July 4, Day One

Registration

Plenary Room

Welcome and Opening Remarks by Co-Organizers

Speakers:

  • Christina Soloyan, Independent Researcher, Journalist

  • Lala Darchinova, Doctoral Researcher, European University Institute (EUI)

  • Dr Sevil Huseynova, Social Anthropologist, CISR e.V. Berlin

5-minute consecutive conversation-starter presentations, followed by discussion

Plenary Room

The Echoes of the Shifting World in the South Caucasus

This panel brings together scholars and practitioners to explore how global developments — war, authoritarianism, democratization, and resistance — echo within local political cultures, social movements, and identity formations. Together, they will reflect on the entanglement of the South Caucasus in broader transformations and discuss what these reverberations mean for justice, peace, and possibility in the region.

Moderator:

  • Christina Soloyan, Independent Researcher, Journalist

Presenters:

  • Sevinj Samadzade, Doctoral Researcher, Ghent University

  • Dr Maia Barkaia, Associate Professor, Georgian Institute of Public Affairs

  • Dr Laurence Broers, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House

  • Dr Stefan Meister, Political Scientist, DGAP Berlin

  • Eviya Hovhannisyan, PhD Researcher, Armenia

Coffee Break

10-minute presentations followed by Q&A

Plenary Room

Reimagining the future for Armenia and Azerbaijan

This panel explores new ways of thinking about the future of Armenia and Azerbaijan through the lenses of history, space, and law. Moving beyond entrenched narratives and state-centered frameworks, the presenters will engage with questions of normalization, coexistence, and justice.

Moderator:

  • Dr Altay Goyushov, Baku Research Institute / Sciences Po

Presenters:
  • Martin Makaryan,Independent Analyst
    Lessons from History: Armenian-Turkish Normalization Process
  • Ayla Azizova,Architect and Researcher
    Borderlands as Catalysts for Peace: Informal Markets and Spatial Strategies for Cross-Border Coexistence in the South Caucasus.
  • Arman Antonyan,JD (Juris Doctor), Columbia Law School
    Withdrawing Interstate Human Rights Claims: The Armenia-Azerbaijan Cases in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict

10-minute presentations followed by Q&A

Room 1

Identity Constructions in the South Caucasus

This panel examines the shifting and contested landscapes of identity in the South Caucasus, where histories of empire, conflict, and migration continue to shape how individuals and communities understand themselves and one another. The presenters explore a range of sites where identity is constructed and challenged — from literature and collective memory to queerness, post-colonial borders, and recent waves of Russian immigration.

Moderator:

  • Diana Yayloyan, PhD Researcher, Georgetown University

Presenters:
  • Nazrin Gadimova-Akbulut,Independent Researcher
    From Enmity to Reconciliation: Exploring the Images of Armenians in the Soviet and post-Soviet Azerbaijani Literature
  • Luka Bedoshvili,FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders) PhD Fellow at KU Leuven
    Complexifying the Georgian Gaze at Abkhazia: ‘Anarchiving’ in Self-portrait Along the Borderline (Anna Dziapshipa, 2023)
  • Oleg Shevekov,Independent Researcher
    Empire Cries Back: Identity Dynamics and Self-Representation of Russian Immigration to the South Caucasus after 2022
  • Komed (Shota) Saghinadze,Independent Researcher and Activist
    The Confines of Queerness in Georgia: Between Nationalism and NGOization

Lunch Break

Panel Discussion

Plenary Room

Powder Keg Politics: Militarist Ideology and Practices Across Wider Europe

February 2022 marked a symbolic turning point - a new phase of militarization, the most extensive since the end of the Cold War. The large-scale war in Ukraine brought discourses of danger back to the forefront across the European continent. It revived long-dormant discourses about the necessity of “military strength,” based on the belief that “weakness” supposedly provokes aggressors. This, in turn, triggered a renewed drive to rebuild powerful armies. But should we assume that the world was on a path toward demilitarization before this pivotal moment? The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the sweeping militarization in Azerbaijan and Armenia - countries that fall within the geographic boundaries of Europe - challenge that assumption. It is evident that both Russia and other countries in Europe had already embarked on a process of militarization well before the military aggression against Ukraine in 2022. Has the world ever truly been a safe place, when it has long been filled with weapons, people in uniform, and revanchist, chauvinist, and nationalist politicians stoking the flames of conflict? This panel explores the deepening entrenchment of militarist ideologies and practices across the broader European, including post-Soviet, landscapes. We will examine how war - and the machinery that sustains it - has become normalized in political, economic, and cultural life. We will seek to answer a critical question: Can the rise of militarization serve as a barrier to future conflicts and wars, or is it merely a symptom of the problem itself?

Moderator:

  • Dr Sevil HuseynovaSocial Anthropologist, CISR e.V. Berlin

Presenters:

  • Dr Sergey Rumyansev,CISR e.V. Berlin,

  • Dr Vadim RomashovPeace Researcher, University of Eastern Finland

  • Dr Gevorg AvetikyanResearch Fellow, ZMO Berlin

Coffee Break

Roundtable

Room 2

Resisting the Norm: Queer and Feminist Activism in Azerbaijan’s Authoritarian Landscape

In recent years, the global rise of anti-gender movements and increasing crackdowns on queer and leftist spaces have sent shockwaves through activist communities. While these developments have garnered heightened international attention only recently, Azerbaijan has long served as a stark example of the brutal consequences of authoritarian governance on queer and feminist resistance. This roundtable explores the evolving terrain of feminist and queer struggles in a context where survival itself has become a radical act. It brings together interdisciplinary perspectives to examine how activists navigate a climate of intensified repression, where state violence, censorship, and social stigmatization collide.

Moderators:

  • Dr Ram Zamanov,External Collaborator, Charles University and Visiting Researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid

  • Sevinj Samadzade,Doctoral Researcher, Ghent University

Discussant:

  • Dr Nona Shahnazaryan,Associate Researcher at the National Academy of Sciences, Yerevan, Armenia / Centre for Independent Social Research Armenia (CISR Armenia), NGO

Presenters:

  • Lili Nazarov,Artivist

  • Nisa Hajiyeva,PhD Researcher, Charles University

  • Rovshana Orujova,Humboldt University

Roundtable

Room 1

Multiple Realities Through Art

This roundtable explores how art becomes a vessel for navigating, confronting, and reimagining the layered realities of the South Caucasus. Through illustration, storytelling, and visual expression, the participants reflect on personal and collective memory, trauma, displacement, and resilience. Rather than seeking a singular truth, the artists embrace fragmentation, contradiction, and ambiguity — offering alternative ways of knowing and feeling in a region marked by rupture. The discussion will center on how artistic practice can hold space for multiple narratives, challenge dominant discourses, and act as a quiet yet radical form of resistance and world-making.

Moderator:

  • Ella Kanegarian-Berberyan, Curator, Essayist

Presenters:

  • Fidan Akhundova,Illustrator and Fine Artist

  • Arpi Bekaryan,Storyteller

  • Hermine Virabian,Storyteller

  • Vusala Hajiyeva - nullfrequenza,Artist

Presentation by the Art Collective and Stand-up Performance by Comedian Rufat Aghayev

Plenary Room

Exhibition Opening, Stand-up Performance and Informal Reception/Cocktail.

We warmly invite you to join us for an evening of reunion, laughter, and connection. It's a chance to gather with friends and colleagues we haven't seen in far too long and to enjoy each other’s company in an informal, welcoming setting. Alongside the opening of our exhibition, we are thrilled to host a special stand-up performance by Armenian-Azerbaijani comedian Rufat Aghayev—a unique voice bringing humor to our shared experience. We look forward to seeing you there!

Exhibition: Playground. Evji-Evji. Toun-Tounique.

When we were children, we knew how to transform everything. Even the reality. A few objects, a spark of imagination, and a whole new world were born.

Now, shaped by the traumas of the past, edited and re-edited historical narratives, we embrace only limits and fear, forgetting that we still hold that power of transformation.

Toun-Tounique. Evji-Evji [home-home] is created by artists from countries bordering one another but divided by conflict, who never had a chance to meet and play.

Their every step towards one another is an act of resistance and connection.

Join us: we are here to connect minds that have been divided.

July 5, Day Two

Registration

5-minute consecutive conversation-starter presentations, followed by discussion

Plenary Room

Can The South Caucasus Think? Epistemology and Knowledge Production

In a region often framed through external geopolitical lenses or internal nationalist mythologies, what does it mean to produce knowledge from within — and against — dominant structures? Presenters will explore how history, memory, and identity are written and rewritten through the prisms of class, gender, environment, coloniality, and resistance. From the construction of enemies in textbooks to the erasure of democratic struggles and emergence of radical counter-knowledges, this session invites a critical conversation on how — and whether — the South Caucasus can think on its own terms, and what forms that thinking might take.

Moderator:

  • Lala Darchinova,Doctoral Researcher, European University Institute (EUI)

Presenters:
  • Diana Yayloyan,PhD Researcher, Georgetown University
    Beyond Ethno-nationalism: Rewriting South Caucasus History through Class, Gender, and Environment.
  • Dr Turkay Gasimova,European University Institute (EUI)/University of Padova
    Azerbaijan's Troubled History of Democracy: Past, Present, and Future
  • Samira Alakbarli,Independent Researcher
    Epistemic Resistance at the Margins: Radical Counter-Knowledge in Post-War Azerbaijan

Coffee Break

Roundtable

Plenary Room

“In service to the Fatherland”: School, Art, and Commerce in Wartime

Public schools, the arts, and even consumer culture today are actively involved in shaping militarist discourse. Under the slogan of "serving the homeland," the need to instill readiness for war is justified from early childhood, while images of heroes and enemies become embedded in mass culture and commerce. This roundtable invites participants to discuss how and why militarist rhetoric penetrates education, art, and the market, and to reflect on everyday militarism and its role in contemporary societies in Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

Moderator:

  • Dr Vadim Romashov, Peace Researcher, University of Eastern Finland

Presenters:

  • Eviya Hovhannisyan,PhD Researcher, Armenia

  • Ilja Kalinin,Cultural Historian, Humboldt University

  • Dr Sergey Rumyansev,Sociologist, CISR e.V. Berlin

10-minute presentations followed by Q&A

Room 1

Sustaining Independence — Navigating Neoliberal Financial Structures

This panel explores the complex tensions between independence and dependence in the landscape of neoliberal funding and international aid, particularly as they affect civil society, academia, and activism in and around the South Caucasus. How can individuals and institutions sustain critical work without becoming subsumed by donor agendas, bureaucratic gatekeeping, or performative accountability? Through critical reflections on personal experience and structural analysis, the presenters will unpack the invisible costs of financial survival — from self-censorship to NGOization — and ask what forms of autonomy, resistance, and strategic compromise are possible within these global financial architectures.

Moderator:

  • Lala Darchinova, Doctoral Researcher, European University Institute (EUI)

Presenters:

  • Sona Dilanyan,Independent Researcher, Impact Europe

  • Sevinj Samadzade,Doctoral Researcher, Ghent University

  • Nukri Tabidze,Independent Expert

Lunch Break

Interactive Session

Plenary Room

Closing Discussion: Polarization, Care, and Future Imaginaries


This participatory session invites participants to explore the emotional and socio-political toll of conflict, the complexities of engaging in dialogue across polarized narratives, and the urgency of imagining just and livable futures in and beyond the South Caucasus.