After an undergraduate degree in History and Archaeology at Durham University, I came to Manchester to undertake an MA in Modern European History and completed an AHRC funded PhD here in 2005. Following this, I studied Russian language at Glasgow University and was the first Manoogian-Simone Postdoctoral Fellow in Armenian history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to returning to Manchester as Senior Lecturer in Modern History in 2018, I was a member of the History Department at Sheffield Hallam University for six years.

I am a historian of refugees, migration and humanitarianism in the modern world. My work focuses on Armenia and its diasporas. It sits at the boundary of histories of Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, examining movements and connections across imperial and national borders in the aftermath of conflict. In particular, my work examines the consequences of forced displacement in the short and long term; from humanitarianism, emergency relief and resettlement to collective memory and the challenges of refugee and diasporic ‘homecomings’.

From September 2025 I am Associate Director Reseach (CIDRAL and Research Centres) in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures.

My current project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, examines how mass displacement and its aftermaths shaped the South Caucasus 1914-1928. It examines how Soviet authorities, the Armenian diaspora and international organisations responded to mass displacement through emergency relief measures, resettlement schemes and attempts to initiate co-operative schemes for the ‘development’ of the region. I am completing a monograph provisionally titled Unsettled States: Refugees, Relief and Development in Armenia and the South Caucasus.

I also recently co-edited a transnational history of humanitarian relief and international intervention in Armenia, Aid to Armenia, which was published by Manchester University Press.

My first monograph, Imagining Armenia, was published by Manchester University Press in 2009 (paperback, 2016). This drew upon postcolonial theory and critiques of Orientalism to examine how European actors engaged with regions conceived of as ‘in-between’ East and West, and with what consequences. Other past research on the ‘repatriation’ of diaspora Armenians to the Soviet Union after the Second World War has been published in Cultural and Social History, History and Memory and Kritika.

I am also interested in histories of conflict, displacement and memory in the wider South Caucasus region. I am a member of the editorial board of Caucasus Studies journal and co-convenor of the BASEES Eurasian Regions Study Group. I am also part of the editorial team for the Peripheral Histories? blog and welcome suggestions for articles, interviews or other contributions on the Caucasus region or on themes of displaccement and migration.

I am co-editor of Diaspora - A Journal of Transnational Studies and managing editor for the Russia and Eastern Europe section of the 1914-18 Online Encyclopedia. 

I am happy to hear from students interested in postgraduate study in refugee and migration history, histories of the modern South Caucasus or, more broadly, late Russian imperial and Soviet history.