Please join the Institute for the Study of Genocide and the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights for the biennial Lemkin Award Ceremony, honoring Raphael Lemkin, the originator of the term genocide and leading advocate of the UN Genocide Convention. The award recognizes the best non-fiction work focusing on genocide, crimes against humanity, and other gross human rights violations, as well as strategies for prevention. This year’s award winner is Elyse Semerdjian, for her work, Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide.

Elyse Semerdjian is a social historian of the Ottoman Empire whose research focuses on the experiences of women and the empire’s Armenian subjects.

Remnants explores a feminist interpretation of the Armenian Genocide, examining how the Ottoman Armenian communal body was dismembered, disfigured, and later reassembled through survivor memory. Drawing on personal accounts and archival fragments, she centers the silenced voices of women and children, particularly those rescued during and after the genocide. Semerdjian challenges traditional archival