Projects & Initiatives

Creative Horizons: Art in the Post-Soviet Era

This venture gives audiences the opportunity to hear from working artists in the region as they discuss their methods, perspectives, and aspirations. The series features videos, followed by online discussions featuring the artist and moderated by regional specialists from ASU, USF, or Miami University.

Reading Groups: Beyond Borders

From 2020-2021, the Melikian Center hosted an online book group focusing on fiction and memoir from Russia, Eurasia and East Europe. In 2023, the Center collaborated with Tempe Public Library to launch the Beyond Borders book club, featuring authors who explore themes of mobility, curiosity and identity in encounters across cultural borders at the edges of Europe. 

Kino Nights: Film Screenings

A free monthly series of curated screenings and conversations hosted by the Melikian Center, showcasing groundbreaking films from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Each event includes timely conversations with scholars and artists and is open to the public.

Professional Workshops

The Melikian Center is working with professors, students, and other writers to get their work from idea to publications in places where the public can readily access the knowledge, as well as other valuable skills.

Confronting Authoritarianism

A collaboration between the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, The Melikian Center, the Center for Jewish Studies and the Narrative Storytelling Initiative—will uncover and relate alternative lessons from the past and present, where active and engaged citizens have challenged, resisted or reversed autocratic projects.

Lowe Family Lecture Series

Made possible by The Lowe Family Holocaust and Genocide Education Endowment this lecture series is designed to generate public awareness about the danger of authoritarian, totalitarian, and nationalistic regimes and the causes and conditions that foster genocides.

Fulbright Pre-Departure Orientation

In 2019, the Melikian Center began hosting pre-departure orientations for Fulbright scholars, researchers and English language teaching assistants awarded grants for study and work in Central Asia.

Citizen-Diplomacy: An Arizonans' Guide

The Melikian Center facilitates a collaboration amoung ASU librarians and archivists, Tempe History Museum, and Tempe Sister Cities to document the impact and reach of efforts in citizen diplomacy in greater Phoenix.

Russian Studies at the Margins

The Melikian Center is working with Arizona educators and specialists to create learning materials on indigenous communities of Russia and Arizona and the Borderland Communities and Forced Displacement in the Former Soviet Union. 

American Studies Center at Yerevan State University

The Melikian Center is working with Yerevan State University (YSU) on a grant sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan for an initial three-year program to create an American Studies Center at YSU.

Internationalizing Kosovo 1989-2019: Intervention, Recognition, and the Politics of Sovereign Statehood in Comparative Perspective

Conference held January 30-February 1, 2019

This conference brought together scholars from different disciplines to explore the many dimensions of the “Kosovo case” and its impact on policy-making and scholarship in international relations.