YEREVAN, Armenia — From June 29 to July 10, the Yerevan Academy for Linguistics and Philosophy (YALP) 2026 transformed Yerevan into a center for intellectual exchange, bringing together leading scholars and talented students from around the world for an intensive program exploring philosophy and linguistics.
Hosted at the American University of Armenia (AUA), YALP has established itself as a unique international academy that combines rigorous academic training with cross-cultural collaboration. The program offered a rich curriculum taught by internationally recognized researchers from leading universities across Europe and North America.
This year’s academy welcomed more than 70 participants from Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Lebanon, India, Estonia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Throughout the program, students took intensive courses covering a broad range of topics in philosophy and linguistics. In philosophy, students explored topics from feminist epistemology and metaphysics to science denialism, logical paradoxes, ancient philosophy, and more.
This year, philosophy courses were dominated by courses on ethics broadly construed. Two of these courses — Professor Armen Marsoobian’s (AUA) course on the philosophical foundations of human rights, and Dr. Anthony Nguyen’s (Florida State University) course on AI Ethics — directly addressed some seminal moral issues. Other courses such as Professor Miriam Ronzoni’s (University of Manchester) course on feminist epistemology and epistemic injustice, and the course on political epistemology, focused on important issues regarding ethics of knowledge.
The Political Epistemology course was taught by the research team of the AUA Center for Ethics in Public Affairs: European Research Area Chair and the Center’s director, Professor Maria Baghramian (AUA and University College Dublin), Dr. Arshak Balayan, the Center’s deputy director and YALP co-organizer, and ETICA postdoctoral fellows Dr. Rory Aird and Dr. Xintong Wei. The crash course was complemented by lectures on science denialism by Dr. Filippo Ferrari (University of Bologna).
In addition to these, YALP participants also had the chance to attend a compelling metaphysics course taught by Professor Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra’s (University of Oxford), two courses on philosophy of logic by Dr. Ferrari and Dr. Ludovica Contis (University of Vienna), and a course on the history of philosophy by Professor Chelsea Harrys (Southern Connecticut State University).
The linguistics curriculum was equally diverse since it included intensive courses on phonology taught by Dr. Tatevik Yolyan (Rutgers University), formal semantics taught by Dr. Setayesh Dashti (University of Göttingen), modality in language taught by Dr. Paloma Jeretič (University of Pennsylvania), computational semantics taught by Dr. Aleksandre Maskharashvili (University of Illinois), psycholinguistics taught by Dr. Kelsey Sasaki (Pomona College), the syntax and semantics of exceptive and exclusive constructions taught by Dr. Luisa Seguin (CNRS), Dr. Dean McHugh’s (University of Edinburgh) course on causal models and meaning and Dr. Lev Blumenfeld’s (Carlton University) course on phonology of poetry.
Professor Maria Polinsky (University of Maryland), one of the world’s leading scholars of bilingualism and heritage languages, taught a course exploring contemporary research on bilingualism, giving students insight into one of the fastest-growing areas of linguistic science.
Special sessions were dedicated during the second week to student presentations. The sessions were facilitated by Professor Daniel Altshuler (University of Oxford) and Dr. Susanna Melkonian-Altshuler (Birkbeck, University of London), who created a supportive and engaging environment for discussion and learning. All participants were encouraged to present their research during the second week of the program, and for many this was a unique opportunity to share their research interests and theoretical questions with an international audience and to receive valuable feedback from their peers and the academy’s distinguished faculty.
Beyond the classroom, YALP is designed to foster an international scholarly community, and provides participants with an opportunity not only to learn from leading researchers but also to become part of an expanding global network of young scholars interested in philosophy and linguistics.
YALP reflects a growing commitment to strengthening the humanities and language sciences in the region while connecting local participants with international research communities. Through bringing distinguished international faculty to Armenia and welcoming participants from across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America, the academy contributes to the development of long-term academic partnerships and new research projects.
The Yerevan Academy for Linguistics and Philosophy 2026 was supported by Horizon Europe Grant No. 101187166 through the ETICA project of the Center for Ethics in Public Affairs. This support reflects ETICA’s commitment to ethics education and to promoting international collaboration, ethical inquiry, and academic excellence through innovative educational initiatives.
As global challenges increasingly require interdisciplinary perspectives, YALP continues to demonstrate the value of bringing together philosophy and linguistics to investigate questions about language, knowledge, reasoning, ethics, and human understanding. The 2026 program marks another exceptional summer of intellectual discovery, rigorous scholarship, and international collaboration in the center of Yerevan.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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 (WSCUC) 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.
