Join Us in Boston
The Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) invites scholars, researchers, students, and members of the wider academic community to its 2026 conference, Armenian Studies and Digital Methods: Theory, Practice, and New Directions.
Bringing together emerging and established scholars working across Armenian Studies and digital humanities, the conference explores new methodological approaches to the study, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of Armenian historical and cultural heritage.
The program features presentations on digital archives, network analysis, computational approaches to historical research, artificial intelligence and language learning, multilingual collections, digital epigraphy, and community-based digital preservation. Together, these contributions examine both the opportunities and limitations of digital methods in advancing Armenian Studies.
Conference Program
Friday, November 20 | Day One
NAASR Headquarters, 395 Concord Avenue, Belmont
5:00–6:30 PM (Eastern Time) | Panel 1
Moderator: Talar Chahinian (UC Irvine)
- Kristine Baghdasaryan (PhD Candidate, Free University of Berlin, Pázmány Péter Catholic University) – “Mapping Intellectual Collaboration in the South Caucasus: Network Analysis and the Armenian-Azerbaijani Satirical Press, 1905–1925”
- Sona Mnatsakanyan (PhD Candidate, Humboldt University of Berlin) – “Rethinking the Armenian Case of “Tamizdat”: Modeling Armenian Diasporic Literature in a Relational Digital Archive”
- Diana Hayrapetyan (Harvard University, Gratz College) – “ChatGPT as an Informal L2 Instructor for Armenian: Where It Helps, Where It Fails, and Why It Matters”
- Mariam Grigoryan (University of Siena, Italy) – “Competing Digital Narratives of Armenia's Geopolitical Reorientation: Evaluating AI-Assisted Multilingual Analysis”
Livestream of Panel 1 is available via https://www.youtube.com/c/ArmenianStudies.
7:00–9:00 PM (Eastern Time) | Reception
Co-sponsored by SAS and NAASR. Prior registration is required. Please contact SAS Executive Secretary Flora Ghazaryan-Abdin execsecretary.sas@gmail.com to register.
Saturday, November 21 | Day Two
Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA)
Hilton Boston Park Plaza, 50 Park Plaza, Boston MA/ Newbury room, 4th floor
10:00–11:15 AM (Eastern Time) | Panel 2
Moderator: David Zakarian (Fresno State)
- Ani Shahinian (HMML, St. Nersess Armenian Theological Seminary and St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, NY) – “From Digital Preservation to Computational Analysis: Armenian Manuscripts, Multilingual Collections, and the Prospects for AI-Assisted Scholarship”
- Jane Kitaevich (Harvard University) – “From Corpus to Context: What Large Language Models Can—and Cannot—Do in Building Historical Event Datasets for Armenian Studies”
- Houry Pilibbossian (PhD Candidate, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)– “Community-Informed Methods: Reflections on Ephemera, Futurity and Pedagogy in the Aleppo-Armenian Diaspora through Hi Haleb (Հայ Հալէպ) Digital Community Archive”
Zoom link to Panel 2:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4632326182?pwd=R2V2TG9zTlZXTW9kVDhXd055TlljQT09&omn=84464988671
Meeting ID: 463 232 6182
Passcode: 266653
11:30 AM–12:30 PM (Eastern Time) | SAS Annual Membership Meeting
The second panel and the annual meeting will take place in the same venue. Those who are unable to attend in person are invited to register for the Zoom meeting using the link below:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/TmXG7yEwR5yzPrLO1BQPcg
For conference information and inquiries:
Barlow Der Mugrdechian
Conference Organizing Committee
barlowd@csufresno.edu
Flora Ghazaryan-Abdin
Executive Secretary, Society for Armenian Studies
execsecretary.sas@gmail.com