This year, we will be commemorating the 110th anniversary of the Armenian genocide with an evening of talks and music, kindly hosted by the Wiener Holocaust Library. Judging by the number of publications that have appeared in the past few years, from monographs to journals and edited volumes, we can say that scholarly research around the topic of the Armenian genocide is an ever renewed field. On Thursday, April 24th, two scholars who are active in this field will present their work and enlighten us on the most recent directions that this research has taken. The second part of the evening will be dedicated to Armenian music by Lucine Musaelian.
Dr Peter Morgan will discuss his recent book, British Representations of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-23, which examines how British politicians, national and local newspapers, writers and commentators discussed the mass killing and deportation of Armenians as they were happening. Morgan found that the news was widely circulated in the provincial press and not just in major contemporary titles.
Dr Becky Jinks will discuss how, in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide, Armenian networks and international relief organisations mounted efforts to rescue Armenians who were being kept in Turkish, Kurdish, or Arab households. Most of the published or well-known sources we have, though, are about male rescuers. Her brief talk will begin to explore the efforts of women rescuers – those who rescued other women, and those who trekked to find their own children.
Moderated by Tatiana Der Avedissian.
This event is held in collaboration with the Wiener Holocaust Library, as part of the Holocaust and Genocide Research Partnership.
About the Speakers and Musician
Dr. Becky Jinks is a historian of comparative genocide and humanitarianism at Royal Holloway, University of London. This exhibition, which she has co-curated with Dr. Christine Schmidt (Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Wiener Holocaust Library), forms part of her AHRC-funded research project Genocidal captivity: (Re)telling the stories of Armenian and Yezidi women survivors, 1915 and 2014. The project builds on her earlier work on international humanitarian organisations’ treatment of ‘absorbed’ Armenian women in the aftermath of the genocide.
Peter Morgan graduated from the University of Leeds with a history degree in 1989. After working in residential childcare, he taught history in secondary schools for 21 years, leaving to do a PhD at the University of Brighton in 2014. His thesis on British Representations of the Armenian Genocide 1915-23 was published as a monograph by Routledge in February. He is currently working as a volunteer on the Armenian Institute’s Heritage of Displacement Project and since January 2024 has been the Education Officer at the Wiener Holocaust Library.
Lucine Musaelian is an Armenian-American viola da gamba player, singer, and composer from New Jersey. She studied music at Yale, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Lucine’s main project is with her duo Intesa, where early music, Armenian music, and contemporary music come together through the art of self-accompaniment and storytelling. Intesa performs internationally and will be releasing new music very soon. Lucine has also performed with Phantasm, the Dunedin Consort, the Tallis Society, La Nuova Musica, the BBC Philharmonic, and regularly performs with the Bellot Ensemble and the Idrisi Ensemble.
