Thomas J. Samuelian
Dean, AUA Law Department
Professor of Law
Thomas Samuelian earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. An international attorney with wide-ranging experience in the US, Armenia, Russia, Kazakhstan and other countries of the CIS, Dr. Samuelian is the founder and managing attorney of Arlex International, a public interest law firm, in Yerevan. Dr. Samuelian has served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, as well as St. Nersess Seminary and AUA Law Department. He is the author of numerous studies in law and public policy, including proposed measures for Armenia's Anti-Corruption Strategy and Protection of Armenian Cultural Heritage, as well as Armenian historical and linguistic publications, including A Textbook of Modern Western Armenian and the first complete English translation of St. Gregory of Narek's Prayer Book. He is Chairman of the Board of the Arak-29 Foundation (Yerevan), dedicated to building common ground among Armenians and promoting Armenian culture and economic development (www.arak29.am). He has served as President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Armenia and President of the Armenian Bar Association (US). He clerked in US District Court (E.D. Pa.) and is admitted to practice in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia and Armenia.

Vahan Bournazian
Associate Dean
Associate Professor
Vahan Bournazian was born and raised in San Diego, California, USA, where he also completed his Juris Doctorate degree in law.  He managed his own law office and practiced immigration law in California for approximately 10 years before repatriating to Armenia in early 2004.  Mr. Bournazian has received advanced training in human rights law and international humanitarian law in Strasburg and in Geneva, respectively, and has participated in various human rights investigatory missions to such places as Iraq, Mexico and Guatemala. He regularly teaches Legal Method and Analysis, Public International Law and Human Rights Law.  In addition to academic and administrative duties at the Department of Law, Mr. Bournazian also serves on the AUA Faculty Senate and on several university wide committees. Outside of AUA Mr. Bournazian serves on the Board of Trustees of the Civic Development and Partnership Foundation (registered in Armenia), and as chair of the Armenian Programs Committee of the Armenian Bar Association (located in the U.S.).

Armen Mazmanyan
Assistant Professor
Programs Director, Legal Resource Center

Dr. Mazmanyan has taught at the AUA Law Department since 2003. He holds a PhD and a Master's degree in law from the European University Institute, an LLM from the University of Illinois and an LLB from Yerevan State University. Between 2006 and 2011, he has also been on various research missions at the Universities of Antwerp, Munich, Tartu and California/Berkeley. His most recent research concentrated on institutional design and law-making in the context of democratization in post-Soviet countries. His last article on constitutional developments in formerly Soviet countries is forthcoming in Global Constitutionalism (Cambridge). Before entering academia, Armen Mazmanyan served as Chief Legal Counsel at HSBC Bank Armenia. He regularly advises various international organizations on law reforms in transitions.

In Fall 2011, Dr. Mazmanyan will teach EU Law and will lead an advanced seminar series designed for the general public with expertise in law and government. His email address is amazman@aua.am .

Edwin Villmoare
Visiting Professor
Ed Villmoare was born and raised in Washington, D.C. He graduated cum laude from Harvard and then received an M.A. and J.D. from the University of Virginia. He graduated in the top 10% of his law school class and was selected as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow. He joined Piper and Marbury in Baltimore where he helped open the first pro bono office for a corporate firm in the US. He handled anti-poverty and civil rights cases as well as test cases in criminal, juvenile and consumer matters. He had the first juvenile confession suppressed in the history of Maryland. He then served in Washington, D.C. as a division chief for the federal Office of Economic Opportunity's Legal Services Program, the precursor of the Legal Services Corporation. He moved to California where he worked as an agency director for Governor Jerry Brown. After working on advocacy projects for the State Bar of California, he joined the faculty of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific, in Sacramento, California. During the over twenty years he served on the McGeorge faculty, he taught administrative law, ADR, social legislation, negotiation, comparative criminal law, disability law and education law. At other institutions in the US and abroad he has taught American legal history, US constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, international criminal law, human rights and a variety of trial advocacy courses. During his tenure at McGeorge he also served as Associate Director of McGeorge's Institute for Administrative Justice where he worked as a mediator, administrative law judge, and chief hearing officer for the state of California. He trained adjudicators from over twenty federal and state administrative agencies. He trained judges, law professors, and attorneys from several African nations in ADR. In 2000, he served as an ABA-CEELI liaison in Kosovo where he trained judges and defense attorneys. He also monitored war crimes trials and helped form the Kosovo Judges' Association and draft new criminal and social legislation. While in Kosovo, he worked with officials from the UN, OSCE, the US Mission, USAID and a variety of European organizations. He returned to Kosovo in 2002 to teach at the law school. Later, he taught trial advocacy skills to Chilean prosecutors and defense attorneys under Chile's new adversarial system. In 2006, he taught international criminal law and comparative constitutional law at the Law Department of AUA. In the fall of 2007, He is scheduled to return to AUA to teach administrative law and legal drafting. He is admitted to practice in Washington, D.C. Maryland, and California.

Emil Babayan
Senior Lecturer
Emil Babayan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, where he completed his Baccalaureate in law. He earned his first LL.M. degree from American University of Armenia (AUA) in 2001. Mr. Babayan earned his second LL.M. degree in Public International Law from Leiden University in 2003. He has taught at AUA Law since 2003. Courses taught by him include Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict from the perspective of International Law, Genocide Law and Reparation, and EU Law. He is currently employed by the Ministry of Justice of Armenia and serves as the Deputy Agent of the RA Government before the European Court of Human Rights. He also teaches European Convention on Human Rights classes to RA civil servants on behalf of the RA Ministry of Justice.

Sarkis Knyazyan
Lecturer
Sarkis Knyazyan earned his LL.M in Intellectual Property law from Franklin Pierce Law School, NH, USA and his LL.B degree from Yerevan University of Management, Armenia. He also received the certificate in the American and International Law from the American and International Law Institute at Plano, Texas, USA, and has completed training in negotiation and group discussion facilitation in the Harvard Negotiation Project, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. A local attorney who majored in international public and private law, Mr. Knyazyan worked for five years for Arlex International, in Yerevan handling civil, corporate, labor, business, IP, and financial law for international clients. He also worked for two years for the American University of Armenia, as a legal counsel and clerked for the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Chicago, IL. In 2007 Mr. Knyazyan served as a Judge in the International Rounds of Jessup Competition in Washington D.C., USA. He is the board member of Jessup Club in Armenia and is one the faculty at the American University of Armenia. Mr. Knyazyan is the founder and managing attorney of Knyazyan & Partners Law Office, a law firm in Armenia, providing wide range of legal services in the field of Intellectual Property and Art Law. Mr. Knyazyan currently advises the Ministry of Economy and the IP Agency on IPR related policies, and closely works with the IPR Advisors of the EU Advisory Group to Armenia on approximating Armenian IP legislation with the European Directives and Regulations.

Hakob Martirosyan
Lecturer

Hakob Martirosyan holds his LL.M in International Economic Law from Warwick University, England (2004), and his B.A. in International Economics from the National Institute of Economy in Yerevan (1999). He joined Arlex International, a leading Armenian law firm in 1999 and has over seven years' experience in complex transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, tax planning, licensing and regulatory matters, real property, banking, and employment law. He teaches International Tax Law at the American University of Armenia.

Marine Antonyan
Lecturer
Marine Antonyan was born in 1986. She graduated from the College "Quantum" in 2002 and was admitted to the Law Faculty of the Yerevan State University the same year where she got her LL.B degree. In 2006, she was admitted to the Law Department of the American University of Armenia where she got her LL.M degree in 2008. M. Antonyan started her professional career in the Yerevan Press Club as a legal expert / consultant. She has also cooperated with "Araza" and "Alphabet of Rights" local NGOs and has taught Constitutional Law of the Republic of Armenia as well as Employment Law to heads of a number of municipalities, businessmen, NGO members, and schoolchildren. She is a winner of a number of moot court competitions conducted in Armenia (annual competition on the Law of Precedent held by USAID /ABA/CEELI; annual competition on International Humanitarian Law held by the ICRC Armenia). In 2007, M. Antonyan also participated in the annual moot court competition on International Environmental Law held by the Stetson University in Florida, USA and was granted a certificate for performing superior appellate advocacy skills. Starting from April 2008 she works as a senior legal reviser / lawyer at the Translation Centre of the RA Ministry of Justice. The mission of the Translation Centre is to provide - within the framework of the process of Armenia's integration to the European Union - high-quality translation of the legal acts of Armenia and those of the EU into English and Armenian, respectively, and to ensure - through its website - the public availability of translated legal acts. M. Antonyan started teaching at the AUA Law Department in January 2010. Courses taught include International Humanitarian Law and Master's Paper.

Adelaida Baghdasaryan
Lecturer
Adelaida Baghdasaryan, Program Assistant at the Political/Economic Section of the U.S. Embassy Yerevan, advises the mission management and other State Department personnel on foreign assistance needs and programming, thus advancing the goals of US Government-funded assistance projects in Armenia. Aside from her full-time service, she assists ARMADEL Consulting law firm in legal research and preparation of litigation materials and lawsuits on a variety of civil and administrative cases.  Her previous experience ranged from finance, office and project manager at RONCO Consulting Corporation's Demining Program to chief administrative officer for the NK Representation at the RA National Assembly.  A former graduate of the AUA Law Department, Mrs. Baghdasaryan currently teaches a class in Master's papers methodology and research at the AUA Law Department.  She earned her Diploma in International Relations at the Yerevan State University in 1996.

Dejan Georgievski
Assistant Professor
Dejan Georgievski was born and raised in Skopje, Macedonia, where he also earned his Bachelor of Laws degree (LL.B.) from Saints Cyril and Methodius University. After briefly working as legal assistant and legal adviser to ABA/CEELI (Skopje, Macedonia) and USAID/CFED - Commercial Law Project (Skopje, Macedonia), he completed a Master of Laws degree (LL.M.) in European Community Law at Leiden University (The Netherlands). From 2003 to 2004, he worked as a lawyer of the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg, France), and from 2005 to 2006, as a consultant to ABA/CEELI (Yerevan, Armenia). He joined the AUA Law Department in 2006. He regularly teaches the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR Law) and European Union Law (EU Law), and is due to teach Comparative Law. He currently serves as at large representative in the AUA Faculty Senate and as international consultant to the Judicial School of Republic of Armenia.

Mher Arshakyan
Lecturer
Mher Arshakyan is a native of Yerevan. He completed his degree in History at Yerevan State University and in 2005 he successfully completed his Masters in Comparative Legal Studies degree at the American University of Armenia. In 2007 he completed summa cum laude the Advanced Studies in Constitutional Law Certificate offered by the Faculty of Law of the University of Bern, Switzerland. Mr. Arshakyan has instructed students regarding legal skills development in connection with a variety of legal topics as well as on international criminal and humanitarian law. He has also lectured at special seminars on legal precedent, international humanitarian law and refugee law. He served as National Consultant for UNHCR Armenia and taught Refugee Law and Constitutional Law Topics
at AUA where he also served as a project coordinator for the Citizens' Guide project.