Current Research

I am currently working on two book projects.

Feeding Allies: Wheat and Inter-Allied Institutions During the Great War (with Paul Poast) explores how wartime coalition members coordinate supply, the institutions set up to facilitate coordination, and the legacies of these institutions one the war ends. We begin our story with World War I and unpack the legacy of allied economic cooperation. Of the various economic resources needed by the allied powers, food supply was deemed critical. The strain of war compelled the major allied powers to experiment with various forms of institutionalized food cooperation, including the creation of international organizations possessing supranational authority. It was through this experimentation that the allied powers created the “Wheat Executive” in late 1916.  This body then served as the template for subsequent allied economic organizations, which were then reconstituted at the onset of World War II. Following the second World War, these economic institutions served as the blueprints for designing the international institutions that governed the global economy after 1945.

Sharing the Foxhole: Forming Battlefield Coalitions (with Ryan Grauer) explores the conditions under which wartime coalition members fight together in battle. The study of coalitions at war has focused primarily on the creation, organization, and achievements in wars. Relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding how these collectives come together, operate, and perform in battle.