Taner Akcam holds the Kaloosdian & Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University. Akçam is widely recognized as one of the first Turkish scholars to write extensively on the Ottoman-Turkish Genocide of the Armenians in the early 20th century. He is the author of more than ten scholarly works as well as numerous articles in Turkish, German, and English on Armenian Genocide and Turkish Nationalism. His most known books are A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Metropolitan Books, 2006, received the 2007 Minnesota Book Award for General Nonfiction) and Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton University Press, 2012 (awarded in 2013 Hourani Book Prize of The Middle East Studies Association; and selected as one of Foreign Affairs’ Best Books on the Middle East for 2012). Akçam’s latest book is Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide (Palgrave 2018).
Fatma Müge Göçek is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies. Her research focuses on the comparative analysis of history, politics and gender in the first and third worlds. She critically analyzes the impact of processes such as development, nationalism, religious movements and collective violence on minorities. Her published works include East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the 18th Century (Oxford University Press, 1987), Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity, Power (Columbia University Press, 1994 co-edited with Shiva Balaghi), Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (Oxford University Press, 1996), Political Cartoons in the Middle East (Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998), Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East (SUNY Press, 2002), The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era (I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2011), and A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2011 co-edited with Ronald Grigor Suny and Norman Naimark).
Ohannes Kılıçdağı is a visiting fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and a columnist for Agos, the Turkish-Armenian newspaper published in Istanbul. In 2012-2013, Ohannes was a research fellow at University of Michigan’s Armenian Studies Program in Ann Arbor. During his years in Turkey, he worked at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, lecturing on “Social change in contemporary Turkish society,” “History of Turkish social and political thought” as well as the “Armenian question in the Ottoman Empire.” Ohannes is a graduate of Boğaziçi University, holding degrees in sociology, political science and history. His PhD dissertation was titled “”Socio-political Reflections and Expectations of the Ottoman Armenians after the 1908 Revolution: Between Hope and Despair.”
Ottoman Armenians and the Politics of Conscription (podcast) with Ohannes Kılıçdağı
Ermeniler, Rumlar, Kürtler, Aleviler, Solcular, Hizmet Hareketi…Sıra Kımde? (television interview in Turkish) with Ohannes Kılıçdağı
Gerard J. Libaridian
Retired in 2012, Professor Gerard J. Libaridian held the Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History (2001-2012) and was director of the Armenian Studies Program (2007-2012) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Libaridian was a co-founder of the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation in Cambridge, Mass., and its director from1982 to 1990; he also served as Director of the ARF archives (1982-1988) and editor of the Armenian Review (1983-1988). From 1991 to 1997, he served as adviser, and then senior adviser (foreign and security policies) to the first President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian, as well as First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs (1993-1994) of the newly independent republic. Prof. Libaridian is the author and editor of a number of works and has published and lectured extensively and internationally on modern and contemporary Armenian history and politics. He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and currently working on a number of new books, including “Anatomy of Conflict: Nagorno Karabakh and the New World Order,” and “My Turkish Problem.” http://libaridian.com
Judy Norsigian is a co-founder and former executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS), a nonprofit women’s health organization that has been educating and advocating for women’s health since 1970. It is best known for the classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (now in its ninth edition and translated/adapted into more than 30 languages, including an ongoing project in Turkey).
Judy has appeared on hundreds of television and radio programs and has served on the boards of the National Women’s Health Network, Public Responsibility in Medicine & Research, and Community Works, a fundraising organization dedicated to social change that she founded. Her personal recognitions include the Public Service Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association; the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association Annual Recognition Award; and the Massachusetts Health Council Award. She was also named one of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s eNews and holds honorary doctorates from Boston University and Simmons College.
Anna Ohanyan is Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations. Her latest book is an edited volume tentatively titled Russia Abroad: Driving Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia and Beyond (forthcoming with Georgetown University Press in 2018). She authored Networked Regionalism as Conflict Management published by Stanford University Press (2015) and NGOs, IGOs, and Network Mechanism of Post-Conflict Global Governance in Microfinance with Palgrave Macmillan (2008). Her articles appeared in International Studies Review, Peace and Change, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Wilson Quarterly, and Global Society, among other journals. Prof. Ohanyan is a Fulbright Scholar and previously served as a doctoral fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. At Stonehill, she served as the Chair of the Political Science and International Studies Department (2014-2017) and established the Learning Inside-Out Network (LION) international internship program in Global Security Studies. She is a Governing Board member for Eurasia Partnership Foundation-Armenia, Caucasus Research Resource Center-Armenia, and Armenian International Women’s Association in the US.
Prof. Ohanyan holds M.A. and M.S. degrees in Political Science and Conflict Resolution, as well as a PhD in Political Science from Syracuse University in NY.
Baskin Oran (b. 1945) is a professor emeritus of international relations who has repeatedly challenged the ideology and practices of Turkey’s State institutions. As assistant professor at the School of Political Science, Ankara University, he was dismissed by the ruling military juntas four times, for a total of nine years, in 1971 and 1982.
Oran, who has sued President Erdoğan twice with no success in 2017, is the author/editor of twenty-four books that deal with Turkey’s international relations and minority rights, nationalism, political satire, as well as oral history.
As a member of the Prime Ministry’s Human Rights Advisory Council, he wrote the controversial Minority and Cultural Rights Report (2004) which set a milestone in Turkey’s debate on minority rights. He edited the three-volume Turkish Foreign Policy (1919-2012), the first two volumes of which were published by the University of Utah Press in 2010, and the third volume by The Institute for Political and International Studies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IPIS) in Tehran in Persian, is the main textbook for the study of international relations in Turkish universities.
Oran was one of the four co-launchers of the 2008 apology campaign signed online by 33,000 Turks. The controversial campaign titled Apology from Armenians called for a collective apology from the Turkish side for the “Great Catastrophe/Metz Yeghern” of 1915.
Besides publishing weekly on artigercek.com and ahvalnews.com, Oran has been a regular columnist for the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos since 2000, and has served as the National Liaison Officer to the CoE’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI; 1999-2009). Oran also served on the official Wise People Committee during Turkey’s now-defunct Kurdish Peace Process of 2013.