I am Lilit Khandakaryan, an Armenian scholar and PhD candidate at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, where I am currently conducting research on Visual Resistances: Altering (Post)Soviet Memory in the Photographic and Comic Art of Young Armenian Artists. Between 2023 and 2024, I was awarded a start-up grant by the University of Basel, which enabled me to further develop my PhD research project and establish academic ties with Basel University.

I hold an international joint master’s degree in Children’s Literature, Media, and Culture from the universities of Glasgow (Scotland), Aarhus (Denmark), and Tilburg (Netherlands), which I completed in 2021. My master’s thesis, Connections Between Russian Historical Avant-Garde and Contemporary Nordic Picturebooks by Stian Hole: Garmann’s Summer, Garmann’s Secret, Anna’s Heaven, focused on the intersection of visual arts and children’s literature.

In 2014, I completed my Bachelor's degree in Journalism at Yerevan State University. My undergraduate research interests centered on photojournalism and youth engagement in social and political activism. My diploma thesis, Reflections on Young People's Participation in Socio-Political Movements in Armenia and Their Representation in Armenian Media, examined the role of youth in activism and their portrayal in media.

Beyond academia, I have professional experience in youth work, photojournalism, and contemporary art education. My deep fascination with visuality serves as a unifying thread across my research aspirations, driving my engagement with visual arts, photography, youth culture, post-Soviet and decolonial studies, memory studies, and feminist studies.