I held a PhD in Armenian Language and Literature and a PhD in Languages, Societies and Cultures (Oriental Studies) from the University of Geneva (Switzerland, 2011) and the University Ca’ Foscari Venice (Italy, 2012). During my PhD, I sought to shed light on the linguistic and conceptual innovations of the Armenian redactions of the logical commentaries by David the Armenian (6th c.), by analysing the epistemological divergencies between the Prolegomena to Philosophy and the Definitions and Divisions of Philosophy in a comparative manner. Between 2012 and 2016, I was lecturer at the Department of Asian and African Mediterranean Studies of the Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. In 2014, I was awarded a two-years grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation (Junior Postdoc scholarship in Armenian Studies). In 2017-2018, I was fellow researcher at the FSCIRE in Bologna. In this period, my own work has open completely new vistas on several Armeno-Byzantine intellectual entanglements which have hitherto been researched only from narrow historical and theological perspectives, ignoring the conceptual underpinnings of some of the most crucial theological ideas in post-Chalcedonian Christological debates. As associate senior researcher within the ERC 9 SALT project (2018-2020), led by Prof. Christophe Erismann, I authored three peer-reviewed articles that have examined various facets of the reception of Hellenic culture in Armenia, focusing on the significance of philosophical arguments and notions of Antique and Late Antique provenance for seventh and eighth centuries Armenian theological developments (see below Annex 3). As recipient of the FWF-Lise-Meitner grant (yr. 2020-2022, Grant-DOI: 10.55776/M2988), I worked on the reception and re-elaboration of Aristotelian philosophy (with a focus on metaphysics and ontology) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Armenian world. During the project I authored three articles, “Whoever Eats My Flesh and Drinks My Blood Remains in Me and I in Him (John 6:56-57): the Armenian Metaphysics of the Sacrifice”, “Civitas magna et opulens: il vademecum politico di Yovhannēs Erznkac‘i (XIII sec.)”, “Julianism in Armenian Christianity: A Preliminary Assessment of the Question”.
Thanks to a Marie-Jahoda scholarship (2023, University of Vienna) I was able to continue my research, especially on manuscript repositories, and to teach one class on the topic “Byzantium and the Caucasus” at the Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Vienna (spring semester 2023). In 2023, I also cooperated with the Institute of Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences as author within the project HEMSEE lead by Dr. Konrad Petrovszky. This collaboration allowed me to widen my professional network and my scientific horizons, as I established fruitful and long-term contacts with several members of the Institute of Balkan Studies and had the opportunity to improve my knowledge on the Armenian Diaspora communities of the early modern southeastern Mediterranean. In November 2023, I was hired by Dr. Adrian Pirtea for my expertise in Armenian intellectual history and culture to collaborate within his ERC project ReviIdEm “Reviving the Ascetic Ideal in the Eastern Mediterranean. Entangled Memories of Early Egyptian Monasticism in Medieval Syriac, Arabic and Armenian Christianity (969-1375 CE), which is currently hosted at the Institute of Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In June 2024, I was invited by the Italian Association of Armenian Studies to deliver a keynote lecture for the Annual Workshop of Armenian Studies. The lecture revolved around my interest on the development of ascetic literature within Armenian urban contexts. Recently, with the team colleagues of the RevIdEm ERC project, I co-organised the international conference “Connected Revivals?” that took place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (6-8 June 2024) and to which I contributed with the paper “In Search for Connection. Sharing Stories and Myths of Conversion and Sanctity in Twelfth Century Armenia”. In January 2024, I was shortlisted for the job interview for a joint tenure-track professorship in Caucasian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna.
In the last years, I started to explore the relationship between material objects and social space. In this vein, I focussed my interest in investigating the social relevance and function of specific texts, places, artefacts, canonical narratives, relics, graves, and pilgrimage sites through which a community constructs its own self-understanding and sense of belonging. The formation of sacred spaces as well as the location of relics across the Armenian highlands and Caucasus defined the construction of social and institutional boundaries to other religious and confessional communities, on the one hand, and shaped collective, shared and transboundary forms of memory and practices among different peoples of the region, on the other. Within this framework, I organized an international workshop with two early career research colleagues from the University of Vienna, Lewis Read and Anahit Safaryan. The workshop “Places of Faith, Places of Memory: Sacral Topography in the Premodern Caucasus” (3-5 October 2024, Austrian Academy of Sciences and University of Vienna) aimed to explore the history of hierotopy in the pre-modern (south-)Caucasus, the organisation and functionality of its sacred spaces, and their social, political, religious, economic, legal, gendered, cultural, visual, and material significance. Following the workshop, an inclusive and systematic expansion of the topic to the entire Caucasus with a view to contemporary developments in regional anthropology and ethnology is envisaged. The discussions and results of the planned workshop will be published in the monograph series of the journal Iran & the Caucasus (Brill), tentative date: end 2025-beginning 2026. By relying on the outlined topic, I and my two abovementioned junior colleagues proposed a panel (round table proposal) for the 25th International Conference of Byzantine Studies (Vienna 2026) that was accepted by the AIEB. The panel aims at bringing together young and experienced international scholars who will discuss narratives about the displacement and re-placement of saintly remains from Constantinople to the East and the other way around as attested in a vast array of Eastern Christian texts, including hagiographies, historiographies, geographies, travelogues, and even historiolae.