Asbarez: Projects for Peace Honors Anoush Baghdassarian as 2026 Alumni Award R

Anoush Baghdassarian has been named the recipient of the Projects for Peace 2026 Alumni Award. She will use the award to advance her ongoing work with Rerooted, a community-centered digital archive and advocacy organization that preserves Armenian stories, strengthens identity, and supports justice efforts for Armenian communities facing displacement, violence, and erasure.

The annual award provides up to $50,000 in support of ongoing peace-building efforts of past Projects for Peace grant recipients who demonstrate innovation and persistence in working for peace and transforming conflict.

Baghdassarian received a 2017 Projects for Peace grant as an undergraduate at Claremont McKenna College for a project cofounded with Ani Schug, then an undergraduate at Pomona College, focused on documenting the stories of Syrian-Armenians who had resettled in Armenia during the Syrian conflict. Their project, “Restorative Memory: Eternalizing and Empowering Narratives of Syrian-Armenian Refugees,” sought to preserve whole histories: family memories of the Armenian Genocide, community life in Syria, experiences of war and displacement, and the work of rebuilding in Armenia. “Ani and I are  over the moon,” Baghdassarian says. “Thank you all so much for this incredible honor and opportunity. We are so grateful.”

What began as a summer project has since grown into Rerooted, an organization founded on the idea that no matter how many times Armenians have been rerouted by conflict, they have continued to reroot in strong, thriving communities. Today, Rerooted has grown to include more than 25 communities, collected more than 400 testimonies, and trained more than 90 team members in its work of preserving memory and using it for action.

For Baghdassarian this announcement is only the start of how the award will raise awareness of Rerooted. “We can’t thank you enough for believing in this project and we are so excited to stay closely involved with you all and for all the events celebrating this important work.”

Rerooted celebrates and explores Armenian identity in communities around the world and advocates for their just and safe futures. Its digital collections of testimonies, photographs, and documents are designed to be accessible to researchers, teachers, artists, community members, and advocates. Through those collections, Baghdassarian and her collaborators create educational resources, interactive maps, legal reports, cultural heritage projects, and tools that show the resilience of Armenian communities while also supporting accountability and recognition.

The organization’s work now spans preservation, education, language, cultural heritage, and justice. Rerooted’s oral history interviews are used in classrooms from middle school to graduate school and address themes including human rights, diaspora, identity, refugee experiences, language preservation, minorities in the Middle East, and displacement. Its hundreds of hours of spoken testimony and time-coded transcripts also support efforts to preserve endangered Armenian dialects, including Western Armenian and Artsakhtsi Armenian.

With only a fraction of the 500 stories translated, transcribed, and published on the Rerooted website, Baghdassarian plans to use Project for Peace funds to tackle the backlog and “bring the resources to life.” This includes her vision to curate an interactive exhibit that would rotate among museums around the globe. 

Baghdassarian’s work with Rerooted also reflects a deep commitment to justice. The organization listens to the needs of Armenian communities and follows the lead of narrators to explore mechanisms for accountability and recognition. Rerooted has partnered with law school clinics, student groups, the United Nations, and nongovernmental organizations to support report writing, case building, submissions to international legal bodies, and other efforts to ensure that Armenian voices are included in justice processes.

Netta Avineri, executive director of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation, says Baghdassarian’s work demonstrates how storytelling, documentation, and community trust can serve as tools for transforming conflict.

“Anoush embodies so many core principles of conflict transformation, deepening relationships with communities for collective awareness-raising around core social issues,” said Avineri. “Her collaborative process bridges disciplines, perspectives, and methods.”

Baghdassarian first listened to—and shared—the stories of Armenian people in her youth. Growing up in an Armenian family in New York, she regularly visited an Armenian senior home as a curious, impassioned middle school student.

“I would just go and spend time with the residents, asking them questions about their lives and listening to their stories, to their memories of the Armenian Genocide,” said Baghdassarian, adding that “every year since sixth grade” she asked her history and social studies teachers, “Can I please present about the genocide?” 

Baghdassarian also recalls attending annual commemorations on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day—April 24—which honors victims of the 1915 massacre of more than 1.5 million Armenians. Witnessing genocide deniers host their own assembly “literally on the block next to us” became a defining moment for Baghdassarian, one that led her to dedicate her academic and professional life to seeking “accountability for atrocity crimes.” 

Since her original Project for Peace, Baghdassarian has continued to build on the connection between memory and accountability. She earned her JD from Harvard Law School and her master’s degree in human rights studies from Columbia University, and her professional path has included work connected to international law, human rights, and Armenian justice efforts. Her continued leadership of Rerooted, in close partnership with Schug and a broad network of volunteers, interns, legal fellows, language specialists, and community members, has turned a student peace project into a lasting platform for education, preservation, and advocacy.

Launched in 2022, the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation is the centerpiece of a seven-year, $25 million grant aimed at incorporating conflict transformation skills into every corner of the Middlebury community while building a global network of scholars and practitioners.

Projects for Peace, which is headquartered at Middlebury College’s Center for Community Engagement, is a global program that encourages young adults to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues. Since 2007, students have used Projects for Peace grants to build knowledge, improve skills, and establish identities as peacebuilders and changemakers in communities around the world.

—