Eliza is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Her doctoral research explores how governance transpires in spaces where the state is largely absent. She is particularly interested in how other actors fill governance roles - armed groups, criminal organizations, traditional leaders, and civil society. Extending from this, her research examines the different ways that people resist this authority, and generally, navigate spaces of institutional and political multiplicity.  She has spoken extensively on this topic at conferences including at ISA, USIP, Club de Madrid, and Hedayah, and published with Foreign Policy, USIP, ODI, and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

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Eliza has taught at the graduate level in France, Afghanistan, and Switzerland. She also serves as a consultant for the Overseas Development Institute and Global Equality Matters, and is on the board of the Everyday Peace Indicators Project. The methodology from this work is central to her doctoral thesis. 

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She has extensive experience in fragile and conflict-affected states. She served as a Senior Program Officer for the United States Institute of Peace in Afghanistan, where she was based from 2013-2017. In this role, she managed several portfolios of programs and research focused on the prevention, mitigation, and resolution of violent conflict. The programs included education and governance initiatives, as well as mixed-method evaluations and research carried out on hard-to-define concepts, like peace, reconciliation, and violent extremism.

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​She holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Paris, and a BA from Concordia University in Montreal and the American University in Cairo.