Lecture by Robert Sukiasyan, Promise Armenian Institute postdoctoral fellow, as part of the Promise Armenian Institute's 2026 commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Engineering VI, Tannas Alumni Suite
The lecture and exclusive exhibition accompanying it examine the life and intellectual legacy of Garabed Kapikian (1864–1925), a prominent Armenian pedagogue, botanist, lexicographer, ethnographer, politician, and public intellectual from Sepastia (Sivas). The presentation first addresses Kapikian’s scholarly formation, pedagogical career, and political life and struggles, including his engagement as a key member of the Social Democratic Hunchakian Party, situating his work within the Late Ottoman intellectual milieu. Emphasis is placed on his pioneering contributions to Armenian natural history and linguistics, especially his botanical research and lexicographic documentation of the Sepastia dialect, which remain foundational sources in Armenian studies.
Central to the lecture is Kapikian’s role as one of the earliest scholar-witnesses of the Armenian Genocide. Uniquely equipped with scholarly training and methodological rigor, and having personally endured the 1915 deportations, Kapikian produced some of the earliest systematic studies of the genocide based on direct observation, survivor testimony, and documentary collection. His post-genocide research, including his collaboration with Aram Andonian, represents a critical early effort to record and analyze the destruction of Ottoman Armenians as a subject of historical and scholarly inquiry.
The accompanying exhibition features selected panels from his scholarship on Armenian flora, historical photographs, maps tracing Kapikian’s movements from Sepastia to Aleppo and Jerusalem, as well as personal belongings and handwritten manuscripts that survived the genocide. Kapikian’s grandson, Garo Kapikian, will be present at the event, offering personal reflections on his grandfather’s legacy.
Robert Sukiasyan is a historian specializing in genocidal deportations, with a particular focus on the Armenian Genocide, memory studies, oral history, survivor testimonies, cartography, and digital humanities. He holds a Ph.D. from the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, an M.A. in International Relations/Genocide Studies, and a B.A. in Art History from Yerevan State University. He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA and a Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University (2021–2022). Since 2023, he has taught The Armenian Genocide course at the American University of Armenia. He is the author of seven articles published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. He has held research positions at the Institute for Armenian Studies at Yerevan State University and served as an Armenian Genocide Collection Indexer at the USC Shoah Foundation. He serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Armenian History and Culture series at Brill.
Garo Kapikian was born in 1959 in New York City. He is the son of Mark Mkhitar Kapikian and Helen Samoorian, and grandson of Garabed Kapikian. An attorney specializing in criminal and immigration law, practicing in New York and Connecticut, he has practiced law in those jurisdictions for many years.
Directions and Parking
Visitor parking available at UCLA Parking Structure 8.
- Park on the roof of Parking Structure 8
- Pay for parking at a Paystation
- Take the stairs or the elevator to Level 1/Westwood Plaza
- Cross the street diagonally, then turn slightly left, continuing north, past the bus stop
- Engineering VI will be on your right as you walk north on Westwood Plaza
We recommend you arrive 15 minutes early for parking.
Please note: This event will be photographed and recorded for documentation and distribution. All audience members agree to the possibility of appearing in these photographs and recordings by virtue of attending the event or participating in the event.