Naira Grigoryan (Antonyan) is the head of the Center for Chinese Language and Culture at the Russian-Armenian University and one of the founders of Sinology in Armenia. She served as the first director of the Confucius Institute in Armenia (2009-2015) and has been the director of the Center for Chinese Language and Culture at RAU since 2015. She is the author of the first Chinese language textbook in Armenian, "Learning Chinese" (亚美尼亚人学习汉语), and a co-author of textbooks on Chinese language and culture, as well as translations of Tang dynasty poetry into Armenian. N. L. Grigoryan has also developed and co-authored the world’s first system for the transliteration of initials and finals from Chinese to Armenian, and she has authored numerous academic articles.
She has been recognized with gratitude from the State Office for the Promotion of Chinese Language and Culture Abroad (Hanban) as the best director of the Confucius Institute in Armenia, coinciding with the five-year anniversary of the Institute.
An important achievement for Naira Grigoryan is the official introduction of Armenian language instruction in Chinese universities. The first university to teach Armenian was the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BeiWai).