, 2000 he wrote a letter to all the Presidents of the National Parliaments of Europe, urging them to recognize to Armenian Genocide. He was also the initiator of a declaration of the Italian Parliament recognizing the Armenian genocide, under which 145 MPs signed. On June 13, 2001, taking into account his great contribution in the pursuit of the recognition of Armenian genocide by the Italian Parliament, the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia awarded him the title of Honorary Doctor of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia.

Kourken Sarkissian
President, Zoryan Institute
USA

Biography

Mr. Sarkissian was born on November 18, 1948. He is a Canadian businessman. After graduating from the University of California in 1972, he joined the family business. He is the founder and president of the following companies: Servocraft Limited Canada (since 1982), Byron Hill Corporation (since 1985) Marlboro, NJ & Toronto Canada, and Yorkbridge Plastics Packaging,YPNE (1996) Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
As an active businessman and philanthropist, he is a founding member of the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation (1982), and President since 1995. Since 1982, he has been devoted to providing strategic direction to the Institute. The Zoryan Institute is the first non-profit, international center devoted to the research and documentation of contemporary issues related to Armenia, the Armenian Genocide, and Diaspora, within a universal context.
He is the founder of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (2001), which runs an annual course called the Genocide and Human Rights University Program. The mission of the Genocide and Human Rights University Program is to help develop a new generation of scholars to engage in research and publication in the field of genocide and human rights studies. The program strives to show, through the study and sharing of the genocidal traumas of many peoples, that genocide is a universal human experience and that, as such, it must be the concern of all individuals and institutions.
He is a founder and sustaining sponsor since 1991 of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. This journal is devoted to providing a forum for the analysis of the challenges that people in Diaspora face in relationship with their host state and their homeland.

Hiroyoshi Segawa
Professor of Law
Aichi Sangyo University
Japan

Biography

In 1973, Hiroyoshi Segawa graduated from doctoral course of Kansai University Graduate School where he had majored in International Human Rights Law. He is currently a professor of law at Aichi Sangyo University in Japan.

In his early career, he focused on research into the elaboration of the Articles of the Genocide Convention itself. Later, he has devoted himself to the study of the Armenian Genocide from the viewpoint of a jurist. Mr. Segawa is the pioneer of research into the Armenian Genocide in Japan.

Ronald Suny
Professor
University of Chicago
USA

Biography

Ronald Suny is currently Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University, he taught at Oberlin College (1968-1981), as visiting professor of history at the University of California, Irvine (1987), and Stanford University (1995-1996). He was the first holder of the Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History at the University of Michigan (1981-1995), where he founded and directed the Armenian Studies Program. Mr. Suny has been elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies for the year 2005. Among his books, he has authored The Baku Commune, 1917-1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution, 1972;, 1983; The Making of the Georgian Nation, 1988, 1994); Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History, 1993; The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1993); and The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States, 1998). He is also the editor of Transcaucasia, Nationalism and Social Change: Essays in the History of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, 1983, 1996 and The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents, 2003. He is currently working on a study of the young Stalin and the formation of the Soviet Union and a series of essays on empire and nations. Mr. Suny organized and ran the Workshop on Armenian Turkish Scholarship, which has held four conferences bringing Armenian, Turkish, and other scholars together to discuss the Armenian Genocide.

Samuel Totten
University of Arkansas
USA

Biography

Samuel Totten specializes in the prevention and intervention of genocide. His articles on intervention and prevention have appeared in Journal of Genocide Research, Society, Human Rights Review, and Aegis Journal of Genocide Research. Totten is the chief editor of Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Testimony, 2004; managing editor of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, and is currently editing, with Eric Markusen, a book on the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project. This past summer Totten was one of 24 investigators sent to Chad by the U.S. State Department to interview refugees from Darfur, Sudan, in order to collect data for the express purpose of ascertaining whether genocide was being perpetrated in Darfur.

Michele Wegner
Armin T. Wegner Society
Italy
Biography

Michele Wegner was born in Rome in 1941, following his father’s departure from Germany for being against the Nazi regime. He earned a degree at the German College in Rome, and later studied to become an architect. He has worked for various construction companies in Italy and Germany, and is currently working on a reconstruction project at the US Embassy in Rome. He is interested in solutions in the spheres of energy, bio-fuel and wind energy.

Boghos Levon Zekiyan
Ca Foscari University, Venice
Italy

Biography

Boghos Levon Zekiyan heads the Chair of Armenian Language and Literature at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, and is Professor of the Armenian Church Institutions at the Pontifical Oriental Institute of Rome. Since 1986, he is the founder and director of Ca' Foscari University's Summer Intensive Course in Armenian language and culture. Listed among the Cambridge-based International Biographical Centre's 2000 Outstanding Scholars of the 21st Century, he is the author of numerous books, monographs and of more than one hundred fifty scholarly articles; among them: The first steps of modern Armenian Theatre and the movement of Armenian Rebirth. A synthetical approach, 1975 (in Arm.); Mekhitar of Sebaste, New illuminator and Precursor, 1977 (in Arm.); An ecumenical dialogue in the 12th century. The negotiations between Saint Nerses Šnorhali and the Imperial Legate Theorianos in view of the union of the Armenian and Byzantine Churches, 1978 (in Arm.); Humanism. Conceptual contents and historical roots, 1981 (in Turkish); The Armenian Way to Modernity. Armenian Identity Between Tradition and Innovation, Speicificity and Universality, 1997; The Mosaic of Identity, 2001 (in Arm.); At the Search of Spirituality and of Roots, 2001 (in Arm.); Armenian History and Identity. Comments between the Lines, 2001 (in Arm.).

Ashot Melkonyan
Director, Institute of History,
National Academy of Sciences
Armenia

Biography

Ahot Melkonyan was born on February 16, 1961 in Akhalkaki. Graduated cum laude from the History department of Yerevan State University (YSU). In 1985, completed post-graduate course at the YSU Armenian History chair. In 1989, Mr. Melkonyan received his Ph.D.
Since 1986, he has worked at the History Institute of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, first as a junior staff member, then researcher, scientific secretary, and finally, deputy director. In 2002, Ashot Melkonyan received his Doctorate, and the same year he became the new director of the History Institute.
Prof. Melkonyan’s scientific interest lies in such areas as Western Armenia, the Armenian Question, the Armenian genocide, the history of Javakhk, the Armenian-Georgian relations, as well as issues pertaining to historiography of the Armenian people. Prof. Melkonyan’s authored 6 books and about 150 scientific papers, published in Armenia, the US, England, France, Georgia, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Argentina in a variety of languages.
For his outstanding contribution to historiography, President Kocharian awarded Prof. Melkonyan the Movses Khorenatsi medal.

Hrant Dink
Editor, Agos Weekly,
Turkey

Biography

Hrant Dink was born in 1954 in Malatia. Upon completing his secondary education at the Armenian Dpravank school in Istanbul, he took Philosophy and History course at the Philology Department of Istanbul University. While at the university, Dink had become sympathetic with the Turkish leftist movement, as a result of which he was often persecuted by Turkish law enforcement agencies and on several occasions even jailed.
In Istanbul, Dink established the bilingual (Turkish/Armenian) weekly Akos, of which he has been the editor-in-chief. He is married, has two children.

Ragip Zarakolu
Bilgi Publishing
Turkey

Biography

Racip Zarakolou was born on July 30, 1942, in (on) Beuyuk Ada, as his father had been appointed Governor of the Istanbul Island province. He spent his childhood living among Armenians, Greeks, and Jews. His mother, who had witnessed the Armenian genocide, told him all about it.
A cofounder of the Human Rights Association (IHD), Mr. Zarakolou is currently responsible for the organization’s foreign relations. He is also among the founders of the IHD-affiliated “Commission on the Protection of the Rights of Minorities,” together with his wife, Ajshe Nour Zarakolou owns and manages the International Document publication. He is Chairman of the “Freedom to Publish” commission of the Union of Turkish Publishers; as well as editor-in-chief and general director of the Turkish Ogzur Bakis (Independent View) daily.