Annual Conference of Yerevan Center for International Education

The Yerevan Center for International Education (YCIE), also known as Y-Center, is launching an annual Y-сonference focused on social sciences and humanities. Y-Conference invites scholars from or interested in the Eurasian region to present their latest research and engage in discussions about ongoing projects. Scholars connected to the region have recently faced various challenges, resulting in the disruption of research collaboration and fragmentation of scientific communication. Responding to these challenges, Y-Conference aims to stimulate intellectual exchange across borders and contribute to the decentralization of knowledge, supporting the further development of social sciences and humanities both in Armenia and the wider region. We think that Yerevan is historically, geographically, logistically and, most importantly, intellectually a very good place to launch this project.

The inaugural Y-Conference, titled Truths, foregrounds the epistemological and ethical dimensions of truth as both a conceptual and sociopolitical category. From the interpretation of historical documents to experimental practices in scientific laboratories, from the analysis of political rhetoric to the close reading of poetic texts, diverse modes of inquiry reflect a shared pursuit: to uncover the social realities embedded within texts and practices — a pursuit of truth that may be obscured, contested, or revealed. Across disciplines, scholars, politicians, philosophers, and religious visionaries construct competing regimes of truth, while rhetorical, legal, and institutional apparatuses function to legitimize and disseminate particular versions. This conference seeks to critically examine the nature of truth, its performative and coercive capacities, and the limits it encounters within specific historical and sociocultural contexts.