This lecture, by Razmik Panossian, analyses the making of modern Armenian national identity in the 19th and 20th centuries. While focusing on politics and history, it also examines cultural and social aspects. In many respects, the “construction” of Armenian national identity was quite different from similar processes that were taking place in various European countries: it was largely diaspora-based and not state-based. In a word, it was “multilocal.”

In the 20th century, after the Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and the Sovietisation of Russian Armenia at the end of 1920, two parallel processes of identity building continued. One was rooted in various diasporan communities, while the other took place in the context of the prevailing communist ideology of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic within the USSR. Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union did these two processes fully came face to face with one another.

The School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Armenian Communities Department), and the Portugal-Armenia Friendship Association have teamed up to offer a five-part series of bi-weekly lectures on the Armenian people. This is the first such initiative in Portugal. The lectures, delivered in English by international experts, introduce the rich history and culture of the Armenians, one of the oldest people in the world, to the academic community in Portugal, as well as to the interested public.