Simon Maghakyan

The founder of Heritage Intel, Simon Maghakyan, is a political scientist specializing in heritage and security. He is an associate member of the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and an incoming Visiting Professor of Political Science at Colorado College. He has previously held appointments at the University of Denver, Fresno State, and Tufts University. He earned his PhD in defense and security studies in 2024 from Cranfield University, an academic arm of the British defense ministry, after a decade in nonprofit and teaching roles, including at his alma mater, the University of Colorado Denver. 

 

Previously, his collaborative research in Hyperallergic and The Art Newspaper exposed Azerbaijan’s erasure of Nakhichevan’s Armenian heritage, praised as “rock-solid” by The Guardian and cited at the International Court of Justice. His insights have appeared in global media, including the BBC, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Time. His academic publications include a forthcoming handbook on heritage and security, and the theoretical element Sovereign Heritage Crime: Security, Autocracy, and the Material Past, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.