Guests of Groong Podcast

Barlow Der Mugrdechian

Dr. Barlow Der Mugrdechian is a historian and teaches Armenian language, art, literature, history, and culture courses in the Armenian Studies Program at California State University, Fresno. His main area of research has been Armenian literature, and he serves as the Berberian Coordinator of the Armenian Studies Program and the Director of the Center for Armenian Studies. In December 2024, Dr. Der Mugrdechian was elected as the president of the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS).

Benyamin Poghosyan

Dr. Benyamin Poghosyan is a Senior Research Fellow at APRI Armenia, a Yerevan based think tank,and the Chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies. He has served as the vice president for research and head of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense Research University in Armenia. Dr. Poghosyan was a Distinguished Research Fellow at the US National Defense University College of International Security Affairs. He is a graduate from the US State Department Study of the US Institutes for Scholars 2012 Program on US National Security Policy Making. He holds a PhD in history and is a graduate from the 2006 Tavitian Program on International Relations at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Christina Maranci

Christina Maranci is Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Professor of Armenian art and architectural history and Chair of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University.

David Darchiashvili

Dr. David Darchiashvili is a Former MP of the Georgian Parliament from the party United National Movement (2008-2016). Currently he’s not affilicated with any political parties and concentrates on his research and teaching at Ilia State University Tbilisi, with expertise in International Relations. From 2002-2003 Dr. Darchiashvili was a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. He has authored many articles and books, one of his latest publications is Georgia: Warlords, Generals, and Politicians, By David Darchiashvili and Stephen Jones, 2020, Oxford Research Encyclopedias.

David Galstyan

David Galstyan is the leader of the Justice faction in the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh.

Դավիթ Գալստյանը Արցախի Հանրապետության Ազգային Ժողովի պատգամավոր և «Արդարություն» խմբակցության ղեկավար։

Diana Yayloyan

Diana Yayloyan is a Research Associate at the Ankara-based think tank TEPAV, working on Armenia-Turkey civil society dialogue supported by the European Union. She is also a Ph.D. Candidate at the Middle East Technical University with a focus on Gender & Peacebuilding.

Dr. Vartan Matiossian

Vartan Matiossian is an Armenian Studies scholar specialized in history and literature. He is the Executive Director of the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church in New York. Born in Montevideo (Uruguay), he moved to Buenos Aires (Argentina) in his childhood and graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. He has lived in New Jersey since 2000. He obtained his Ph.D. in History from the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia in 2006.

He has published extensively in Armenian, Spanish, and English, including ten books and many scholarly articles, reviews, translations, and commentaries. He has edited several volumes and translated more than two dozen of books into Spanish, English, and Armenian. He is the author in English of Armenian Language Matters (2019), The Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide: Language, History and ‘Medz Yeghern’ (2022), and has co-authored A Woman of the World: Armen Ohanian, the “Dancer of Shamakha” (2023) with Artsvi Bakhchinyan. His book The Color of Choice: The Armenians and the Politics of Race in the United States and Germany (1890-1945) will be published in the summer of 2025.

Dziunik Aghajanian

Ms. Dziunik Aghajanian has served Armenia through the ranks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and most recently as a diplomat, as Armenia’s Ambassador to such countries as the Netherlands, Malaysia, and Indonesia. She received her education at Yerevan State University, Columbia University in NY, and Uppsala University in Sweden.

Edgar Elbakyan

Edgar Elbakyan is a political scientist and social thinker based in Yerevan, Armenia. He is a co-founder of the Armenian Project non-profit organization, which contributes to enhancing Armenian national civil society.