Artsakh Uprooted: Aftermaths of Displacement

Mohamed El-Naggar is Interim Dean of USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, where he holds an appointment as Dean’s Professor of Physics and Astronomy and serves in a number of leadership and advisory roles at the university. He previously held the Robert D. Beyer Early Career Chair in Natural Sciences (2015-2021). El-Naggar served from 2021 to 2024 as Divisional Dean for the Physical Sciences and Mathematics at Dornsife, overseeing strategic planning, faculty appointments, and recruiting, and the advancement of research across the physical sciences and mathematics.

Nina Shahverdyan is an educator from Stepanakert, Artsakh. She obtained her BA in communications from the American University of Armenia and later worked as a teacher with Teach for Armenia in two villages in Artsakh. Her teaching career coincided with the blockade and ethnic cleansing of the region, and she documented the realities of Artsakh through her Instagram and the “Inadu” podcast. Nina is now pursuing her MA in International Educational Development at Columbia University in New York. Her area of focus is education in emergencies and conflict zones.

Ashot Gabrielyan is an educator from Artsakh, who taught in the village of Kolkhozashen through Teach for Armenia. During the Artsakh blockade, Gabrielyan shared stories from his everyday life, including his family’s struggles, his students’ experiences, and more. In the absence of English language news coming out of Artsakh, Gabrielyan’s social media provided essential information and updates to the world. Gabrielyan is currently the Education in Emergencies Project Manager at Teach for Armenia.

Karén Karslyan is a poet, visual artist, and translator. He earned his PhD in English from Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Karslyan is the author of the following Armenian-language books: On the Tip of the Tongue («Լեզվի ծայրին»), a poetry collection (Granish, 2022); The Regime Is In Panic («Ռեժիմը խուճապի մեջ է»), a play (Actual Art, 2019, staged by Tech Degh); Aterazma («Ատերազմա»), a typographic film-novel, the first book of conceptual writing in Eastern Armenian (Inknagir, 2016); Doomed to Spell («Գրողի ծոցը»), a poetry collection (Inknagir, 2010); X Frames/Sec («X կադր/վայրկյան»), collected works (Bnagir, 2003). Dr. Karslyan is the chairman of the Writers for Peace Committee of PEN Armenia.

Stephan Astourian is Director of the Turpanjian Institute of Social Sciences and a professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the American University of Armenia. He earned his PhD from UCLA under the late Richard Hovannisian. Along with his expertise in the history and politics of the modern Caucasus and the Middle East, Dr. Astourian received substantial training in both France and the U.S. in diplomatic history, political psychology (as it pertains to leaders, decision-making, and international relations more broadly), crisis management, and conflict resolution. He has published extensively on topics related to modern Armenian, Turkish, and Azerbaijani history and politics.

Stepan (Steve) Bagmanyan is the Instrument Repair Supervisor at the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Last Repair Shop, in which he shared his family story as refugees from Baku, Azerbaijan. Bagmanyan as part of its “California History Through Armenian Experiences” oral history project.

Arman Dzhragatspanyan is a researcher graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2022, where he initiated the trauma and resilience study following the 2020 Artsakh War. After graduating from USC, he moved to Armenia to pursue a Master’s in Political Science and International Affairs at the American University of Armenia (AUA). He graduated from AUA in 2024 and has since moved back to Los Angeles, where he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, specializing in Neuropsychology. His future research will seek to understand further the neural and microbiological mechanisms underlying thoughts and emotions and the relationship between gut microbiota and the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Shushan Karapetian is Director of the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies. She sets the vision for the Institute and leads research and scholarship initiatives, deepening integration with entities both on and off campus and expanding the scope of academic programming. She researches, teaches, and writes about the Armenian experience, focusing on competing ideologies at the intersection of language and the construction of transnational identity. Dr. Karapetian received a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA in 2014, where she taught Armenian Studies courses for more than 10 years. She hosts the Institute’s flagship podcast “Language Therapy with Dr. K,” which explores language in the Armenian context.

Professor Frank Manis is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Southern California. He has published over 55 peer-reviewed articles, 8 chapters and 1 edited book on the psychology and neuroscience of dyslexia and reading disabilities. He was funded for several years by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study reading in children and adults with dyslexia, and to co-conduct a 9-year longitudinal study of literacy development in Spanish-speaking children. He served a 5-year term as editor for Scientific Studies of Reading. He is the author of interactive educational websites entitled My Virtual Child (2006), My Virtual Teen (2009), and co-author of My Virtual Life (2012). He is the author of a developmental psychology textbook entitled, The Dynamic Child (2017, 2020, 2025). He served as a Distinguished Fellow of the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching, and received the Raubenheimer Outstanding Faculty Award at USC in 2011. He has taugt graduate courses on cognitive development, and teaching techniques for new graduate TAs. His undergraduate courses have included Developmental Psychology and Children’s Learning and Cognitive Development. His paternal grandparent was Dikran Manissedjian, who emigrated to the U.S. before 1915, and his paternal grandmother was Asnive Manissedjian (neé Egavian), who was a genocide survivor who emigrated to the U.S. in 1918.

Clayton Stephenson is an Associate Professor (Teaching) at the University of Southern California and the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Psychology. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from Claremont Graduate University with an emphasis in cognitive psychology and research methods including quantitative and qualitative methods. Dr. Stephenson’s expertise focused on the relationship between working memory and intelligence, sex comparisons in cognitive abilities, and evidence-based principles of learning. While Dr. Stephenson continues to engage in research on cognition, he also enjoys being involved in a breadth of research topics. For example, he has been involved in research on perceptions of assertive women leaders, evaluators’ values, perceptions of sex differences in cognitive abilities, and trauma and resilience experienced by Armenians during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Dr. Stephenson was also the President of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association for the 2023/2024 academic year and continues as the Past-President and the Teaching Conference Coordinator for the 2024/2025 academic year.

Dr. Valentina Ogaryan is a licensed clinical psychologist as well as the Clinical Director at the UCLA Simms/Mann Center for Integrative Oncology. She oversees clinical programming as well as the clinical staff providing direct psychosocial care to patients and families impacted by a cancer diagnosis. Dr. Ogaryan has extensive clinical experience in providing direct care to individuals experiencing and navigating grief, chronic illness, as well as adjustment to significant life stressors. Dr. Ogaryan teaches, trains and supervises advanced doctoral interns and students while overseeing the multidisciplinary training program. Dr. Ogaryan has spoken and written in academic and nonacademic outlets on the intricacies of psychosocial impacts of cancer, as well as ways to support individuals coping with treatment and survivorship.

Ara Oshagan is a diasporic multi-disciplinary artist and curator whose practice explores collective and personal histories of dispossession, legacies of violence, identity and (un)imagined futures. Oshagan works in photography, collage, installation, film, book arts, public art and monuments and has published four books of photography. He has presented his work at the Annenberg Space for Photography, International Center of Photography in NY and TedX Yerevan and has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Armenia, Morocco, and South Korea. His work has been featured on NPR, LA Times, Hyperallergic, Mother Jones and Art Papers. Based in Los Angeles, Oshagan is an Artist-in-Residence at the 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica and a curator at the City of Glendale ReflectSpace Gallery.

Oshagan is collaborating with writer, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, on a multi-year, multimedia work, What Can I Tell You, We Lost Everything, considering the displacement of Armenians from Artsakh.

Micheline Aharonian Marcom has published eight books, including a trilogy of novels about the Armenian genocide and its aftermath in the 20th century. She has received fellowships and awards from the Lannan Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the US Artists’ Foundation, and in 2022 she was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Her first novel, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, was a New York Times Notable Book and Runner-Up for the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, won the PEN/USA Award for Fiction. Marcom founded and co-directs the digital oral history project, The New American Story Project www.newamericanstoryproject.org. She is currently collaborating with artist and filmmaker, Ara Oshagan, on a multi-year multimedia work considering the displacement of Armenians from Artsakh. She is Director and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Prof. Hannah R. Garry is Professor from Practice and Executive Director of The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law. She is an internationally-recognized legal scholar, teacher and advocate with over 25 years’ experience, spanning more than 25 countries, in human rights, international criminal law, international refugee law, and transitional justice, and has held prior faculty appointments at University of Southern California (USC) Law and University of Colorado Law.

Steve Swerdlow, esq. is a human rights lawyer and Associate Professor of the Practice of Human Rights in the Department of Political and International Relations at the University of Southern California. An expert on the former Soviet region, Swerdlow teaches international human rights law, human rights research and advocacy, and human rights across Eurasia. Swerdlow has been a visiting professor at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Webster University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and the University of San Diego.

Aroussiak Gabrielian is a trained Architect, Landscape Architect, and Media Artist. She works with living organisms, natural systems, and atmospheric phenomena, to explore multispecies entanglements across scales. Her work aims to torque our imaginaries to help us rethink our interactions with both human and non-human agents on this planet. Aroussiak’s work has received numerous design recognitions including the Emerging Designer Awards from the Design Futures Initiative, the Tomorrowland Projects Foundation Award administered through the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Word Changing Ideas Awards recognized by Fast Company, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. She has exhibited internationally at various institutions, including SXSW, Ars Electronica Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, the Eli & Edith Broad Museum Art Lab, A+D Museum Los Angeles, the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City, Science Gallery Detroit, among others. Aroussiak is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism at the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, where she teaches design across ecologic and biologic scales. She is an Affiliate Faculty of Media Arts Practice at the School of Cinematic Arts and Founding Director of the Landscape Futures Lab, which is focused on expanding the climate imaginary. Outside of academia, Aroussiak is a member of NEW INC, the arts and technology incubator of the New Museum in New York City, and Founding Design Principal of foreground design agency, a critical design practice based in Los Angeles that aims to dismantle structures of power and privilege that render specific humans, species, and matter silent.

The editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, Hrag Vartanian is an editor, art critic, artist, curator, and lecturer on contemporary art with an expertise in the intersection of art and politics. In 2009, Hrag co-founded Hyperallergic with his partner Veken Gueyikian in response to changes in the art world and the media industry. Breaking news, award-winning reporting, informed opinions, and quality conversations about art have helped Hyperallergic reach over a million readers a month. In 2018, Harvard University’s Neiman Reports wrote that Hyperallergic was “named the top digital resource for arts journalists, according to the survey of more than 300 visual arts writers and critics working regularly for U.S. publications.” In 2021, he edited a special dossier on Artsakh, titled “Artsakh: Cultural Heritage Under Threat,” that featured writing by leading thinkers and reporters in the field. In 2022, the historian and artist Murat Cem Mengüç, writing for the Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies, called the special issue “probably the most important collection of cultural heritage studies published last year and it is a substantial introduction for future academic research on the war in Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh.” Vartanian’s work has helped to shift the field of art writing and criticism by championing straight-forward online reporting that asserts the power of journalism to inform public debate, while retaining a sensitivity to the cultural and economic realities that inform the world of art, culture, and politics. He is featured in Out of the Picture (2024), a film about art critics living through a period of transformation for both art and media. Directed by Mary-Louise Schumacher, the feature-length documentary premiered at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in November 2023 as part of the Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture Series and is currently screening at film festivals around the world.

A Cooking Demonstration by Zhengyalov Hatz.

A Community Poetry Project by Raffi Wartanian.

Balin Schneider is a director and producer based in Los Angeles. His first feature film, Out of Time: The Material Issue Story, is now out on Amazon Prime Video. Schneider obtained his Master of Arts degree from the University of Southern California in Specialized Journalism with an emphasis on International Reporting, where the European Union External Action Service trained him in Brussels, Belgium. He previously worked in broadcast journalism where he won a KAB Award for reporting and interviewing former Sec. of State Mike Pompeo. Schneider has written for LAist, The 74 and his work has been featured in Forbes, Axios, Brooklyn Vegan and Pitchfork. His work can be found in Go Further: More Literary Appreciations on Power Pop. He is currently the Executive Director of documentary studio arvonia films. While at USC, Schneider took an interest in the Armenian diaspora through local reporting. After hearing community stories, he decided to report beyond Los Angeles. He flew to Armenia where he filmed My Dearest Artsakh, a short documentary. The film is a story about a displaced teenager from Artsakh, who grapples with feelings of loss, her new life and coming of age.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was turned into an HBO limited series. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, his most recent publication is A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial. His next book is To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, forthcoming from Harvard University Press in 2025. He teaches at the University of Southern California, where he is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English.

Filmmaker and screenwriter Eric Nazarian is an honors graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and the recipient of the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for his screenplay, Giants. Currently, he is in post-production on Die Like a Man, a rite of passage feature film about the aftereffects of gun violence in a gentrifying Westside neighborhood in L.A. While making the film, Nazarian created a social impact audiovisual literacy program with the aim of combating gun violence in at-risk communities through grassroots filmmaking.

Described as “relentless” by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Simon Maghakyan is a political scientist who researches heritage and security. He is the 20th Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies at California State University, Fresno, a Community Scholar at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. Previously, he was affiliated with Tufts University, the University of Colorado, Denver, and Cranfield University, where he earned a PhD in Defense and Security, focusing on heritage crime. His professional and community experiences range from founding the applied research firm Heritage Intel to spearheading Colorado’s capitol genocide memorial. His publications include a forensic Hyperallergic exposé of Nakhichevan’s cultural erasure, acclaimed as “groundbreaking” by Forbes and “rock-solid” by The Guardian. His investigative writing has been cited at the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice, and his analyses have been featured by the BBC, Le Monde, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Time. Dr. Maghakyan is the author of Sovereign Heritage Crime: Security, Autocracy, and the Material Past, a critical heritage studies theoretical element, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

A native of Gyumri, Armenia, Dr. Artyom Tonoyan is a sociologist and Visiting Professor of Global Studies at Hamline University, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His research interests include sociology of religion, religion and politics in the South Caucasus, and religion and nationalism in post-Soviet Russia. His articles have appeared in Demokratizatsiva: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, Society, and Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, among others. He has been a frequent guest on the BBC, Deutsche Welle, France 24, and other outlets. He is the editor of the recently published volume Black Garden Aflame: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict in the Soviet and Russian Press.

Alexis Pazoumian is a photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on social and documentary subjects. His approach highlights communities living on the margins of society. From Armenia to the United States, and more recently Siberia, notions of humanity, identity, and society are central to his work. Alexis is the author of two books published by Éditions André Frère: Faubourg Treme (2018) and Sacha (2020). In 2020, with the support of Arte, he directed a documentary on Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2022, he released the short film Bellus in collaboration with Canal+. His first feature-length documentary, Jardin Noir, will be broadcast on France Télévisions in summer 2024. Alexis has participated in several international exhibitions and collaborates with NGOs such as Action Against Hunger. He has also directed numerous commercial films for brands such as Nike, L’Oréal, Société Générale, Uber, Google, and regularly contributes to publications like The Guardian, The Washington Post, Vice, National Geographic, Libération, and Télérama.

Hrach Martirosyan was born in 1964, November 10, in Kirovakan (nowadays Vanadzor), Armenia. After graduating from Vanadzor Pedagogical Institute where he studied Armenian Language and Literature (1986-1991), Dr. Martirosyan worked at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Armenian Academy of Sciences in Yerevan as a researcher under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Sargis Harutyunyan (1991-1994). Dr. Martirosyan carries out an online course and a research project on the History of the Armenian language at “Hayerenagitut‘yan akademia.”

Lika (Anzhelika) Zakaryan was born in 1994 in Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh. Studied: Political Science/ Artsakh State University Master’s degree. During the 44-Day Artsakh War in 2020, Lika Zakaryan started to write and post her diary, living through the shelling in bunkers. The diary became widely read and loved by people worldwide and remains a definitive chronicle of those forty-four days. The following year, Lika with the support of Creative Armenia NGO, published the diaries as a book: “44 Days: Diary from an Invisible War”. Also, she co-wrote the documentary on the Artsakh war in 2020 “Invisible Republic”. Her film was screened at various film festivals in the USA and Europe, as well as at the US Capitol and the European Parliament. At the moment she is working as a freelance journalist and has her podcast series “Muklimandil” at Civilnet, where she collects human stories in the Artsakh dialect to preserve the stories and the dialect.

Shushan Karapetian is Director of the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies. She sets the vision for the Institute and leads research and scholarship initiatives, deepening integration with entities both on and off campus and expanding the scope of academic programming. She researches, teaches, and writes about the Armenian experience, focusing on competing ideologies at the intersection of language and the construction of transnational identity. Dr. Karapetian received a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA in 2014, where she taught Armenian Studies courses for more than 10 years. She hosts the Institute’s flagship podcast “Language Therapy with Dr. K,” which explores language in the Armenian context.

Papazian’s scholarship primarily focuses on Armenian experiences in contemporary Turkey. His ethnographic research investigates Turkey’s diverse landscape of Armenianness, studying Christian Armenians, descendants of Islamized Armenians identifying as Muslim or Alevi Armenian today, and labor migrants from the Republic of Armenia in Istanbul. His research probes the official categorization and treatment of Armenianness and Armenians in post-genocide Turkey, and examines issues related to religion, conversion, racialization, migration, diasporicity, and intra-ethnic relations and boundaries, among others. More recently, he has been conducting research in Armenia, studying Turkish Armenians who have established residence there and examining the evolving perceptions toward Turkey and Turks in Armenian society and politics following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Papazian received his DPhil in Anthropology and MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford and his BA in Communication Arts from the Lebanese American University. He joins USC from the faculty at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan. He has previously held postdoctoral and visiting positions at UCLA, CSU Fresno, and the University of Cambridge.

Emily Mkrtichian is a filmmaker, multimedia artist, and interdisciplinary creative collaborator. Her artistic practice reflects her upbringing in a displaced, diasporic family, and explores radically personal, alternative archives of places and people, especially from the SWANA region, and a deep commitment to the healing power of relational, ethical, collaborative storytelling. Her multimedia Installation, Luys i Luso, made in collaboration with Tigran Hamasyan, has been exhibited in museums, concert halls, and public spaces around the world. Emily has been a Flaherty Seminar Fellow, a LA Public Arts Activation Fund recipient, A Locarno Film Festival Open Doors grant winner, a UnionDocs Summer Lab Fellow, a Torino Film Lab Fellow, and a resident at the Yerevan Institute of Contemporary Art. She currently splits her time between the US and Armenia.

Alexis Pazoumian is a photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on social and documentary subjects. His approach highlights communities living on the margins of society. From Armenia to the United States, and more recently Siberia, notions of humanity, identity, and society are central to his work. Alexis is the author of two books published by Éditions André Frère: Faubourg Treme (2018) and Sacha (2020). In 2020, with the support of Arte, he directed a documentary on Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2022, he released the short film Bellus in collaboration with Canal+. His first feature-length documentary, Jardin Noir, will be broadcast on France Télévisions in summer 2024. Alexis has participated in several international exhibitions and collaborates with NGOs such as Action Against Hunger. He has also directed numerous commercial films for brands such as Nike, L’Oréal, Société Générale, Uber, Google, and regularly contributes to publications like The Guardian, The Washington Post, Vice, National Geographic, Libération, and Télérama.

Emily Mkrtichian is a filmmaker, multimedia artist, and interdisciplinary creative collaborator. Her artistic practice reflects her upbringing in a displaced, diasporic family, and explores radically personal, alternative archives of places and people, especially from the SWANA region, and a deep commitment to the healing power of relational, ethical, collaborative storytelling. Her multimedia Installation, Luys i Luso, made in collaboration with Tigran Hamasyan, has been exhibited in museums, concert halls, and public spaces around the world. Emily has been a Flaherty Seminar Fellow, a LA Public Arts Activation Fund recipient, A Locarno Film Festival Open Doors grant winner, a UnionDocs Summer Lab Fellow, a Torino Film Lab Fellow, and a resident at the Yerevan Institute of Contemporary Art. She currently splits her time between the US and Armenia.

Alexis Pazoumian is a photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on social and documentary subjects. His approach highlights communities living on the margins of society. From Armenia to the United States, and more recently Siberia, notions of humanity, identity, and society are central to his work. Alexis is the author of two books published by Éditions André Frère: Faubourg Treme (2018) and Sacha (2020). In 2020, with the support of Arte, he directed a documentary on Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2022, he released the short film Bellus in collaboration with Canal+. His first feature-length documentary, Jardin Noir, will be broadcast on France Télévisions in summer 2024. Alexis has participated in several international exhibitions and collaborates with NGOs such as Action Against Hunger. He has also directed numerous commercial films for brands such as Nike, L’Oréal, Société Générale, Uber, Google, and regularly contributes to publications like The Guardian, The Washington Post, Vice, National Geographic, Libération, and Télérama.

Writer-Director Ted Braun works in non-fiction across documentary and scripted forms with a focus on global conflict. He is best known for his feature documentaries Darfur Now (2007), Betting on Zero (2017), and ¡Viva Maestro! (2022). Braun teaches screenwriting at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and is the Joseph Campbell Endowed Chair in Cinematic Ethics. In 2018 Variety named him one of the world’s Top Ten Teachers in Film and TV.

Artak Beglaryan is a genocide survivor from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), who fled his ancient homeland in September 2023 due to a 9-month blockade, aggression and genocide by Azerbaijan. Currently, he serves as the president of the newly-established “Union for the Protection of the Interests and Rights of the Artsakh People” NGO. His work focuses on raising global awareness about the genocide and advocating for international justice and protection for his compatriots sheltered in Armenia. Previously, Artak Beglaryan held several high-ranking positions in the Republic of Artsakh. He was the Human Rights Ombudsman from 2018 to 2020 and the Chief of Presidential Staff from 2020 to 2021. In 2021-2022, he served as the State Minister, the second position in the Government, coordinating the activities of mostly humanitarian ministries. Artak Beglaryan’s personal experiences have deeply influenced his career. His father was killed in the war with Azerbaijan when Artak was just four years old, and he lost his eyesight due to a landmine explosion at the age of six. These tragedies instilled in him a resilient spirit and a deep sense of responsibility to serve his people, advocate for peace and uphold human rights.

Josh Kun is a cultural historian, author, curator, and MacArthur Fellow. His books include Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, and others. As a curator and artist, his projects have appeared with Getty, Prospect New Orleans, Grammy Museum, SFMOMA, California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Public Library, and more. He has been the recipient of a Berlin Prize and an American Book Award. He is Vice Provost for the Arts at USC, where is a Professor and Chair of Cross-Cultural Communication in the USC Annenberg School. He is currently writing a book on music and migration in the 21st century for MCD/FSG.

Lyoka became famous for his song “Tun Tarek” (“Take Me Home”), which now has over 5.7 million views on YouTube. Lyoka, who has an iron leg (half of his leg is an endoprosthesis) and an iron heart, miraculously survived. Like many of our compatriots, he too has had to leave his home many times and start everything from scratch. The first time was when he was a child; his family hardly escaped the Maragha massacre. Lyoka lost his home a second time in Nor Maragha on November 9, 2020, and a third time in Stepanakert in 2023. Lyoka’s works are based on the story of his life and family; through his bold and sincere songs, he speaks about the most personal feelings.

William Deverell is an historian of the American West and Co-Director of The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He currently serves as the Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences at USC Dornsife. He received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University in American Studies and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in United States history from Princeton University. He has written widely on the history and culture of the 19th and 20th century American West.