Research Interests
- Degenociding Colonial Societies
- Canadian Identity and Reconciliation
- Children’s Rights
- The Power of Music
Van Armenian is a Ph.D. student at the University of Ottawa’s Interdisciplinary Research in Music program and recipient of several scholarships including the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l'aide à la recherche. He builds his research on several decades of experience as a professional musician, his significant charity work in Armenia, and the understanding that music is a positive force for healing and societal consolidation.
For his thesis he explicitly asks: How can Indigenous musics and stories, that make visible the experientially rich Indigenous worldviews, help develop a more ethical Canadian identity? Providing these worldviews in the K-12 space, Van suggests, will contribute to States obligations to not only respect the innate dignity of the child and to provide quality education, but also indeed be a denial of continued settler-racism and become a nucleus to meaningful reconciliation in Canadian society today.
Balancing his music, research, and charity work, Van lives in Montreal with his wife, a schoolteacher, and two teenage daughters.