Liana Aghajanian | Journalist

The Atlantic – Most Armenians live outside the “homeland,” but the country is trying to draw back some of the best and brightest to help fix the troubled nation. So far they’ve gotten 12 recruits. Armenia is known for having a high emigration rate, caused mainly by labor migrants heading...

Ianyanmag - Inspired by an ongoing “Arab Spring” in countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Kurds in Turkey, which number around 20 million, have taken to the streets in Istanbul and elsewhere in the country to protest against political repression, cultural suppression, discrimination and a decision by Turkey’s...

EurasiaNet - Residents of one of Armenia’s most dilapidated villages are hoping a religious revival can improve their economic fortunes. In early August, the town of Karakert, a churchless Armenian village founded during the 1950s to house factory workers, hosted a mass baptism. Residents, some of whom now refer to...

Los Angeles Times - With the headlines gone and the arrests made, Armenians in Burbank and Glendale are now struggling with the perceptions of their cultural identity after a massive crackdown on the organized crime ring Armenian Power. The cultural perceptions — egged on by media bias, according to some,...

Spot.us – In the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Evergreen Cemetery stands with tombstones held high. Some show inspirational passages, some boast lifetime accomplishments, others carry distinctive photos of the deceased. On weekends – as mariachi music swirls in the air – families come, one by one, paying respects...

LA Weekly – As protests calling for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak violently escalated on the streets of Egypt in what is now the fifth day of anti-government unrest, at least a thousand demonstrators in Los Angeles organized in front the Federal Building chanting for an end to the...

Just 10 hours after I got back to Los Angeles after five months abroad, I had the honor of giving the key note speech to a room full of Los Angeles-area high school students at Cal State Northridge’s high school journalism event, which they had organized with the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of...

Greetings, world. I’ve been in Armenia for almost two months, although it feels much longer than that. Every day is an adventure. Every day the heat gets more unbearable than the day before, but the nights are burning here, too, with love and laughter until the morning hours. Time moves strangely here and so does...

I will be reporting from the South Caucasus for the summer, with Yerevan, Armenia as my base and Georgia and Turkey as exciting possibilities. Feel free to follow along, either via Twitter or Tumblr, where I do the most frequent posting these days.

Last Thursday, I was invited to speak at USC’s Armenian Student Association about Ianyan Magazine. I was excited but nervous and a bit surprised because most of the time, I never feel like I’m doing enough on the site or having at least somewhat of an impact, but more than 600 Facebook fans, hundreds of...

Very excited to report that my story on the growth of integrative medicine was published in three different outlets in the span of a week, including Spot.us, New America Media and Nguoi Viet 2, the English edition of a Vietnamese newspaper, the first and largest daily newspaper published in Vietnamese in the United States. The...