Eliza Helmers is an AM student at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where she hopes to specialize in issues of coexistence and identity-based conflict. Eliza graduated from Dartmouth College in 2022, where she majored in biology and minored in Jewish studies. While she began her academic career with a primary interest in the sciences, her enthusiasm for Middle Eastern studies and Jewish studies grew at Dartmouth. After finishing this AM degree, Eliza intends to pursue either law school or a PhD program. Eliza’s undergraduate thesis at Dartmouth College, titled “Conflict and Coexistence: Exploring Egyptian, Jewish, and Egyptian-Jewish Narratives of Identity,” explored the crossroads of collective memory and human rights, paying particular attention to how conceptions of national identity can facilitate the inclusion or exclusion of minority groups from wider society. Her research, which was based on intensive fieldwork in Egypt, was funded in part by the Leslie Center Student Research Fellowship and the Mozel Charitable Trust research funds. This thesis went on to win the Gary H. Plotnick Prize for Best Research Paper, marking the second time Eliza has been awarded this prize.