WATERTOWN — The Armenian Relief Society of Eastern USA announced the appointment of Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D., as the new Director of the ARS Norian Youth Connect Program.

“Over the years, Dr. Theriault has been a valued part of the ARS Norian Youth Connect Program, sharing his expertise as a workshop leader and engaging our students with thought-provoking discussions,” said Mimi Parseghian, Chairperson of the ARS Eastern USA Regional Executive Board.

“We are delighted that he is now stepping into the role of Program Director and are confident that under his leadership, the ARS Norian Youth Connect Program will continue to serve as a hub to engage with scholars and have critical dialogue,” she continued. 

Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D., is Associate Provost at Worcester State University in the United States, after teaching in its Philosophy Department 1998 to 2017. In his current position, Theriault oversees the university’s library, international students and study program, faculty development center, human subjects research ethics board, general education program, first-year seminar program, and academic integrity process, as well as serving in various other leadership capacities, including as chair of the research advisory board and a member of the president’s cabinet. He coordinated WSU’s Human Rights Center 1999 to 2007. 

With a background in radical social and political as well as continental philosophy, Theriault researches genocide denial, genocide prevention, post-genocide victim-perpetrator relations, reparations, and mass violence against women and girls. He has lectured around the world and published numerous journal articles and chapters.

He is lead author of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group’s “2015 Resolution with Justice;” with Samuel Totten, co-authored “The United Nations Genocide Convention: An Introduction”(University of Toronto Press, 2019), and, with Chunhui Peng, coeditor of “Aftermath of Mass Violence: A Comprehensive Approach through Theory and Case Studies” (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).

Theriault’s work has appeared in English, Spanish, Armenian, Turkish, and other languages. Theriault served two terms as president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, 2017 to 2019 and 2019 to 2021. He has been founding co-editor of Genocide Studies International since 2012 and co-edited Genocide Studies and Prevention 2007 to 2012. He currently serves as vice-chair of the executive committee of the board of directors of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research and is a member of the Armenian Society of Fellows.

Originally established in 1971 as the ARS Summer Studies Institute, the program has evolved over the decades to meet the changing needs of Armenian youth while remaining true to its educational mission. Its continued success has been made possible through the generosity of the Norian Endowment Fund, established by sisters Alice Norian and Doris Norian-Lenz.

Over the years, the program has benefited from the dedicated leadership Dr. Asbed Kotchikian (2010 to 2014) and Dr. Khatchig Mouradian (2014 to 2026), whose vision and commitment helped shape the program.

The next ARS Norian Youth Connect Program will take place on October 24 in Belmont, MA, bringing together Armenian university students and young professionals. More details will be published soon on the ARS website and social media pages.

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ATHENS — Asini Publications announced the publication of Christine Philliou’s and Elias Kolovos’s “Naming Non-Muslims: A Guide to Reading Greek, Armenian, and Jewish Male Names in Ottoman Sources.”

This book is a reference work intended as a resource for researchers working with Ottoman sources on non-Muslim communities—Armenians, Greeks, Slavs, and Jews. The main body consists of separate lists of Greek (primarily Greek Orthodox, including some Slavic names), Armenian, and Jewish/Hebrew names.

For each entry, the Ottoman spelling is followed by a transliteration into Latin characters, the standard form of the name in its source language (Greek, Slavic, Armenian, or Hebrew), commentary on the name’s meaning and variants, and relevant bibliographical references.

The impetus for the book was the widespread misspelling, misreading, and consequent misidentification of non-Muslim names in Ottoman sources by researchers unfamiliar with the languages from which those names originated. The authors maintain that accurately identifying and spelling the names of non-Muslims is a key prerequisite for understanding who they were as unique individuals rather than reducing them to nameless members of religious or ethnic communities.

The lists are preceded by an introduction by Philliou and a preface by Kolovos, which discuss the value of Ottoman population registers for the study of Armenians, Greeks, and Jews in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and emphasize the importance of reading their names accurately.

According to Philliou and Kolovos, one of the greatest obstacles to researching and writing the history of Armenians and other non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire is the difficulty of deciphering their names in Ottoman Turkish, which was itself written in Arabic script. The spelling of non-Arabic names was often improvised within a writing system not designed to represent them.

As a result, unless a researcher already has some idea of what a particular name might be, it can be extremely difficult—and sometimes impossible—to identify it correctly. Most Turkish scholars today do not know Armenian, let alone Greek or Hebrew, while non-Turkish scholars may know one of these languages in addition to Turkish, but very few researchers possess expertise in all of them.

“We used a particular population register from 1821 to compile our list of names, focusing on the Bazaar of Istanbul’s Old City, where we found thousands of Armenians, who had by far the largest presence among the three non-Muslim groups,” the authors explain. “This alone provides grounds for further fascinating research on Armenians in the Ottoman capital as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century.”

The book includes an extensive list of the historical names of Armenian, Greek, and Jewish individuals who lived quite literally alongside one another in the khans of Ottoman Istanbul and in Galata, Yeniköy, Emirgan, and Boyacıköy—all areas surveyed in the unique 1821 register studied by the authors.

These individuals brought with them naming practices from across the provinces of the Ottoman Empire while simultaneously interacting with and influencing one another through everyday life, including, potentially, in their naming practices. In this sense, the names recorded in the register provide not only a practical tool for identifying individuals in Ottoman sources but also an important point of departure for investigating migration, community formation, cultural interaction, and everyday life in nineteenth-century Istanbul.

In a review of the book, Baki Tezcan of the University of California, Davis writes, “Our names define us. When we meet someone, we introduce ourselves with our names first. They constitute the center of our individual identities. They also help us navigate our relationships with people around us, turning random people into individuals. ‘Naming Non-Muslims,’ therefore, is not simply A Guide to Reading Greek, Armenian and Jewish Male Names in Ottoman Sources as its subtitle describes it. It invites scholars (like myself), who do not read Armenian, Greek, or Hebrew and mainly work with Ottoman Turkish, to acknowledge Armenian, Greek, and Jewish Ottomans, whose names are recorded in Ottoman archival documents in Arabic letters, as unique individuals with unique lives who actually write their names in different alphabets and speak different languages that shape the ways in which they understand themselves and the world around them. ‘Naming Non-Muslims,’ thus, transforms ‘non-Muslims,’ who have mostly been defined negatively by their not-belonging to the Muslim community in Ottoman historiography, into people. By recording the shared names between Armenian, Greek, Jewish, and Muslim Ottomans, ‘Naming Non-Muslims’ also invites us to consider more seriously the ties that bound these confessional communities together in Ottoman society.”

Christine Philliou, Professor in the Department of History and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at UC Berkeley, specializes in the connected histories of the Balkans and Middle East since the 17th century, focusing particularly on the emergence of the Greek and Turkish nation-states out of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her books include “Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution” (UC Press, 2010) and “Turkey: A Past Against History” (UC Press, 2021). She also directs a collaborative digital/public humanities project on Greek Orthodox communities in the larger context of late Ottoman Istanbul/Constantinople (1821-1923). Her forthcoming book, “An Ottoman Pompeii: The Greek Revolution and the Limits of Conviviality in 1821 Istanbul” (Koç University Press 2026) is the first fruit of that collaboration.

Elias Kolovos is Research Director with a specialization in Ottoman History at the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, in Athens, Greece. He is the elected Secretary of the Board of the International Association for Ottoman Social and Economic History. In the past, he served as Professor of Ottoman History at the Department of History and Archaeology, Faculty of Letters, University of Crete, serving also as the Director of the M.A. in Ottoman History Program of the same Department. He has written, edited, and coedited 20 books and over 80 papers in Greek and international publications and journals. His research interests include Mediterranean economic history, the history of insular (island) worlds,the history of frontiers, rural and environmental history, as well as spatial history and legacies of the Ottoman Empire.

Copies of “Naming Non-Muslims: A Guide to Reading Greek, Armenian, and Jewish Male Names in Ottoman Sources” can be purchased through Asini’s website or by emailing [email protected].

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Religious Autonomy Under International Human Rights Law

Courts interpreting international human rights instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights (to which the Republic of Armenia is a State Party), have consistently recognized that, while the freedom to hold religious beliefs is absolute, the _expression_ and organization of religion may be subject to state regulation only where it is prescribed by law and is strictly necessary to protect public safety, public order, health, morals, or the rights and freedoms of others. In particular, the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly recognized that the autonomy of religious communities is an indispensable component of the right to freedom of religion protected by Article 9 of the Convention. 

Accordingly, decisions concerning matters of doctrine, ecclesiastical discipline, church governance, and the appointment or removal of clergy are presumptively for religious communities, not civil authorities, to determine. Absent exceptional circumstances that satisfy the Convention’s strict requirements, state interference in such internal religious matters is incompatible with the principles of religious freedom and institutional autonomy.

The Criminal Proceedings
It is with these principles in mind that the Armenian Bar Association is deeply troubled by the criminal prosecution of His Holiness Karekin II and the six members of the Supreme Spiritual Council of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church.

According to court records, including the summary of the criminal charges, the allegations are as follows. On or about January 10, 2026, Catholicos Karekin II issued Patriarchal Directive No. 2 removing Bishop Gevorg Saroyan from his position as Primate of the Masis Diocese. Bp. 

Saroyan subsequently filed suit in the Armavir District Court seeking to have Patriarchal 

Directive No. 2 declared invalid and to be reinstated as Primate of the Masis Diocese. The District Court accepted the lawsuit and, on the same day, issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church from obstructing Bp. Saroyan’s service as Primate of the Masis Diocese. The court further enjoined the Church from taking any action that would interfere with Bp. Saroyan’s exercise of the powers and duties assigned to a diocesan primate under Article 68 of the Church’s Charter, including management of the Diocese’s financial accounts. The injunction was to remain in effect pending entry of a final judgment.

The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Armenia alleges that, after learning of the court’s ruling, the Supreme Spiritual Council determined that Bp. Saroyan’s conduct constituted a breach of communion with the Mother See, canonical deviations, and a violation of his vow of obedience. By unanimous vote, the Supreme Spiritual Council recommended that His Holiness Karekin II defrock Bp. Saroyan. Karekin II accepted that recommendation and defrocked Bp. Saroyan, thereby allegedly committing the offense of obstructing execution of the court’s injunction.

The initial hearing on the criminal charges was held on August 7, 2026. According to defense counsel Ara Zohrabyan, following the hearing the presiding judge recused himself after disclosing that he had received his judicial license during Mr. Zohrabyan’s tenure as Chairman of the Chamber of Advocates. As a result, the hearing was adjourned without any substantive ruling on the merits. The case will be reassigned to a different judge, and no date has yet been set for the next hearing.

The Armenian Bar Association’s Position
If these allegations were a hypothetical, they would illustrate a textbook example of why civil courts should exercise restraint in matters of internal religious governance. Whether, and under what circumstances, a bishop may be removed from or reinstated to ecclesiastical office are quintessentially religious questions governed by canon law and the internal rules of the Church. It is not ordinarily a matter for judicial determination. And criminal liability predicated on the legitimate exercise of ecclesiastical authority raises serious concerns under the principles of religious autonomy protected by international human rights law.

The Armenian Bar Association respectfully calls upon the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Armenia to reconsider its decision to indict His Holiness Karekin II and the six members of the Supreme Spiritual Council under Article 507 of the Criminal Code. We further urge the Armenian Church leaders to pursue all available legal remedies, including appellate review, to seek reconsideration of the Armavir District Court’s preliminary injunction, which we believe was erroneously granted and precipitated the present dispute.

The Armenian Bar Association reaffirms that the rule of law requires both respect for judicial authority and respect for the autonomy of religious communities. Those core principles are not in conflict. Rather, the legitimacy of the justice system depends upon courts recognizing the limits of their own authority, particularly where the internal governance of religious institutions is concerned.

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The Artsakh Cultural Preservation Center’s participation in the international folklore festival held in Italy

YEREVAN — The Artsakh Cultural Preservation Center NGO has officially been invited to participate in the XVI International Christmas Choir Festival “Vienna Christmas Voices,” which will take place in the Austrian capital, from November 27 to 30. The festival is organized by the World Festival Association in cooperation with the local authorities of the City of Vienna.

Representing Armenia and the cultural heritage of Artsakh at the festival will be the State Orchestra of Traditional Instruments of Artsakh and the “We Are Our Mountains” State Song and Dance Ensemble, both operating under the Artsakh Cultural Preservation Center NGO.

The ensembles will introduce international audiences to Armenian music and dance as a living cultural tradition that embodies the historical memory, identity, and creative spirit of the Armenian people. Their performances will also underscore the importance of safeguarding cultural heritage and passing it on to future generations.

Participation in the festival marks another important step in the organization’s efforts to strengthen cultural diplomacy and expand international cooperation while presenting Armenian culture and the cultural heritage of Artsakh to the global community.

In recent years, the Artsakh Cultural Preservation Center has consistently broadened its international cultural activities. One of the organization’s significant milestones was its participation in an international folklore festival in Italy held within the framework of the International Council of Organizations of Folklore Festivals and Folk Arts, an international partner of UNESCO.

CIOFF® is a globally recognized network dedicated to the preservation and promotion of folk arts and intangible cultural heritage. Through its activities, it contributes to safeguarding cultural traditions and fostering intercultural dialogue among peoples.

The Artsakh Cultural Preservation Center remains committed to preserving, promoting, and showcasing Armenian and Artsakh cultural heritage on international platforms while encouraging cultural dialogue and strengthening international partnerships.

The Center implements a wide range of initiatives aimed at safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage of Artsakh, increasing its international visibility, and expanding opportunities for cultural cooperation.

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A 24-hour hackathon titled “Hack Armenia,” focused on the use of large language models, was held on August 8 to 9 at the AI9 Startup Campus in Yerevan.

The event was held with the support of Armenia’s Ministry of High-Tech Industry and the Agency of Digital Government.

The hackathon brought together developers, researchers, students, startup founders and other AI specialists. The goal was to turn new knowledge and technologies into practical solutions for Armenia.

Participants worked in teams of three to four people. During the 24-hour event, they developed ideas, created working prototypes, tested their solutions and presented the results to an expert jury.

The jury included Gevorg Mantashyan, Acting First Deputy Minister of High-Tech Industry; David Zohrabyan of OpenAI; David Arakelyan of Eleveight AI; Ara Hakhverdyan of AI9; Vazgen Hakobjanyan of Magical Labs; Artavazd Yeritsyan of Async; and Vazgen Badalyan of Evidenso.

The jury evaluated the projects based on the relevance of the ideas, technical implementation, measurable results and their potential for real-world use.

“Our goal is to ensure that the development of artificial intelligence in Armenia is not limited to knowledge and research. It is important to create an environment where knowledge can quickly become working solutions, new products and companies. Hackathons like this bring together talent, technology and real-world problems,” Mantashyan said.

The main prizes were sponsored by OpenAI. The first-place team received $12,000 worth of OpenAI API credits, the second-place team received $7,500 worth, and the third-place team received $5,000 worth.

Eleveight AI also provided a special prize of $5,000 worth of GPU computing resources.

The hackathon was organized by the Armenia LLM Summer School, AI9 Startup Campus and YerevaNN.

The initiative aims to support the development of Armenia’s AI community and help turn new knowledge into practical solutions, technological products and innovative projects.

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· AUGUST 10, 2026