Dr. Alexandr Osipian

Alexandr Osipian was born in Ukraine. He studied history at the National University of Chernivtsi and received his doctorate in history from the National University of Donetsk in 1999. From 1994 to 2014, he was teaching at the Kramatorsk Institute for Economics and Humanities, Kramatorsk, Ukraine (since 2000 as Associate Professor of History). From 2014 to 2017, he was a senior research fellow at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and from 2017 to 2020, a visiting research fellow at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig. In 2020/21 he was Research Fellow at the Osteuropa-Institut, Free University of Berlin. During the winter semester of 2025/2026, interim professorship at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Chair »Entangled History of Ukraine«.

Alexandr Osipian has been a research fellow at the GWZO since December 2022.

• Long-distance trade between the Middle East and Eastern Europe in early modern period
• Armenian diaspora in Eastern Europe, 13^th-19^th centuries
• Cultural history of the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
• Cultural memory and the politics of history in Russia and Ukraine, 1991-2023
• Deindustrialization and its political implications in the old industrial region of Donbas in comparative perspective

• Member of the “Association Internationale des Etudes Arméniennes” (AIEA)
• Member of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)

October 2018 – March 2019, Visiting Professor of History at the Center for Eastern Europe, Justus Liebig University of Giessen.

• Member of the editorial board of the journal and book series Transponticae: The Black Sea Studies

• 2003 American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) short-term grant in humanities
• 2005 Central European University / Curriculum Development Competition grant (Budapest, Hungary).
• 2007 Grant of “Kasa im. Józefa Mianowskiego” foundation (Warsaw, Poland). Research stay at the Jagellonian University (Krakow, Poland)
• 2009 Grant of Center for Advanced Studies and Education (CASE) in cooperation with Carnegie Corporation of New York and ACTR/ACCELS.
• 2010 Grant of Center for Advanced Studies and Education (CASE) in cooperation with Carnegie Corporation of New York and ACTR/ACCELS.
• 2012 Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University (Washington, D. C.)
• 2012 Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of California (Berkeley, CA, the USA)
• 2013 Visiting Research Fellow at the New Europe College, Institute of Advanced Studies (Bucharest, Romania)
• 2013 Visiting Research Fellow at the International Cultural Centre (Krakow, Poland)
• 2014 Visiting Research Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany)
• 2015 Visiting Research Fellow at the Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, the USA)
• 2015 Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (Halle, Germany)
• 2016 Visiting Research Fellow at the Herzog-August-Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, Germany)