AUA Welcomes Three New CHSS Faculty Members

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YEREVAN, Armenia — With the Spring 2024 semester in full swing, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is pleased to welcome three new faculty members to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS): Dr. Armen Mazmanyan, Dr. Naira Sahakyan, and Dr. Robert Tyler. Read on to meet the newest Assistant and Associate Professors to join CHSS.

Dr. Armen Mazmanyan, CHSS Associate Professor

Dr. Armen Mazmanyan’s connection to AUA dates back to 2003, when he joined the University as an adjunct lecturer. From 2010-12, he served as an Assistant Professor and in 2018 as a Visiting Professor of AUA’s LL.M. program. He earned his Doctor of Laws from the European University Institute in Italy, an LL.M. from the University of Illinois, and a Graduate Degree in Law from Yerevan State University in Armenia. 

He was the Magdalena Yesil Visiting Professor at Duke University (2015) and Resident Senior Research Fellow in the Electoral Integrity Project at the University of Sydney (2015). He also held research visiting positions at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Columbia Law School, University of Antwerp, and at Central European University. Most recently, he served as Visiting Professor at the Dirpolis Institute of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. Since 2014, he has held the position of director at Yerevan’s Apella Institute for Policy Analysis and Dialogue. He has served as a member of the State Commission for Constitutional Reform and as a European Court of Human Rights ad hoc judge for Armenia. As an international expert, Dr. Mazmanyan has advised on constitutional-building and election reforms in over 15 countries. His research focuses on constitution-building, constitutional courts, elections, and post-Soviet politics and law.

Dr. Naira Sahakyan, CHSS Assistant Professor 

Dr. Naira Sahakyan is an Assistant Professor of History at AUA. She earned her Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and both her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Armenia’s Yerevan State University: the former in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, the latter in Arabic Studies. Dr. Sahakyan has served as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge (2022-23) and University of Washington (2018), as well as a library-affiliated scholar at the University of Illinois from 2022-24. From 2021-23, she served as an adjunct lecturer at AUA for several years..

Her research focuses on ethno-religious nationalism and political discourses in the Caucasus and the Middle East. She is the author of Muslim Reformers and the Bolsheviks: The Case of Daghestan (Routledge, 2022) and Armenian Price of Peace: The Revolutions of 1917 and the Future of Armenia in the Perception of the Armenian Intelligentsia (Newmag, 2023, in Armenian). Her current research interests include the transformation of ethno-religious nationalism in the Caucasus and the impact of the regional conflicts on the identities of the people in Caucasus countries, starting from the late imperial era. Dr. Sahakyan’s research has been published in high-ranked journals, including Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Central Asian Survey, Revolutionary Russia, and Caucasus Survey.

Dr. Robert Tyler, CHSS Associate Professor

Dr. Robert Llewellyn Tyler is an Associate Professor of History at AUA. He is from Newport, Wales. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne in Australia, his master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and his bachelor’s degree from University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. 

His primary area of research has been nineteenth-century migration from Europe to the United States and Australia and the subsequent emerging forms of identity in diasporic communities. More specifically, he has considered the continuation, modification, and decline of discernible ethno-linguistic communities, focusing on their changing nature as they interacted with the host community and other migrant groups. 

He has taught in Japan and Argentina, and at universities in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. For the academic year 2009-10, he was the Fulbright-Robertson Visiting Professor of British History at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He has been widely published and remains an active researcher, with scholarly articles appearing recently in the journals Settler Colonial Studies, History Australia, Ethnohistory, and Journal of Migration History.

Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values.