Title: The Grandchildren of Refugees: Armenianness and Armenian identities in Greece.
Speaker: Dr. Merih Erol, Associate Professor of History, Özyeğin University & Marilena Laskaridis Visiting Fellow and Lecturer in Modern Greek Studies, University of Amsterdam
Date: 27 November 2026
Time: 15:30
Location: P.C. Hoofthuis, room 1.04, UvA, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam.
Language: English
Organized by: Dept. of Modern Greek Language and Culture of the University of Amsterdam and the Dutch Society for Modern Greek Studies (NGNS)
Abstract
This talk explores the intergenerational transmission of memory among Greek Armenians whose grandparents were subjected to forced migration from Asia Minor to Greece in 1922. Drawing on oral history interviews and the analysis of selected memorial productions, Dr. Erol will discuss various aspects of Armenianness and Armenian identity in Greece. Her analysis engages with recent scholarship on trauma and memory in Armenian Genocide Studies, as well as with scholarship on refugee memory in Greece. This talk forms part of a larger ongoing book project on Armenian refugees in Greece after 1922.
Bio
Merih Erol is an Associate Professor of History at Özyeğin University in Turkey and a Marilena Laskaridis Visiting Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul: Nation and Community in the Era of Reform (Indiana University Press, 2015) and has published on religious conversion and the American Protestant missionary movement in the Ottoman Empire. Her current research focuses on Armenian refugees in Greece during the interwar years and aspects of Greek-Armenian identity. She is working on the manuscript Armenians of Greece: From Anatolian Refugees to a Diaspora Community, which is under contract with Edinburgh University Press.