2026 Projects for Peace Alumni Award Keynote Address: Anoush Baghdassarian

Anoush Baghdassarian, co-founder of Rerooted Archive and winner of the $50,000 2026 Projects for Peace Alumni Award, will deliver this year’s keynote address about her life’s work in justice, human rights, and conflict transformation. A graduate of Harvard Law School with a master’s degree in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University, Baghdassarian co-founded Rerooted following her initial Project for Peace. Rerooted is a community-centered digital archive and advocacy organization that preserves Armenian stories, strengthens identity, and supports justice efforts for Armenian communities facing displacement, violence, and erasure. The organization is founded on the idea that no matter how many times Armenians have been rerouted by conflict, they have continued to reroot in strong, thriving communities. Today, Rerooted has grown to include more than 25 communities, collected more than 400 testimonies, and trained more than 90 team members in its work of preserving memory and using it for action. Rerooted celebrates and explores Armenian identity in communities around the world and advocates for their just and safe futures. Its digital collections of testimonies, photographs, and documents are designed to be accessible to researchers, teachers, artists, community members, and advocates. Through those collections, Baghdassarian and her collaborators create educational resources, interactive maps, legal reports, cultural heritage projects, and tools that show the resilience of Armenian communities while also supporting accountability and recognition.

Projects for Peace, which is headquartered at Middlebury College’s Center for Community Engagement, is a global program that encourages young adults to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues. The annual Projects for Peace Alumni Award provides up to $50,000 in support of ongoing peacebuilding efforts of past Projects for Peace grant recipients who demonstrate innovation and persistence in working for peace and transforming conflict.