Armine Ishkanian

Armine Ishkanian is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy and the Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme at the International Inequalities Institute. Her research examines the relationship between civil society, democracy, development, and social transformation. She has examined how civil society organisations and social movements engage in policy processes and transformative politics in a number of countries including Armenia, Egypt, Greece, Russia, Turkey, and the UK.

Her current research is focused in two areas. The first examines the relationship between social movements and social policy, exploring how social movements engage with, contest, and seek to inform and shape social policies and the factors which enable or hinder their ability to influence policy shaping and outcomes. In examining how social movements engage in policy processes. Over the past decade, has examined a number of different types of mobilisations, including anti-austerity movements, pro-democracy mobilisations, and movements against gender-based violence. Since 2017, her research has focused on emergent forms of solidarity, care, and collective action in the context of migration in Europe. The second area of research builds on and extends her long-standing work on civil society in Armenia. Working with local partners, she is working on a project that critically examines the ways in which local and international civil society actors have been involved in peace building and development processes, the challenges of achieving peace in the region and the relationship between conflict and inequalities.

Armine’s research has been published in a wide range of journals including: Critical Social Policy, Democratization, Europe Asia Studies, Journal of Civil Society, Journal of International Development, Social Politics, Sociological Review, and Voluntas. She is the author of two books: Democracy Building and Civil Society in Armenia (2008) and The Big Society Debate: A New Agenda for Social Welfare? (co-edited with Simon Szreter 2012). In 2016 she received the Best Article Award from the International Society for Third Sector Research for her article “Surreptitious Symbiosis: Engagement Between Activists and NGOs” (published in the Voluntas and co-authored with Marlies Glasius).

Through her research she also engages with a number of foundations as a means of disseminating research findings and creating platforms for multi-stakeholder discussions. She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Armenian Diaspora Survey project and has previously had research and knowledge exchange projects funded by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Heinrich Boell Stiftung, and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

She welcomes enquiries from potential PhD students to work on topics in her areas of interest.

Expertise Details

Civil society; Social movements; Democracy; Neoliberalism; Inequalities; Policy process

Selected publications

Social movements and social policy: new research horizons A Ishkanian Journal of Social Policy 2021

Who Needs the Experts? The Politics and Practices of Alternative Humanitarianism and Its Relationship to NGOs A Ishkanian, I Shutes VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 1-11 1 2021

Transnational welfare within and beyond the nation-state: civil society responses to the migration crisis in Greece I Shutes, A Ishkanian Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1-18 1 2021

Why peace looks a long way off in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict A Ishkanian LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) blog 2020

The politics and practices of intersectional prefiguration in social movements: The case of Sisters Uncut A Ishkanian, A Peña Saavedra The Sociological Review 67 (5), 985-1001 20 2019

Social movements, Brexit and social policy A Ishkanian Social Policy and Society 18 (1), 147-159 7 2019

Is Putinism the Russian Norm or an Aberration? M McFaul Current History 117 (801), 251-257 2018

Armenia's Unfinished Revolution A Ishkanian Current History 117 (801), 271-276 4 2018

Resisting neoliberalism? Movements against austerity and for democracy in Cairo, Athens and London A Ishkanian, M Glasius Critical Social Policy 38 (3), 527-546 19 2018

The Brexit vote was driven by the losers of globalisation, but that's hardly the whole story A Ishkanian LSE Brexit 1 2018

A revolution of values: freedom, responsibility, and courage in the Armenian Velvet Revolution A Ishkanian LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog 1 2018

From consensus to dissensus: The politics of anti-austerity activism in London and its relationship to voluntary organizations A Ishkanian, IS Ali Journal of Civil Society 14 (1), 1-19 16 2018

The square and beyond: Trajectories and implications of the square occupations M Glasius, A Ishkanian Global Cultures of Contestation, 27-48 1 2018

What does democracy mean? Activist views and practices in Athens, Cairo, London and Moscow A Ishkanian, M Glasius Democratization 24 (6), 1006-1024 2017