ZI’s Promoting Equity, Tolerance, Reconciliation and Awareness Through Genocide Education Program, which included presentations in high school classrooms, a teacher training workshop, & the development of an online high school genocide education resource database, wrapped up on August 31st.

The Institute is utilizing feedback from this program to develop new teacher training programs, and expanded high school education programs utilizing its animated documentary, Aurora’s Sunrise.

ZI staff, volunteers, and Board of Directors are working with the editors of the Genocide Studies International journal to develop a special issue on the lasting impacts of mass violence on Indigenous Peoples.

This special issue will invite submissions on issues pertaining to forced sterilization, ecocide, Indigenous languages, resilience and memory, the forced transfer of children, residential and day schools, gendered experiences of reclaiming power and place, among others.

The 20th annual Genocide and Human Rights University Program (GHRUP), held virtually over Zoom during the first 2 weeks of August, brought together a dedicated and diverse group of 13 students and 16 faculty members from around the globe to study select cases of genocide and important themes pertaining to human rights and genocide studies.

The Institute is already in the beginning stages of planning its first in-person GHRUP since 2019 for the 2023 program, to be hosted at the University of Toronto.

ZIA and the 44-Day Artsakh War Oral History Project team continue to conduct interviews with those impacted by the war. The team has recently collaborated with the INTRA Mental Health Center and Dr. Khachatur Gasparyan, & consulted with Dr. Armen Goenjian, Research Professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, to introduce a more trauma informed approach to conducting these interviews.

Simultaneously, transcription of these interviews continues to be completed by AUA work-study student, Shahen, who has been inspired by this work to centre his capstone project around oral history.

The transcription and translation into English of the audio-visual testimonies of survivors of the Armenian Genocide has been underway since June 2022.

The Institute is working with students and professionals from Armenia and the Armenian diaspora to begin the significant task of transcribing and translating the 780 interviews contained within its Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection.