Anoush F. Terjanian

Anoush F. Terjanian is the special adviser to the vice-president, International and Francophonie, at the University of Ottawa, building on her role as assistant vice-dean, Partnerships and Research Networks, Faculty of Social Sciences. She is formerly a tenured associate professor of history at East Carolina University, and her research and teaching focus on the interconnected origins of imperialism, capitalism and modern democracy. She is the author of Commerce and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century French Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, paperback reprint 2016).

As founding director of the US Social Science Research Council's Anxieties of Democracy program, Terjanian collaborated with an eminent advisory committee to design, fund, promote and manage this international venture to produce and broadcast a better understanding of the dilemmas of legitimacy and capacity faced by established democracies. Mobilizing a diverse team of over 75 top-tier social scientists, journalists and practitioners to “smart up the public conversation about democracy with fresh social science,” Terjanian led innovative public programming and communications strategies to champion the civic role of university research to the broadest publics, and secured the program’s longevity by securing an Anxieties of Democracy book series with Cambridge University Press.

Born and raised in Canada, and having lived and studied in Egypt, England, France and Italy, Terjanian brings an international perspective to her work. Her interest in democratic institutions and politics is longstanding: Terjanian is an alumna of the non-partisan Parliamentary Internship Programme—an initiative of the Canadian Political Science Association—which operates on Parliament Hill under the auspices of the Speaker of the House of Commons. She also served as a summit officer with Canada’s G7 Summit delegation in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now called Global Affairs Canada).

Terjanian earned her PhD at Johns Hopkins University, following doctoral studies at l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris) and degrees in political science and history at McGill University and the University of Cambridge.

Date modified:

2020-02-21