At BYU’s commencement exercises this week, student Mirabella Archibald Keogh will represent the graduates as the student speaker.
As a double major in Middle Eastern Studies/Arabic and public health, Keogh has accomplished much in her time at BYU. She, along with her husband, started the Peacemaking Project at BYU. She also studied abroad in Morocco and at the BYU Jerusalem Center. As an undergraduate student, she co-authored a research paper about how commitment to stability over ideology produces peace agreements. This summer Keogh will present the research at a conference in Vienna.
University Communications’ Aaron Sorenson recently met with Keogh to discuss Keogh’s experiences at BYU.
Aaron: Your two majors seem really distinct. Why did you choose those two?
Mirabella: I came into BYU as a public health major. I was really interested in health policy, and then during my sophomore year, I went to the BYU Jerusalem Center, and I just really fell in love with my whole experience. And after that, I started taking some Middle Eastern Studies/Arabic classes just for fun, but later I felt like God was telling me I had to go all in on it.
Have you had other experiences where listening to a prompting changed you?
Yes, it completely transformed my education. I was planning on going on a mission but I felt like God was saying to me that I really shouldn't go. That was really devastating for me, because I had been planning on it for so long, and thought, how else am I going to serve in the kingdom if I can't be a missionary? At one point when I felt like my life was turning upside down, I felt like God was telling that I didn’t have to be a missionary to serve Him, and that my education is as much a ministry as an actual mission would be. That experience really shaped how I approached my studies, how I decided the things that I was going to do with my time, what classes to take. I felt like it was a ministry, and that my time at BYU was part of me building up the kingdom of God.
What made you decide to start the Peacemaking Project?
My husband and I did speech and debate in high school, and we loved talking about politics with people, but we noticed at BYU, that was kind of a stigmatized thing. After President Russel M. Nelson gave his “Peacemakers Needed” talk in 2023 we really felt that this feeling of discomfort — that we can't have honest conversations with other students — is what he called divine discontent. His address prompted us to start this academic student association. In fact, the mission statement of the association is based off of that address.
What has your experience been with the association?
We've had really huge student buy-in. We've gotten grants from BYU that enabled us to go to 15 different schools and do research on what other students are doing about peacemaking on their campus. And then, using that same grant, we founded an annual BYU Summit, where we invited students from those same schools to come to BYU. We wrote a student declaration of peacemaking together. When we first started the peacemaker project, our vision was really centered on BYU, but I've seen now that this disciple approach to peacemaking has an effect nationally, and there have been students from Stanford to Harvard, who've benefited, and I'm really, really grateful for that. In President Nelson's message, he says that we really can change the world one conversation at a time.
What are your plans after graduation?
My husband and I are moving to England in the fall because he got a scholarship to study at Oxford. I am applying to jobs in London right now. Post our time in Oxford, my plan is to apply to law school. I want to do a JD PhD. I'm really interested in looking at peace theology in religious law, like Sharia law or halakha, or even Catholic religious texts and canon.
What advice would you give to incoming freshmen?
To see your education as a consecrated experience. Ask yourself: Why am I doing this, and how can I point what I'm learning to Jesus Christ? Having that mentality has really transformed a lot of how I've viewed my education. I think that when students do that, they're able to rely on Jesus Christ and His enabling power to become more than what they expect they could become as a BYU student.
