Ella is a first-year PhD student in Music at the University of Virginia. Growing up in Berlin and later completing an undergraduate degree in music at Oxford University, she became interested in how memory culture, public sentiment, legal frameworks, and funding structures shape the experiences of Israeli and Palestinian musicians in Berlin. Given the urgency of recent events and the rapid changes in Berlin’s cultural scene, she is eager to expand this work with the interdisciplinary perspectives of the Jewish Studies Graduate Fellows. For her, music offers not only a rich lens of study but also a vital means of bridging polarisation.