Dr. Tamar Marie Boyadjian (she/her)
Chair
Dr. Tamar Marie Boyadjian is the Chair of the Armenian Genocide Museum of Canada and an internationally recognized, award-winning author, editor, translator, educator, and medievalist. She is the first US born author to publish a book of poetry in Western Armenian ինչ որ է ան է it is what it is (Yerevan: Antares, 2015). She is the first writer of Western Armenian to produce a fantasy series in the language Մէփէն ու Վիշապը The Mepe and the Dragon (Los Angeles: Arpi Publishing, 2025). Her book The City Lament: Jerusalem Across the Medieval Mediterranean was the recipient of the Sona Aronian Book Prize for excellence in Armenian Studies (2019).
With a global publishing record and decades of teaching, Boyadjian bridges the gap between ancient Armenian texts and contemporary movements, bringing a unique and vital perspective to literary studies. Her work grapples with the ethical dilemmas of endangered language preservation, centers the forgotten voices of women writers in Western Armenian literary history, and explores the radical possibilities of Armenian Futurism, reaching audiences worldwide.
Her work as an editor and translator is also quite extensive. She has served as the guest editor of two out of three extant volumes of contemporary Armenian literature in translation into English: makukachu (Ingnakir, 2017), and unscripted: An Armenian Palimpsest [Absinthe: World Literature in Translation] (University of Michigan Press, 2017). She has also served authors and international and local presses as an editor, writing coach, and consultant for a number of books of translation, trade publications, academic monographs, and creative projects. She was also the first female Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for the Society of Armenian Studies, serving from 2020-2024. Her new book Կաթիլ մը կին՝ անանուն, անքերթուած [a drop of woman: unnamed, unwritten] won a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian foundation and will be released by Aras Yayıncılık in Istanbul in 2025.
Boyadjian currently teaches Western Armenian Courses at Stanford University.