Julia Schiwal is a program specialist with the Religion and Inclusive Societies program at USIP. Before joining USIP in 2019, she worked at the George Washington University, volunteered with local transgender organizations, and supported the Xinjiang Victims Database. 

Schiwal is a historian of Central Asia, with particular focus on Afghanistan, gender and sexuality. Her research interests include Islamic law, gender and sexual minorities, and countering violent extremism. Her country expertise includes Iran, Afghanistan and the Xinjiang region of China. 

She is currently working on an approach to gender and sexual minority inclusion in peacebuilding that emphasizes pragmatism and strategic inclusion. Schiwal is deeply interested in the significance of transgender identity for cisgender people, especially the way that cisgender people use transgender people to crystallize their own sense of self, often in violent ways.

She has a bachelor’s in global humanities and religion from the University of Montana and a master’s in Central Asian studies from the George Washington University. She was also awarded a 2021 Richards Research Fellowship by the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies to study gender and sexual minorities in Central Asia.