Berkley Center

Judd Birdsall is assistant professor of the practice in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, where he is also a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the project director of the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy (TPNRD). In addition, he is a senior advisor on the religion and inclusive societies team at the United States Institute of Peace. From 2011 to 2020 Birdsall was based at Cambridge University, where he earned his Ph.D., founded a research center on religion and international studies, and served as an affiliated lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies. Prior to his time at Cambridge, he served in the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. Birdsall is the editor of Religion & Diplomacy, and his work has appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Guardian, Huffington Post, Christianity Today, and Religion & Politics. He is also a senior editor and a frequent contributor at the Review of Faith & International Affairs.

Rohit Chopra is a professor in the Department of Communication at Santa Clara University and has been a visiting scholar at the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. His research centers on global online communities and the relationship of media, culture, and political memory, with a particular focus on Hindu nationalist and rightwing communities. Chopra is the author of The Gita for a Global World: Ethical Action in an Age of Flux (2021); The Virtual Hindu Nation: Saffron Nationalism and New Media (2019); and Technology and Nationalism in India: Cultural Negotiations from Colonialism to Cyberspace (2008).

Julia Schiwal is a program officer with the religion and inclusive societies program and the disruptive technologies program at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Before joining USIP in 2019, she worked at George Washington University and volunteered with the Xinjiang Victims Database. Her research interests include history, law, and society, particularly regarding how people engage religion and technology. She has a master’s degree in imperial and colonial studies from the George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in global humanities and religions from the University of Montana. Built on her expertise on Afghan history, she wrote a thesis on “The Wire Monkey: Hearts and Minds Counterinsurgency from Sandeman to CVE,” which is the first account of how the idea of winning the hearts and minds of the people was historically transmitted through institutional learning across 150 years of frontier governance. She co-led with Peter Mandaville a thematic series on Asia as part of the Berkley Center’s Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power project.

Eric Schluessel is an associate professor of history and international affairs and director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University. He has published extensively on Xinjiang past and present. Schluessel received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has received research fellowships from such organizations as the Social Science Research Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Institute for Advanced Study.

Mohammed Sinan Siyech is a full scholarship doctoral candidate at the Islamic and Middle East Studies Department at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He also teaches politics at King's College London and at School of Oriental and African Studies. He has written and spoken extensively on security, foreign policy, and religion in South Asia and the Middle East.

Bianca Trifoi is a Ph.D. candidate at the George Washington University studying North Korean and Cold War history, with a minor field in modern Chinese history. Her research interests include social history and everyday life, national identity, and socialist internationalism and solidarity. Her dissertation analyzes childhood in 1950s and 1960s North Korea: how the state defined children and constructed a particular North Korean child, and how concerns about children shaped North Korean society and national identity in the context of the Cold War. She received her M.A. in Asian studies from Florida International University and her B.A. in international studies and Spanish from Florida Atlantic University.