Manaswini Ramkumar is the CDSN Postdoctoral Fellow 2024-2025 at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. She is completing her PhD in International Relations at the School of International Service, American University in Washington DC, where she examines civil-military relations in the context of democratic erosion. She also studies postcolonial statebuilding, subnational democracy, and authoritarian resistance. Her work has been funded by American University, The Association for Documentary Editing and the American Political Science Association. She received her MPhil in IR from American University and MSc in Strategic Studies from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore where she previously worked as an Associate Research Fellow in the Military Studies program and was a lecturer in Professional Military Education to the Singapore Armed Forces.