Spotlight Detail

Lori Sinanian, recipient of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundations BE HEARD Prize

Congratulations to Lori Sinanian, recipient of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's BE HEARD Prize.

Lori Sinanian, UCI class of 2020, majored in English. While at UCI, she wore many hats that derived from her interest in the intersection of different modes of communicating. During her undergraduate career, she sought to explore the communicative capacity of language through her involvement in the Newport Beach Film Festival, Anteater Television, and Insight Magazine. She also served as the Vice-Chair of the UCI Student Center Board of Advisors. Through her degree and undergraduate experience, she has embraced the power and impact of words, but always with an eye for advocacy, storytelling, and social justice. Currently, Lori is the Social Media Manager for the ARPA International Film Festival.

During her studies at UCI, Lori also participated in the newly offered Armenian language courses, successfully completing both the Beginner and Intermediate Series. With the opportunity to develop her creative voice in Western Armenian, Lori won a Be Heard Prize by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for her submission ?????? ????????? [involuntary solitude]. Gulbenkian Foundation’s Armenian Communities Department launched the ???? ??/ Be Heard initiative in April 2020, in order to invite speakers of the Armenian language to submit innovative audiovisual and literary productions that address contemporary global issues. ?????? ????????? is a transcript for an experimental podcast, which questions the idea of the “social,” when our practices of the digital age meet the experience of a global pandemic.