Smbat Hovhannisyan is an advisory committee member of Calouste Gulbenkian Transaltion Series project. Hovhannisyan is a historian, poet and translator. He graduated from Faculty of History of Yerevan State University. Currently, he is a lecturer at the World History Chair of the same Faculty (Associate Professor) and an invited lecturer at the American University of Armenia. Author of a monography, more than thirty scientific and sociopolitical articles, as well numerous translations (Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Yuri Lotman, Osip
Mandelstam, Rainer Maria Rilke and many others). The scope of his scientific interests includes the theories of historiography, civilization, semiotics and history; the problems of history of the Armenian and world trade capital of pre-industrial eras.