Julia Raven is a Ph.D. candidate (graduating summer 2025) in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on organizational change and adaptation, with a dissertation focus on military effectiveness and security sector reform. Her dissertation examines the challenges to meaningful military reform in post-colonial states and argues that colonizers strategically varied the ethnic composition of their colonial militaries and supported veto actors to cement those designs after independence. In addition to support from UC Berkeley, her research has been supported by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Center for African Studies (UC Berkeley), UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust, Institute of International Studies (UC Berkeley), and Center for American Democracy (UC Berkeley). Before coming to UC Berkeley, Raven earned a BA in political science and communication studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.