November 4th - November 18th, 2025 | | Wheat at War: Associate Professor Paul Poast examines Food, Sovereignty, and Economic Cooperation in New Book | | Associate Professor and former CISSR Board Member Paul Poast calls his new book “first and foremost a book about World War I” that focuses on an understudied aspect of the war: food. In Wheat at War: Allied Economic Cooperation in the Great War, Poast and coauthor, Rosella Capella-Zelinski, examine how the Allied powers confronted severe food shortages, especially wheat, during World War I. While much of the literature about the first World War has focused on blockades and submarine warfare, this book turns attention to how the Allied powers and their partners coordinated to keep civilians and soldiers fed. Central to the story is the creation of wartime institutions such as the Wheat Executive, an international body empowered to make distribution decisions on behalf of the Allies. Poast explains that the Wheat Executive did more than solve an immediate crisis: it served as a template for later economic cooperation. | | The origin of the project, Poast says, was partly serendipitous. The authors were initially studying wartime finance and loans when they learned about the Wheat Executive. Methodologically, the book combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. The beginning of the book analyzes historical price data from the Chicago Board of Trade to identify meaningful shifts in the average price of wheat. They then follow those signals into U.S. and European archives to document policymaker responses. Poast calls the result a “nice combination” of data analysis and archival research that helps explain why and when states ceded aspects of sovereign control to manage a transnational crisis. | | | |
The book’s main theoretical contribution is a framework for looking at the conditions under which states are willing to give up their sovereignty to resolve a particular issue, something that can be applied to contemporary issues like climate change or the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Poast points to contemporary parallels: disruptions to wheat production in Ukraine and the use of starvation in warfare in conflicts in Sudan and Gaza make the book’s subject especially timely. He hopes readers take away two things: a clearer sense of how economic cooperation can grow out of wartime necessity, and a deeper appreciation for the central, but often overlooked, role food plays in both civilian welfare and military capability.
What surprised Dr. Poast the most when writing this book (aside from the inordinate amount of time he spent learning about stem rust), was how helpful archivists and librarians are when doing this kind of research. He wants students to know that when working with archives, they should contact archivists early because they are often willing to help and to scan and send materials when it isn’t possible to access the materials in person.
Wheat at War is available at Oxford University Press.
| | Around Town and Down the Road | | |
Institutions Workshop
4:30pm - 6:30pm CST
November 12th: Susan Stokes, "Explaining Democratic Erosion"
1126 East 59th Street, Room 201
| |
African Studies Workshop
Tuesdays, 5:30 to 7 pm, Foster 107
November 11th: Gregory Mann, Columbia University, Department of History
| |
Empires Workshop
Alternate Mondays, 12:00 to 2pm, SSRB 224
November 3rd: Siyen Fei, "Lost People on the Ming-Mongol Frontiers: Captivity and Labour Acquisition in Early Modern China"
| |
History and Theory of Global Capitalism
Wednesdays, 4:30 to 6pm, Pick 105
November 5th: Nicolae Biea
| |
Demography Workshop
Thursdays, 12:30-1:50 pm, NORC Conference Room
November 6th: Aleksandra Lukina, University of Chicago
November 13th: Kristina Butaeva, University of Chicago
| |
Immigration Workshop
Alternate Mondays, 12:30 to 1:45pm, Pick 105
November 10th: Sophia Costa, University of Chicago – Sociology.
| | |
Political Theory Workshop
Select Mondays from 3:30-5:20 PM in Foster Hall 107
November 10th: Julie Cooper, Tel Aviv University. Discussant: Daniel Epstein
November 17th: Marie Louise Krogh, Leiden University. Discussant: Elizabeth Camacho
| |
Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean
Alternate Thursdays, 5 to 6:30pm, Pick 118
November 6th: Zi Yang Lim, "Death and Dreams: How Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei (Re)Imagine Person and Place of Lima"
November 13th: Cristina Esteves-Wolff, "Allegorical Caudillos in Edgardo Rodríguez's La noche oscura del niño Avilés"
| |
Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop
Alternate Tuesdays, 5:00 – 6:20 pm, The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Room 103
November 18th: Vicki Kirby, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of New South Wales, “Playing the Field: non-non binary promiscuity”
| | The Mosque Nearby: Visible Minorities and Far-Right Support in France | |
2017-18 Dissertation Fellow Dr. Victor Gay explores how likely people are to vote for right wing populist political parties based on their exposure and proximity to Muslim people in France. Gay positions this research in the context of growing populist radical right movements across Europe, situating his quantitative analysis in context by describing the ascension of the far-right movement and the coinciding rise in construction of mosques and Islamic places of worship in France. Gay references the public observation that the presence and construction of mosques “triggers” anti-Muslim protests across Europe that are capitalized upon by far-right parties for their electoral campaigns. While existing theories discuss different ways of looking at the relationship between Muslim immigration and far-right parties’ rise, Gay builds upon scholarship that uses the image of a halo to present a cohesive notion of these theories’ mixed findings. The findings show that propensity to vote for the major far-right party increases in intermediate proximity from mosques but decreases as proximity to mosques decreases, resembling a halo. Further, the size, visibility, and identifiability of a mosque also are associated with differing levels of support for far-right political parties. Gay uses extensive quantitative spatial analysis of vote share and proximity to mosques through quadratic distance to confirm the halo effect.
Read the paper here.
| | | When Redistribution Backfires Politically: Land Reform in Portugal | |
2020-21 CISSR Rudolph Fellow Noah Schouela and 2018-25 CISSR Faculty Fellow Michael Albertus discuss ways that reform policies shape mass politics and how reform and redistribution can backfire against political groups. Albertus and Schouela explore past scholarly research, where reform policies were believed to potentially be self-reinforcing. However, newer research elucidates that reform policies are contingent, conditional, and, in some cases, may even be self-undermining. This article further contributes to the literature by theorizing how two key groups –– eligible non-beneficiaries and ineligible individuals –– can shape feedback loops, in addition to the main groups examined in past studies. Two critical variables facilitate their research, proximity and policy saturations –– the former capturing the extent to which people can tangibly observe policy consequences near them, and the latter describing the extent of policy reform among the population. Using a case study of Portugal, Albertus and Schouela unpack these features and variables to examine how they shape land reform redistribution and the consequences of land reform for political parties. Land redistribution differs from other forms of redistribution due to its tangible visibility and finitude. The authors find that because land redistribution is so visible, unlike fiscal or social forms of redistribution that occur through less visible means, the limited and rivalrous nature of land ownership may fuel emotions such as fear or a sense of expectation at the start, and relief, satisfaction, or grievances when it ends, which will reflect in the support or decline in support for political groups.
Read the full article here.
| | | New Data on Unaccompanied Minors in US Migration Court | | | |
2024-25 CISSR Faculty Fellow Chiara Galli extrapolates statistics on unaccompanied minors and lays new infrastructure for future scholars to examine migration and access to legal counsel. Her article examines how little was previously known about the nearly 800,000 unaccompanied minors that have been apprehended along the Southern US-Mexico border since 2009, who fled violence, child abuse, sought opportunity, or family reunification. Apprehended children often cycle through multiple government agencies in the immigration system, and only some of these agencies keep records of the unaccompanied minors that pass through them. As a result of this, there are major gaps in the data that make it extremely difficult to gauge how unaccompanied minors fare once they are placed in removal proceedings or whether they obtain any deportation relief. The challenges in identifying unaccompanied minors in the EOIR data have constrained immigration research and advocacy, making it impossible to monitor US government treatment of immigrant children. To combat the gaps in the data, Galli extrapolated statistics by using a novel approach that the authors of the article developed to identify unaccompanied minors in administrative data from the EOIR that integrates and builds on previous methods. The findings of this article introduce new methods that make it possible to reliably identify unaccompanied minors in the EOIR’s immigration court data, overcome reliability issues introduced by the Trump administrations changes to courts record keeping practices, and helps future scholarship examine determinants to counsel and case outcomes using data transparency to ensure government accountability.
Read the full article here.
| | | Impacts of Climate Change on Global Agricultural Practices | |
2023-24 CISSR Faculty Fellow Amir Jina examines the impacts of climate change on global agriculture and adaptation methods, measuring the effects of climate change on crop production and adoption rates of producer adaptation. Jina addresses how disruptions to global food systems due to climate change are well-studied, but highlights that the degree to which humans globally will adapt their agricultural practices accordingly remains widely unknown and under researched. As a result of the lack of research, global projections have thus far been unable to account for the adoption rates and efficacy of producers' adaptation methods to combat climate change. Jina developed an empirical approach to measure these effects by analyzing one of the most comprehensive samples of subnational crop yields ever recorded –– representing two-thirds of the global crop-calorie production –– which allows for the findings to be globally representative. The results of this study allow us to understand the real world response of producers to weather events, changes in climate, and economic development, as well as apply these results to gauge likely climate change impacts on yields that account for environment changes, biophysical processes, and the responses of producers to offset these changes. Previous analyses provide details into the progress of agronomic (soil preparation, irrigation, crop rotation, etc.) methods, but such methods typically assume that producers optimize yields that are possible, but not always realistic due to climate and weather conditions. This research analysis is the first to quantify the adaptations of real producers to climate around the world and to apply these measurements to projections of global agricultural damages from climate change.
Read the full article here.
| | | Sana Jaffrey Discusses the Importance of Fieldwork, Quantitative Data, and Effective Methodology | |
In this interview, 2017-18 Dissertation Fellow Dr. Sana Jaffrey discusses her approach to fieldwork and quantitative methodology by drawing upon her work at the World Bank crafting the Indonesian National Violence Monitoring System and her dissertation research. In doing so, she analyzes the case for mixed qualitative and quantitative methods. Central to Jaffrey’s conception of effective methodology is the notion that qualitative data is necessary to supplement numerical data, to provide a more thorough understanding of what factors are at play. In Jaffrey’s research, the intersection of qualitative and quantitative data is paramount to understanding incidences of violence and how they inform perspectives on Indonesian politics and society. The interview delves into the importance of methodological production, illustrating that both the results and the way they are obtained tell researchers something vital about the question at hand. Diving into the role of positionality in research, Jaffrey and the interlocutor discuss biases at play in fieldwork and research methods as they pertain particularly to research done in and about Southeast Asia. Jaffrey reflects on her own work and the methodologies employed, leading us to consider how to approach data collection in a new way.
Watch the interview here.
| | | | |
