The Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is pleased to announce the programme of the conference “It Takes a Diaspora to Raise a Language: Future Directions for Armenian,” co-organised with the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies. It will take place between 27 February and 1 March 2026 at the University of Southern California’s Taper Hall of Humanities, in Los Angeles.
How can the Armenian language thrive in the Diaspora? Rather than focusing on narratives of loss or decline, the conference intentionally shifts the focus to examples of innovation, creativity and success, highlighting initiatives, strategies and targeted efforts that sustain and invigorate Armenian in its literary standards, as well as in its colloquial and dialectal forms, across generations and geographies. At the heart of the question is the sustainability of Armenian in diasporan communities.
Over three days, participants will address themes including language policy and assessment, heritage language transmission, early childhood and university-level language education, translanguaging and immersion models, creative and artistic language practices, journalism, artificial intelligence and the future of Armenian in digital spaces. The programme foregrounds both Western and Eastern Armenian, featuring global perspectives from Armenia, the Middle East, Europe, North America and Latin America.
The conference will feature keynote addresses by Dr. Ruth Kircher and Dr. Maria Polinsky, alongside various roundtable discussions that spotlight innovative pedagogical approaches, creative language use in digital and artistic spaces, and emerging models of language revitalization. Dr. Razmik Panossian, Director of the Armenian Communities Department, will moderate two roundtables including “The Gulbenkian Approach: Building a Sustainable Language Ecosystem in the Diaspora.” Ani Garmiryan, Senior Programme Officer for Western Armenian and Education, will deliver the closing remarks of the conference.
The conference is free and open to the public, but registration is mandatory.
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