Biography
Dr Maghakyan is a political scientist specialising in the emerging interdisciplinary field of heritage and security. His first book, Sovereign Heritage Crime: Security, Autocracy, and the Material Past (Cambridge University Press, Elements in Critical Heritage Studies, 2026), offers a theoretical examination of state-sponsored campaigns against the cultural heritage of ethnoterritorial minorities. He is co-editing the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Heritage and Security with Laurajane Smith and A. Dirk Moses (Oxford University Press).
Since earning his PhD in 2024 from Cranfield University—an academic partner of the British Ministry of Defence—Dr Maghakyan has served as an Associate of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, where he was also a Gulbenkian Postdoctoral Fellow (2024–25). He has also held teaching appointments at Colorado College (Russian foreign policy) and Fresno State (20th Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies), alongside research affiliations with Tufts University and the University of Denver’s Korbel School for Global and Public Affairs.
Prior to his doctoral studies, he spent a decade in the non-profit sector, lectured on international relations at his alma mater (University of Colorado, Denver), and conducted independent research. His predoctoral forensic investigation exposed Azerbaijan’s 1997–2006 systematic erasure of Nakhichevan’s Armenian cultural heritage. This collaborative work was praised as “groundbreaking” by Forbes and “rock-solid” by The Guardian, and its findings were cited at the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice. His public scholarship on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict has appeared internationally, including in BBC interviews and essays in Time.
Selected Publications
Books & Edited Volumes
- Maghakyan, S., Smith, L., & Moses, A. D. (Eds.). (Forthcoming). The Oxford Handbook of Heritage and Security. Oxford University Press.
- Maghakyan, S. (2026). Sovereign Heritage Crime: Security, Autocracy, and the Material Past. Elements in Critical Heritage Studies Series, Cambridge University Press.
Book Chapters
- Maghakyan, S. (Forthcoming). “Past-Proofing: The Future of Heritage Governance in Security Contexts.” In The Oxford Handbook of Heritage and Security. Oxford University Press.
- Ismayil, U., & Maghakyan, S. (Forthcoming). “Syncretic Superstition as Informal Governance in Coexistence: The Haunting Idiom and Moral Underground in Local Resistance to the State’s Erasure of Nakhichevan’s Christian Past.” In I. Dorfmann-Lazarev (Ed.), Cultural Landscape and Geopolitics of the South-Eastern Caucasus: Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan. Brill.
- Maghakyan, S. (2026). “Monumental Lessons from Nakhichevan for the Future of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Past.” In V. Cheterian (Ed.), The Second Karabakh War Between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury.
Journal Articles & Public Scholarship
- Maghakyan, S. (2025, October 22). “Permanent Security or Regime Security? The Erasure of Nakhichevan’s Armenian Past.” Journal of Genocide Research.
- Maghakyan, S., Tonoyan, A., Sargsyan, S., & Berberian, L. (2024, January 11). “Investigation: Armenian Fears of a ‘Concentration Camp’ in Nagorno-Karabakh May Have Been Warranted.” New Lines Magazine.
- Maghakyan, S. (2023, February 22). “How Azerbaijan Weaponized Environmentalism to Justify Ethnic Cleansing.” Time.
- Maghakyan, S. (2022). “Is Indigeneity Discourse Productive for the Cause of Armenian Preservation?” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, 29(1), 85–95.
- Maghakyan, S. (2021, June 1). “Special Investigation: Declassified Satellite Images Show Erasure of Armenian Churches.” The Art Newspaper.
- Maghakyan, S., & Pickman, S. (2019, February 18). “A Regime Conceals Its Erasure of Indigenous Armenian Culture.” Hyperallergic.
Selected Recorded Presentations
- “Deconstructing ‘Western Azerbaijan’: Synthetic Memory and the Politics of Perpetual Conflict” National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lecture Series, Belmont, MA (September 19, 2026). [Watch Lecture]
- “Past-Proofing the Future: Theorising the Erasure of Djulfa, Twenty Years On” The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA (December 1, 2025) & Pembroke College, University of Oxford (October 23, 2025). [Watch Lecture]
- “From Rights to Responsibilities: Victim Agency in Rerooting Artsakh” Artsakh Uprooted: Aftermaths of Displacement, University of Southern California (November 2, 2024). [Watch Lecture]
