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Project events

Conference Bones and Relics: Necrogeographies of the Armenian Genocide, Uni Philosophes, Room 201, 8 June 2026, 18h15.

Join Elyse Semerdjian as she traces the earliest Armenian pilgrimages to the killing fields of Dayr al-Zur in the Syrian Desert. In this landscape of loss, pilgrims came face to face with the remains of victims of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1918), transforming grief into acts of remembrance. The talk explores the origins of the now-destroyed Armenian Genocide Memorial and the powerful rituals and practices through which pilgrims expressed what Semerdjian calls “bone memory.”

Elyse Semerdjian is the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She is a social historian of the Ottoman Empire whose research focuses on the experiences of women and the empire’s Armenian subjects. She is the author of “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo (Syracuse University Press, 2008) and Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide (Stanford University Press, 2023), as well as several articles on gender, Ottoman Armenians, urban history, and law in the Ottoman Empire.

Vahan Papazian (1876–1973), known by the pseudonym “Goms,” looks upon bones protruding from the soil during his pilgrimage to Dayr al-Zur in 1930. Source: National Archive of Norway, Oslo.


Conference “Disruptive Bodies: Death and Burial in Early Modern England and WWI France, Uni Dufour, U260, University of Geneva, 3 March 2026, 12h15–14h.

This conference brings together two international speakers to illuminate the disruptive potential of dead bodies in different contexts. Martin Christ (University of Erfurt, Germany) will talk about the plague epidemic that struck London in 1665, asking how dead bodies were placed, analysed and used. He argues that while initially disruptive, these times of crisis were also highly dynamic. Meriam N. Belli (University of Iowa, USA) will examine French funeral practices during the First World War, paying particular attention to Muslim colonial soldiers. She shows that while the science of body disposal could and can technically adapt burial methods to religious prescriptions, French institutions did not then, and do not now, seek to do so.


Workshop “Between Techniques, Politics, and Memory: The Identification of Dead Bodies of Mass Violence (19th–20th Century), Maison Française d’Oxford, 22–23 January 2026.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers with an interest in past and present practices of identification in the context of mass violence. Participants from various backgrounds (e.g. history, anthropology, forensics, and humanitarian action) will discuss both historical approaches to identification and current issues. In particular, the workshop will explore how identification has become a key aspect of managing dead bodies in post-conflict settings and the technical, political, and memorial questions this raises.


Workshop “Réflexions historiques de la gestion des dépouilles mortelles de guerre (1850-1960)”, Institut d’études politiques d’Aix-en-Provence, 13–14 juin 2024.

Lors de cet atelier de lancement du projet, les trois chercheuses présentent leurs axes de recherche aux partenaires du projet d’Aix-en-Provence et d’Oxford, ainsi qu’à des expert.e.s de différents horizons disciplinaires. Il s’agit notamment d’historien.ne.s et d’anthropologues, ainsi que d’expert.e.s de l’Armée française et de Médecins sans frontières. L’atelier permet ainsi de relier des perspectives historiques à des questions actuelles relatives à la mort de masse et aux pratiques médico-légales.