2025 Lev Student Research Fellowship Awarded to Aliyah Blank

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research has bestowed the 2025 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship to USC undergraduate student Aliyah Blank for Spring 2025.

The Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship provides support for USC students at any academic level and from any discipline to conduct a period of research in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on testimonies of the Visual History Archive (VHA) and related USC resources and collections. Aliyah Blank is spending Spring 2025 in residence at the Center and will give a public talk about her research during the 2025-2026 academic year.

Aliyah Blank is a senior who is double-majoring in Law, History, and Culture and Jewish Studies and minoring in Resistance to Genocide. She is conducting research with Holocaust survivor testimonies in the VHA and with primary and secondary sources in the USC Libraries to contribute to her study of Jewish resistance in the Vilna and Kovno ghettos. Her project is born out of her desire to challenge simplistic victim narratives and instead highlight the strength, determination, and resourcefulness of those who resisted. She’s also committed to highlighting Jewish experiences in Lithuania where 90 to 95% of the Jewish population was killed during the Holocaust.

Blank has done extensive coursework to prepare for her research, taking courses on “The Holocaust,” “Antisemitism, Racism, and Other Hatreds,” “Mass Violence and Comparative Genocide in Modern World History,” and “The Holocaust in 20th Century Europe.” It was in this last class that she conducted original research on this topic, which she is broadening through this fellowship, consulting even more sources than she could last semester.

Among other awards and distinctions, Blank was awarded the Winer Scholarship for the 2024-2025 academic year. In her extracurricular activities, she is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and President of USC Gamma Phi Beta. She is also a member of USC Moot Court where she was a semifinalist at the City of Angeles Moot Court Regional in 2024. She has served as a tutor for student athletes at USC. In 2020, she had an internship at Resolutions Northwest in Portland, Oregon, where she became a certified mediator in Oregon and delivered over 500+ instructional hours on antiracism, restorative justice, and equity-informed mediation. She volunteered at Lessons & Legacies, the international Holocaust Studies conference that the Center had the honor of cohosting in November 2024.