Dispersion

About Dispersion

Dispersion is a podcast by the Zoryan Institute that analyzes and celebrates both the diverse and common experiences of diasporas living away from, and returning to, their homeland. Having published its academic journal in the field of diaspora studies for 30 years, the Zoryan Institute is excited to bring the conversation of diaspora to a new platform. Introducing important theories, topics, and experiences related to diaspora and transnational studies through casual conversations with people currently or previously living in Canada. Through conversations with diverse communities in Canada, Dispersion will challenge stereotypes, discrimination, and aim to bring people together through conversations that navigate identity, home, and belonging. The Zoryan Institute is a non-profit organization that serves the cause of scholarship and public awareness relating to issues of universal human rights, genocide, and diaspora-homeland relations. For more from the Institute follow us on Instagram and Twitter @ZoryanInstitute, on Facebook @ Zoryan Canada, on Youtube @ZI e-Chronicles and at www.zoryaninstitute.org (http://www.zoryaninstitute.org). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Publisher

Zoryan Institute

Category

education · history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

15 Dec 2021

Latest episode

3 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   3 Jun 2026

   Behind the Lens of Cultural Memory: The Power of Filmmaking to Transcend Single Identities

   Guests: Award-winning filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist, and curator Emily Mkrtichian, and acclaimed filmmaker and director Hasmik Movsisyan. In this episode, our guests reflect on how their connections to Armenia have shifted over time, and how film becomes a way of holding onto and passing down memory. They discuss how storytelling has the power to reach people in ways that feel both personal and universal, transcending the boundaries of any singular identity. Along the way, they consider how culture is carried forward, and what it means, as filmmakers, to take on the responsibility of preserving and sharing those stories. Biographies: Emily Mkrtichian is an award-winning filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores alternative archives and visionary futures across the SWANA region. Working across documentary, fiction, and expanded media, her practice is grounded in collaborative ethics and care-centered methodologies. Her feature documentary There Was, There Was Not premiered at True/False Film Festival and went on to screen internationally, earning the Audience Award and Special Mention at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, the FIPRESCI Prize at the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, and a North American release with Watermelon Pictures. Her earlier work has screened at festivals including Full Frame and BFI Flare. Mkrtichian has been recognized as a Creative Capital awardee (2025), an LA Arts Activation Fund recipient, and a DocX Fellow at Duke University and is an alum of the Sundance Institute Mkrtichian’s projects center diasporic memory, intergenerational storytelling, and collective world-building. She is also a curator, educator, and facilitator. Hasmik Movsisyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1991. At the age of 11, she moved with her family to St. Petersburg, Russia, where she grew up. She received a medical degree from St. Petersburg State University, but after graduation, she decided to pursue her true passion for filmmaking. Hasmik was accepted into the Directing Department of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), where she studied under the guidance of Alexander and Vladimir Kott and Anna Fenchenko in the fiction film workshop. During her time at VGIK, Hasmik’s films (Apnea 2019, Side by Side 2021, Harisa 2022) were recognized at various student film festivals and received numerous awards. Her short film 250 KM, which originally began as a student project, developed into a full-fledged independent film and went on to participate in more than 40 international film festivals, earning around 20 awards. In 2025, Hasmik completed her Master’s degree in Film Directing at ESCAC (Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya) in Spain, where she wrote and directed her first European short film, Barceloneta. Find us on all your favourite social media platforms: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dispersionpodcast/?hl=en Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3YnJI7YEgyyxVXn4qJWeIf Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dispersion/id1604466506 Acast: https://shows.acast.com/dispersion Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/be249e46-4f77-41f9-8c41-9c62cfc1ecd6/dispersion Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

2. 

   27 May 2026

   Echoes in Eight Counts: How Memory is Embodied Through Folkloric Dance

   Guests: Dance researcher, teacher, and director, Carolyn Rapkievian, and artistic director and choreographer of Sassoun Dance Ensemble, Sevag Avakian. In this episode, our guests reflect on their personal journeys and the evolution of Armenian dance across the diaspora. They explore efforts to preserve traditional forms alongside the emergence of new, diaspora-born dances, and how performance and teaching actively reshape Armenian historical memory. The conversation highlights dance as both a practice of preservation and celebration, one that carries history forward in exciting ways. Biographies: Carolyn Okoomian Rapkievian has been researching, teaching, and performing dance in a professional capacity for more than 30 years. She grew up dancing at Armenian family and social functions. Her directing highlights include the Washington D.C. Arev Armenian Dance Ensemble and the Arax Armenian Dance Ensemble. Her performance experience includes AGBU’s Antranig Dance Ensemble in New York, and Dancefolk and the Palamakia (Greek) Dancers in Nashville. She has studied Russian, Polish, and Hungarian dancing and continues to study ballet. In addition to Armenian dance, she has taught character ballet and ballroom dancing for dance companies, universities, and public folk festivals. She teaches Armenian dancing and international folk dancing with the Kotwica Band at monthly dances and at festivals in Maine. Carolyn has held leadership positions in museums for over 50 years including 26 years at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. She has lectured internationally about genocides, understanding history, and the politics of cultural acknowledgement in museums. In 2018 she curated the Armenian Dance Showcase at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She currently works to document and preserve historic Western Armenian village dances in collaboration with the Houshamadyan project: https://www.houshamadyan.org/themes/dance.html (https://www.houshamadyan.org/themes/dance.html) Sevag Avakian developed a passion for Armenian dance at a young age, growing up in a family deeply rooted in dance and cultural tradition. Beginning his training at the age of six, he was immersed in music and movement early on, a constant influence throughout his life. As he matured, his natural curiosity and dedication led him to independently study traditional Armenian folkloric dances, exploring their techniques and cultural and historical significance. He is now the Artistic Director and Choreographer of the Sassoun Dance Ensemble, established in 2004 under the auspices Toronto’s Holy Trinity Armenian Church by Reverend Archpriest Father Zareh Zargarian and now operating under the Canadian Armenian Community Services Centre (Barev Centre). Over the past 22 years, the group has welcomed hundreds of members and presented annual performances featuring traditional and contemporary Armenian dances. The ensemble has performed at multicultural festivals, theatrical productions, and music videos, represented Armenian heritage at an NBA game, and appeared on major local stages including Dundas Square, the Canadian National Exhibition, and David Pecaut Square. Find Dispersion on all your favourite social media platforms: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dispersionpodcast/?hl=en Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3YnJI7YEgyyxVXn4qJWeIf Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dispersion/id1604466506 Acast: https://shows.acast.com/dispersion Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/be249e46-4f77-41f9-8c41-9c62cfc1ecd6/dispersion Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

3. 

   20 May 2026

   Painting an Unfinished Portrait

   Guests: Chicago-based painter and visual artist Jackie Kazarian, and Armenian-Dutch biodesigner and artist Shushanik Droshakiryan. In this episode, our guests explore how their art emerges from personal curiosities and lived experiences engaging with Armenian narratives, rather than representing a singular collective view. They reflect on how Armenian identity is a continuously reconstructed phenomenon that is shaped through their evolving relationships between art, homeland, and themselves across time and different mediums. Biographies: Jackie Kazarian is a Chicago-based visual artist working primarily in painting, installation and video. She received a BS in Zoology from Duke University and a MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has held numerous solo exhibitions, including New York, Chicago, Miami, Spain, Syria and Kuwait. Her work is in many private and public collections, including Illinois State Museum, Rockford Art Museum, Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, Chicago Public Library, and the United States Embassy, Armenia. In 2019, Jackie received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Armenian Behavioral Science Association. She is a 2008 fellow of the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media at Columbia College Chicago and has served two tours as an art envoy for the U.S. State Department, presenting workshops, lectures and exhibitions in Kuwait and Syria. In 2015, Kazarian created a monumental painting to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Shushanik Droshakiryan is an Armenian-Dutch biodesigner and artist based in Amsterdam. Her creative journey began with traditional Armenian carpet weaving at the National Centre for Aesthetics in Yerevan, where the material and ornamental logic of Armenian carpets formed her artistic thinking. Today, that foundation drives her biodesign practice in which Armenian cultural heritage is not preserved but activated as regenerative design intelligence. Her biomaterial systems do not merely reference Armenian identity — they are rooted in it, drawing from the logic of Armenian landscape, material memory, and cultural form. She is the founder of Venus in Fury, an Amsterdam-based biodesign lab, working at the intersection of material science, craft, and next-generation biomaterial systems. Her signature materials, SUF, a translucent seaweed-based bio-garment inspired by G.I. Gurdjieff, and ARTSAKH, a carbon-based bio-leather registered under EU trademark droshakiryan ®, each draw their identity from the Armenian land, memory, and heritage. Find us on all your favourite social media platforms: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dispersionpodcast/?hl=en Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3YnJI7YEgyyxVXn4qJWeIf Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dispersion/id1604466506 Acast: https://shows.acast.com/dispersion Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/be249e46-4f77-41f9-8c41-9c62cfc1ecd6/dispersion Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 35 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

57

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.