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Dr Victoria  Abrahamyan

Dr Victoria Abrahamyan

Visiting Research Fellow

Department of International History

Languages
Arabic, Armenian, English, French, German, Russian
Key Expertise
Two World Wars, Global Migration, Refugees and Forced Displacement

About me

Dr. Victoria Abrahamyan is a post-doctoral research fellow at Maison d’Histoire at the University of Geneva.

She received her PhD in contemporary history from the University of Neuchâtel. Her research focuses on the Ottoman Empire, the modern Middle East, USSR and the Caucasus, from the late 19th century through the interwar period. Her research interests include World War I, imperalism, colonialism, nationalism, violence, forced displacement, refugees, state formation, and subaltern agency.

Dr. Abrahamyan has published extensively in leading journals, including Journal of Contemporary Levant and Journal of Migration History and contributed several book chapters. She is currently working on her first monograph, provisionally entitled, Armenian Refugees in French Mandate Syria: Statelessness and Nation-Building in the Middle East under contract with Bloomsbury (I.B. Tauris).

Expertise Details

Mass violence; Armenian Genocide; forced displacement; Western and Soviet competition in the Middle East and the Caucasus; nationalism and state-formation.

Awards

Outstanding Dissertation Award, 2020-2023, Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) for “Between the Homeland and the Hostland: (Re)Claiming the Armenian Refugees in French Mandatory Syria, 1918-1946,” PhD. diss., University of Neuchâtel, 2023.

Publications

Book, Armenian Refugees in French Mandate Syria: Statelessness and Nation-Building in the Middle East (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming).

Peer-reviewed article, “Armenian Refugees between Greece, Soviet Armenia and Syria, 1922-1926: The Entangled History of Population Exchanges and Partitions,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies (Special Issue, forthcoming). 

Book chapter, “Loyalty on Stake: Armenian Refugees and the Syrian Great Revolt,” in Microhistories in Armenian Studies, ed., Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Hans-Lukas Kieser, Ümit Kurt, Ara Sarafian (Fresno: The Press at California State University, forthcoming).

Peer-reviewed book chapter, “Rumours, Imperial “Humanitarianism” and the Destruction of the Armenian Refugee Camps in Syria and Lebanon, 1918-1926” in Refugees and Population Transfer Management in Europe 1914-1920s, ed.,Kamil Ruszała (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2024).

Peer-reviewed article, “Extraordinary Cooperation between Ordinary Ottomans: Creation of the First Armenian Settlements in the Syrian Jazira, 1918-1926,” Journal of Contemporary Levant 9,no. 2 (2024): 169-185.

Book chapter, “Harici Vatandaşlar: Fransız Mandası Suriyesi’nde Kimlik Etiketleme ve Kimlik Söylemi (1920-1932)” in 1915 and the Arabs: Genocide, Identity, Geography, ed., Emre Can Dağlıoğlu (in Turkish) (Istanbul: November 2021).

Peer-reviewed article, “Citizen Strangers: Identity Labelling and Discourse in the French Mandatory Syria, 1920-1932,” Journal of Migration History 6, no. 1 (2020): 40-61.