Mr. Richard Giragosian is the Founding Director of the Regional Studies Center, an independent “think tank” located in Yerevan, Armenia and serves as both a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe’s Natolin Campus and Senior Expert at Yerevan State University’s Centre for European Studies, and is also a contributing analyst for al Jazeera and the Asia Times. Giragosian also represents the Republic of Armenia as a Member and National Expert of the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance in Strasbourg. Giragosian has served as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, the European Union Delegation to Armenia, the French Ministry of Defence, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the U.S. Departments of Defense and State, among others. He was also a contributing analyst for Oxford Analytica, a UK-based global analysis and advisory firm, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty publications and served as a contributing analyst for the London-based Jane’s Information Group. From 2008-2010, he was a regular columnist for the Turkish-language international edition of the international news magazine Newsweek. In addition, he has written for the Centre for European Policy Studies, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Le Monde, the Moscow Times, and the Turkish Policy Quarterly, as well for the peer-reviewed journals Current History, Demokratizatsiya, the China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Oxford University’s St. Antony’s International Review, the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, and the Harvard International Review, among others. He has also been regularly quoted and cited by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, as well as by Le Figaro, The Economist, Newsweek, Radio France Internationale and the BBC, AFP, Reuters and Bloomberg news agencies. He has also contributed to a dozen books, most recently including “Small States and the Large Costs of Regional Fracture: The Case of Armenia,” in Ohanyan, Anna, Editor, Russia Abroad. Driving Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia and Beyond and chapters in: Kamrava, Mehran, Ed., The Great Game in West Asia: Iran, Turkey and the South Caucasus, Georgetown University, Doha, Qatar ; “Twenty-Five Years On: Armenia’s Difficult Period of Statebuilding,” in Hunter, Shireen, Ed., The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus. Prospects for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Resolution,. From 2002-2006, Giragosian served as a guest lecturer for the U.S. Army Special Forces at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, NC, and has participated in various research projects for the Naval Post-Graduate School, the U.S. Navy’s Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, and for the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School. For nine years, Giragosian served as a Professional Staff Member of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and was the committee’s principal staffer for the former Soviet Union and China, responsible for organizing Congressional hearings and conducting analytical studies for Members of Congress, and served as Committee liaison to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. From 2000-2005, he has also worked as an analyst for Abt Associates Inc., a social science consulting firm, and was a research consultant for the New America Foundation and the Center for National Policy in Washington. Giragosian was twice appointed as a State Commissioner on the Virginia Governor’s Commission on Armenian Affairs, and has also served as an honorary member of the National Steering Committees of both the 1996 Clinton-Gore Reelection Campaign and the Gore 2000 Presidential Campaign.
