Gomidas Institute

27/12/2025

LONDON CALLING...
EMPIRE, EXILE, AND LITERATURE: ZABEL YESSAYAN AND YERVANT ODIAN IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

We will shortly announce a public event in London, co-sponsored by the Gomidas Institute and CAIA Hayashen. Our guest will be Dr. Nanor Kebranian, a distinguished scholar whose recent work has made significant contributions to Armenian Studies.

Dr. Kebranian is the author of two groundbreaking books. One centers on a curated collection of articles by Zabel Yessayan, published both in Armenian and in English translation. The other is her critical edition and study of Yervant Odian’s "Twelve Years Away from Constantinople."

Both works are highly readable and deeply poignant, offering valuable insight into the fragmented world of the late Ottoman Empire. While Yessayan’s writings engage broad social, political, and ethical themes that cut across communal divisions, Odian’s work sheds light on the little-known inner world of Armenian exiles in Egypt, London, and Paris in the aftermath of the Hamidian massacres of 1895. All of these works are introduced with probing analyses by the author.

Further details about the event will be announced shortly.

All three titles were published by Gomidas Institute (London). The Gomidas Institute is an independent academic organisation dedicated to modern Armenian Studies and research. It is also the most prolific publisher of Armenian-related books in the diaspora.

For more information, please write to [email protected]
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* Yervant Odian, "Twelve Years Away from Constantinople, 1896-1908," translated from Armenian and introduced by Nanor Kebranian London: Gomidas Institute, 2025, xx + 274 pp., ISBN 978-1-909382-81-7, pb., UK£25.00 / US$30.00

* Nanor Kebranian, "Zabel Yessayan on the Threshold: Key Texts on Armenians and Turks as Ottoman Subjects," translated from Armenian by Nanor Kebranian, London : Gomidas Institute, 2023, 144 pp., illust, ISBN 978-1-909382-75-6, pb., UK£20.00 / US$24.00

* Զապէլ Եսայեան՝ "Սեմին Վրայ - Բանալի Գրութիւններ Օսմանահպատակ Հայ եւ Թուրք Կեանքէ," խմբ. եւ ներած. Նանոր Գպրանեան, Լոնտոն : Կոմիտաս Հիմնարկ, 2025, 230 էջ., նկարներ, ISBN 978-1-909382-88-6, թկ., ՄԹ£20.00 / ԱՄՆ$24.00

24/12/2025

In recent weeks, air pollution in Yerevan has emerged as a major issue of public concern in Armenia. In this context, it is worth recounting the significant role of environmentalism in Armenian history, as explored by historian Pietro Shakarian in his study "Haze Over Ararat", published by the Gomidas Institute's Armenian Forum On-Line in 2013.

Submissions

08/12/2025

Press Release: Nora Vosbigian, Gomidas Institute (London)

Founded in 2012, the Amed International Film Festival in Diyarbakir champions independent cinema, especially Kurdish filmmakers resisting mainstream industry power dynamics in Turkey and abroad. Shaped by the women’s liberation paradigm, it celebrates social diversity, ecological awareness, and creative defiance.
Amed’s spirit of cultural transformation helped the festival quickly become a landmark for Kurdish cinema, uniting dispersed initiatives and amplifying Kurdish filmmakers worldwide.
After an eight-year hiatus due to political barriers, the festival returns with renewed momentum under the Middle Eastern Cinema Academy, supported by the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality. More than an event, it is a city-wide expression of freedom, solidarity, and artistic exchange.
This year’s festival includes an award-winning Armenian production, which will be the Turkish premiere of Aurora’s Sunrise (Barz Media, 2022), based on Aurora Mardiganian’s incredible biography, startıng with the destruction of Armenians in Çemişgezek (Ottoman Turkey) in 1915 to her escape and stardom in Hollywood in 1919 and beyond.

Aurora's Sunrıse will be screened on 12 December 2025. For more information please contact [email protected]

25/11/2025

LONDON'S 'DISGRACEFUL VARDAPET' : ARMENIAN PRIEST, ADULTERER, SOVIET AGENT by Felix Corley, Philippe Sukiasyan, Jakub Osiecki, London: Gomidas Institute, 2025, 84 pp, ISBN 978-1-909382-89-3, pb. UK£14 / US$18.00

Abel Abrahamian arrived in London in 1919 as an energetic vardapet (celibate priest). He was instrumental in building the city’s first Armenian church, St Sarkis. He joined the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Patriarch of Constantinople when the king received them at Buckingham Palace. Post-genocide, when the plight of the Armenians was of public concern, he spoke eloquently from public platforms. The young vardapet, by now going by the name Nazarian, was a rising star.
Yet this came to an abrupt halt, when in 1923 he fled London with a young mother, a relative of Calouste Gulbenkian. He was now an adulterer, leaving confusion in the church. The vardapet who had abandoned holy orders teamed up with the Soviet secret police to help destroy the Church which had trained and nurtured him.
How a young man born on the southern rim of the Russian Empire, educated at Echmiadzin seminary and European universities, came and went in a whirlwind through London and back to Soviet Armenia before regaining western Europe is the extraordinary tale told here for the first time.

17/11/2025

"Author Felix Corley does a great job of keeping the story lively and full of the tales of ordinary people." The Economist (15 Nov. 2025)

"With priests being sent to jail and arrested in Armenia for plotting to overthrow the government, now is a good moment to read up about the church. I have been consulting “Catholicos and Commissar,” a study of the church under Soviet rule. Its two volumes of 1491 pages come to 3.6kg. There are few books about Soviet Armenia and Armenians in English but these are like stumbling across an entire library. Author Felix Corley does a great job of keeping the story lively and full of the tales of ordinary people. Stalin’s persecutions almost snuffed out the church but after the second world war it had recovered and was championing a campaign for the Soviet Union to annex former Armenian lands in eastern Turkey. By the time of the Soviet collapse though the church had declined to such an extent that Corely writes that it “was largely an irrelevance” that “impinged little” on daily lives. Acting as a sort of de facto opposition nowadays that period seems well and truly over. Tim Judah, Special correspondent"
-The Economist

11/11/2025

Շուտով լոյս կը տեսնէ

Զապէլ Եսայեան՝ Սեմին Վրայ - Բանալի Գրութիւններ Օսմանահպատակ Հայ եւ Թուրք Կեանքէ, Նանոր (Գպրանեան Խմբ. եւ ներած.), Լոնտոն : Կոմիտաս Հիմնարկ, 2025, 230 էջ., նկարներ. ISBN 978-1-909382-88-6, թկ., ՄԹ£20.00 / ԱՄՆ$24.00
Պատուիրելու համար կապուեցէք՝ [email protected] հասցէով:


https://gomidas.org/books/show/176

11/10/2025

OUT NOW
Smart Nation: A Blueprint for Modern Armenia - Second Edition
Sassoon Grigorian

London: Gomidas Institute, 2025,
xx + 164 pages, maps, photos, illustrations, index
ISBN 978-1-909382-83-1, paperback,
Price: UK£18.00 / US$22.00
More information and orders: [email protected]
https://gomidas.org/books/show/175

08/09/2025

Gérard Chaliand, Memory of My Memory, 2nd edition.
Translated from French by Tito Cohen and Juliet Kepl with a new foreword by Gerard Libaridian (London : Gomidas Institute, 2025), x + 64., ISBN 978-1-909382-86-2, pb., UK£14.00 / US$20.00.

13/08/2025

OUT NOW
Felix Corley, Catholicos and Commissar: The Armenian Church Under the Soviet Regime (London: Gomidas Institute, 2025).
Two volume set: UK£120.00 / US$160.00
For more information: https://gomidas.org
Orders: [email protected]

Vol 1: Pages i-xlii + 1-698, intro, chronology, maps, ISBN 978-1-909382-84-8
Vol. 2: Pages i-ii + 699-1494., index, ISBN 978-1-909382-85-5

13/08/2025

Ali Poyraz, Twenty-One Years, Four Months: The Journal of a Kurdish Political Prisoner, transl. from Turkish into English by Andrew Penny, (London: Gomidas Institute, 2025), 358 pp., photos.
ISBN 978-1-909382-82-4, pb., UK£25.00 / US$35.00
For more info: https://gomidas.org/books/show/173
Orders: [email protected]