The Department of the Christian Orient focuses on different problems of eastern-Christian communities, the history of medieval and modern Georgia, Armenian-Georgian and Armenian-Byzantine interrelations, the history of Caucasian Albania, the Caucasian ethno-cultural area, and also the eastern-Caucasian church and the interconfessional connections.

The Department of Iranian Studies, besides the urgent issues of history, internal policy, agrarian relations and the Islamic revolution, investigates different problems of the ethno-cultural and linguistic peculiarities of the Iranian peoples and of classical and modern Persian literature.

The Department of Turkish Studies deals with the history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, the juridical status of national minorities, the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide, the policies of the great powers, the peculiarities of the development of modern Turkey, the problems of Ottomanism, Pan-Turkism, Pan-Islamism, Kemalism, Neo-Ottomanism and Neo-Pan-Turkism.

The Department of Arabic Studies deals with the problems of medieval and modern history of the Arabic East (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, etc.), the national-liberation movements, downfall of colonial domination, independence movements in Arabic countries as well as international and inter-Arabic relations, ideology and Islam in general.

The Department of Ancient Orient deals with the history, ethnic, socio- economic and cultural-linguistic problems of the countries of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor: Assyria, Babylonia, the Hittite Kingdom and other political entities, as well as with Hellenism.

The primary problems of the Department are: the study of narrative and documentary sources about the history of Armenia created in foreign languages (in Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Georgian) in the neighboring countries; their translation into Armenian; and the enhancement of the source study basis for comprehensive and integral study of the history of Armenia.

The department is dealing with a research of the international and regional relations in the Near and Middle East and South Caucasus, as well as the policy of the great powers in the region. The department is also involved in to a research, where the main focus is done on the international relations of Armenia and their connections with adjacent countries.