Panel of Experts

Asbed Kotchikian joined AUA after a twelve-year of teaching at the Global Studies Department at Bentley University. Before joining Bentley University he was the Assistant Director of International Affairs Program and assistant professor of Political Science at Florida State University. Between 2000 and 2002, Dr. Kotchikian was a visiting professor in Armenia teaching at Yerevan State University, Brusov State University of Languages and Social Sciences and the Gyumri branch of Armenian State University of Economics. For nine years (2008-17) he was the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed Armenian Review journal. Between 2011 and 2019 Dr. Kotchikian was the academic coordinator of Armenia Higher Education Initiative (AHEI) which organized summer courses in social sciences and humanities methodology retraining for graduate students in Armenia focusing on students from universities outside of Yerevan. During the last 20 years, Dr. Kotchikian has traveled extensively in the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey) and former Soviet Union (Armenia, Azerbaijan, The Baltics, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine).

 

He has written, lectured, presented, and organized conferences on foreign policies of small and weak states, questions of identity and diasporas, and regional developments in the Middle East and Eurasia. In recent years his research on minorities has taken him to Iraq (Kurdistan in 2015) and Syria (2014 and 2019). Apart from his academic/scholarly research, he is also a freelance consultant on de-radicalization, civil society and judicial reforms working with organizations such as Council of Europe and the European Union on projects in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine. Dr. Kotchikian received his undergraduate degree in Political Science and Public Administration from the American University of Beirut (AUB) after which he continued his graduate studies at Boston University obtaining his PhD in 2008 (with a dissertation work on the foreign policy of small states focusing on Georgia and Armenia).