Julia Tomasso

Julia Tomasso is a research fellow and lecturer within the “Defence and High Technology Industry” and “Middle East/North Africa” programmes at IRIS. She specialises in defence industrial policies and strategic cultures in Europe and the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Iranian and Turkish defence industries.

She holds a dual Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Islamic Studies from McGill University in Montreal, as well as a Master’s degree specialising in the Middle East from SOAS University of London. During her studies, she focused on Iranian defence, Iran’s non-state partners, and Islamic issues, particularly the instrumentalisation of Quranic theological concepts by terrorist groups. She has an intermediate proficiency in Farsi and Turkish.

Before joining IRIS, Julia Tomasso completed internships at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ecuador and at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, where she worked on Iranian military doctrine. She later joined the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum, a London-based think tank, as an analyst specialising in defence and security issues in Iran and Syria.