Berkley Center

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.