Razmik Panossian


Razmik Panossian is a Canadian-Armenian historian and political scientist.

Career

An ethnic Armenian, Panossian was born in Beirut, Lebanon and raised in Canada in a family "engaged with community affairs." He is fluent in English, French, and Armenian. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 2002. His thesis was titled "The evolution of multilocal national identity and the contemporary politics of nationalism: Armenia and its diaspora."
He was director of policy at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development and has served as an international consultant, including at the United Nations Development Programme. He has lectured at the LSE and at the SOAS, University of London. Panossian, currently based in Portugal, has been the director of the department of Armenian communities for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation since 2013.

Publications

''The Armenians''

Panossian is the author of The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars, published by the Columbia University Press in 2006. The book was widely acclaimed for its extensive and balanced coverage of Armenian history and national identity. James R. Russell praised the book in his review as the "most meticulously researched and scholarly study of the development of Armenian national identity ever written in any language; and it is also the best general study of the Armenians I have read." Levon Chorbajian wrote that despite his slight objection, the book is "a remarkably balanced, empirically sound, and theoretically engaging one." William Safran wrote of the book: "a first-rate piece of scholarship. It is exhaustively documented; its footnote references alone are accompanied by details that greatly amplify and complement the text, and the provision of population statistics and other hard data is balanced by numerous poetic evocations of Armenian feelings. The book may well serve as a model for the study of other diaspora nations."

Journal articles