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What do you teach at Ca’ Foscari? What are your main research interests? 
I teach courses in Armenian Language and Theory of Translation. My main research interests are in linguistics, with a focus on Armenian syntax, interlingual and cultural translation, the success of Dante in the Armenian world and the literature of the diaspora.
I graduated in Philology and Translation from the Yerevan State University (YSU), Armenia. During my graduate studies, more precisely in 1994, I had the opportunity to come to Venice as an exchange student of the first agreement ever signed between YSU and Ca' Foscari, after which I returned to Yerevan to graduate. I could have never imagined that years later I would get my PhD at the Venetian University and start teaching. In the meantime, I did several visiting professorships, mainly in the United States. 

What led you to pursue a research career? What are you most passionate about in your field of study? 
I have always been involved in translation, since I was 15. Initially, I actually translated. Later on, I started to work on theory as well. My dissertation was on the Armenian translations of Shakespeare and then I moved on to study the Armenian schools of translation, with a focus on the School of Translation of the Mekhitarist Armenian Congregation in Venice. It was then that I began to study the Armenian translations of the Divine Comedy and found that Armenian was the first Oriental language into which the Comedy was translated at the end of the 19th century. This is the topic I dealt with in my PhD, with a particular focus on the transposition of Dante's verbal system into Armenian translations. In the last few years, I have also been working on the literature of the diaspora.
I am very passionate about conducting research here in Venice, where Armenians have been living for centuries, where there is one of the most important Armenian libraries in the world, that of San Lazzaro, where "Armenian Dante" was also born. 

What does teaching at the university mean to you?
For me, teaching at the university is a great honour but also a great responsibility. I really enjoy being close to students, organising events with their participation and conducting research in close cooperation with colleagues.

You work in a department dealing with non-European worlds: what does working on cultural diversity mean to you in an increasingly interconnected world?
I was born in Armenia and later moved to Italy. I have also travelled a lot for research purposes. Sometimes I feel like I am in that "third space" that Bhabha talks about and I personally understand what it means to be a "Translated (wo)man" - to use Rushdie's definition. From my own perspective, I cherish working with both Italian and non-Italian colleagues, who are also bearers of other cultures. It was along these lines that three years ago my colleague Miccoli and I launched the seminar series "Orienti Migranti: tra letteratura e traduzione" (Migrant Orient: between literature and translation), which was attended by many colleagues from our department but also from the DSLCC and DSU departments and visiting professors from foreign universities. And so, speaking of "cultural diversity in an increasingly interconnected world", we were able to see that between Armenia and Japan, India and Israel, Latin America and Iran, China and the Arab world, etc., there is a common thread, that they may look so different, but are actually united when we talk about the literary expression of migrants' individual experiences. Lastly, the fact that concepts such as "third space", "translated wo/men" or "cultural translation" also fascinate our students is interesting.