Armenian Diaspora Survey Staff

Susan Paul Pattie, Pilot Project Director is a cultural anthropologist (PhD University of Michigan), writer and project manager. An Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College London, Dr. Pattie has done research in Cyprus, London, Syria, North America and Armenia and authored a number of articles and chapters on Armenians living in diaspora. including the ethnography Faith in History: Armenians Rebuilding Community (Smithsonian Institute Press, 1997).  Co-founder and former Director of the Armenian Institute, she has also served as Director of the Armenian Museum of America and as Program Manager of the National Armenian Genocide Centennial Commemorations in Washington,D.C.  Co-author of Treasured Objects: Armenian Life in the Ottoman Empire, Susan is also lead author of the children’s book, Who Are the Armenians?  (also published in Turkish and Portuguese). She is has worked as Project Manager of “Engaging Refugee Narratives: Perspectives from Academia and the Arts”, based at UCL. and is currently the leader of the Armenian Diaspora Study Pilot Project initiated by the Gulbenkian Foundation.

Leon Aslanov,  Researcher and Analyst is a researcher who works primarily on topics related to Armenia and the Middle East. He is currently working as a political analyst for the think tank IntegrityUK, focusing on political, economic and social issues in Iraq, Syria and the broader Middle East. He is also part of a number of Armenian-related projects, including the Armenian Diaspora Survey, supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation, and research connected to Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. In addition, he is an active member of the London-based Programme of Armenian Studies. Leon graduated with a BA in French & Arabic from UCL & SOAS and an MSc in International Public Policy from UCL. 

Gagik Stepan-Sarkissian, Executive Administrator is a retired biochemist (PhD University of Sheffield). He has taught and led research groups at Teheran State University and University of Sheffield before moving to the private sector working in biotechnology and agribusiness across Europe. He developed the first Armenian syllabus for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and has taught there many years. Administrator at the Armenian Institute, he is also the Librarian, Armenian Language Teaching coordinator and regularly advises visiting researchers on projects ranging from theatre and film to novels, translations, Armenian fonts and others. 

Eileen Vartan Barker, FBA; OBE; Professor Emeritus of Sociology with special reference to the study of religion at the London School of Economics. Founder ofwww.INFORM.ac . Most of her work has been studying minority religions, but she has also carried out research on Armenian religion(s).

Anny Bakalian, (Ph.D. in Sociology, Columbia University) was Associate Director the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (ret.). Author of Armenian Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian, and articles on the Armenian diaspora, e.g., “Subversive Tourism? Diaspora Armenians Visiting Turkey” which was an illustrated lecture in the diaspora and featured on Jadaliyya. Anny also has several articles on Muslim Americans and Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond (with Mehdi Bozorgmehr). Anny taught sociology at AUB and Haigazian during the Civil War in Lebanon and after her doctorate was on the faculty at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Mentoring students and young scholars has always been an important part of her work.

Daniel Douglas, PhD is Visiting Assistant Professor of Education Studies and Sociology at Trinity College, and Associate Researcher at the Education and Employment Research Center at Rutgers University. Among other topics, his research focuses on mechanisms affecting student retention, performance, and completion in higher education. His other research interests include the connections between education and the labor market, sociological theory, and quantitative research methods. Outside of his academic work, Daniel is also a musician and songwriter. 

Hayk Gyuzalyan has managed surveys and research projects for international organizations since 1999, including for the Eurasia Foundation, USAID, RA Ministry of Social Protection and others. In 2010, Hayk began working on international surveys, such as the Life in Transition II for the EBRD and World Bank and then with the 6th European Working Conditions Survey for the Eurofound, BEEPS for the World Bank and EBRD, Violence Against Women survey for the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights. Joining the Kantar Public Brussels team in 2015, he has worked on the 4th European Quality of Life Survey, the Life in Transition III Survey for the EBRD and World Bank and Feasibility of Conducting Mixed-Mode survey on Fundamental Rights for the EU FRA.  Most recently, Hayk has managed surveys of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and Humanitarian Index for the same client.

Armine Ishkanian, Associate Professor and Programme Director of the MSc in Social Policy and Development at the London School of Economics, does research on the relationship between activism, policy processes, and social transformation. She has done extensive research on Armenia and Armenians, as well as international and comparative work. She examines how diasporic communities and activists express solidarity with communities/individuals in the 'homeland' and the ways in which they engage with and seek to influence policies, practices, and political developments. http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchandexpertise/experts/profile.aspx?KeyValue=a.Ishkanian%40lse.ac.uk

Sossie Kasbarian is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Comparative Politics at the University of Stirling. Sossie’s research interests and publications broadly span diaspora studies; contemporary Middle East politics and society; nationalism and ethnicity; transnational political activism; refugee and migration studies. She is co-editor of the journal Diaspora- A Journal of Transnational Studies. Her current research is a comparative study of the different trajectories that transnational communities in the contemporary Middle East embody and enact, focusing on the Armenian diaspora. 

Donald E. Miller is the Leonard K. Firestone Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California and co-founder of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC.  His research has focused on genocide, the role of faith-based institutions, and global religious trends.  He recently completed a book based on 260 interviews with survivors of 1994 genocide in Rwanda.  He is the author, co-author, or editor of ten books, including two books with his wife, Lorna Touryan Miller: Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope (University of California Press, 2003); and Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (University of California Press, 1993).

Joanne Randa Nucho is an Anthropologist and Filmmaker who is currently a Mellon Chau Postdoctoral Fellow at Pomona College. She is the author of Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon: Infrastructures, Public Services, and Power (2016). Her research has received support from the Wenner Gren Foundation and a Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Award. She has written about the Armenian community in Lebanon and made a full-length non-fiction film called The Narrow Streets of Bourj Hammoud. Her films have been screened in various venues, including the London International Documentary Film Festival in 2008.

Vahe Sahakyan (PhD, Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan) takes a comparative approach to Armenian diasporic experiences, his research highlighting alternative forms and spaces of belonging, multiplicity of identities and discourses on homeland, ethnicity and nation. He has carried out research in Beirut, Marseille, Paris, Boston and Los Angeles and been involved in projects promoting Armenian Studies and organizing conferences in the U.S. and beyond. Currently Dr. Sahakyan works as researcher and senior information resources specialist for the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan Dearborn.

Hratch Tchilingirian is Associate Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford since 2012, focusing on Middle Eastern and Armenian Studies, with a particular focus on identity politics, homeland-disaspora relations, sociology of religion, and inter-ethnic conflicts in the Middle East and Eurasia.  Following his PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics, he was director of research on Eurasia and lecturer at Cambridge University's business school (2003-2012). Dr. Tchilingirian has lectured internationally and is the author of numerous academic studies and articles (www.hratch.info). He has held executive positions in academic institutions and charitable organizations and has served communities in various capacities and leadership positions in the United Kingdom and the United States for over three decades.

Khachig Tölölyan is Professor of the Humanities in the College of Letters at Wesleyan University, where he teaches literature, history and philosophy. He founded in 1977 and coedited until 2007 Pynchon Notes, a journal devoted to the study of the novels of Thomas Pynchon. In 1991 he founded, and now co-edits, Diaspora: a journal of transnational studies, which is the leading scholarly publication in the field of diaspora studies.  Tölölyan is the author of over 100 articles in Armenian, some of which are collected in Spurki Mech (Haratch Press, Paris, 1980, in Armenian), the co-editor of a book, Diaspora, Identity and Religion (Routledge, 2004), and of thirty scholarly articles on topics ranging from American literature and literary theory to Armenian terrorism and the Armenian diaspora.

Ulrike Ziemer is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Sociology at the University of Winchester. Ulrike’s research expertise lies in the sociology of identity and culture, with specific interest in diaspora, migration and gender in Russia and the South Caucasus. Her current research focuses on exploring gender issues and political transformations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and Armenia.