Mary Elisabeth Cox

Mary Elisabeth Cox is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Central European University in Vienna, Austria, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She received her doctorate degree from the University of Oxford, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her BA from Brigham Young University.

RESEARCH AREAS

She is broadly interested in the impacts of war on civilian populations. Her first book, Hunger in War & Peace: Women & Children in Germany, 1914-1924 (Oxford University Press, 2019) incorporates a unique combination of archival data to understand the impacts of war and relief interventions on vulnerable civilians. Her statistical analyses demonstrate that children in Germany suffered intense nutritional deprivation. German women, in particular, suffered disproportionately high caloric deficits compared to their families. Hunger in War & Peace also assesses the effectiveness of post-war international relief efforts in Germany by governmental and non-governmental organizations, based on careful analyses of qualitative and quantitative sources.

Her newest book, Hunger Redraws the Map: Food State and Society in the Era of the First World War, (Cambridge University Press, 2025), is an edited volume by experts from a variety of fields who explore how hunger and food insecurity shaped relationships between the state, citizens, and civil society in the wake of the First World War.

She is now researching the impact of World War I and international humanitarian aid on children in Vienna, as well as the consequences of blockades and sanctions throughout the world in the 20th century.

PUBLICATIONS

Cox, M.E. and C. Morelon, (eds). Hunger Redraws the Map: Food, State, and Society in the Era of the First World War. Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Cox, M.E. ‘Hunger in Urban and Rural Areas, and Children on the Move’ Hunger Redraws the Map: Food, State, and Society in the Era of the First World War, Mary Elisabeth Cox and Claire Morelon, (eds), Cambridge University Press, 2025, pp. 197 – 230.

Cox, M.E. and C. Morelon, ‘Introduction’ Hunger Redraws the Map: Food, State, and Society in the Era of the First World War, Mary Elisabeth Cox and Claire Morelon, (eds), Cambridge University Press, 2025, pp. 1 – 17.

Cox, M.E. and C. Morelon, ‘Hunger Draws the Map’ Hunger Redraws the Map: Food, State, and Society in the Era of the First World War, Mary Elisabeth Cox and Claire Morelon, (eds), Cambridge University Press, 2025, pp. 391 – 433.

Cox, M.E. and A. van Mourik ‘‘I haven’t eaten so well for so long!’ Representations of the Allied blockade of Germany in German textbooks and film, 1914–32’ in The Politics of Famine in European History and Memory, Ingrid de Zwarte and Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco, Routledge, 2025, pp. 165 – 182.

Cox, M.E. ‘The Blockade in the First World War’ From Harﬂeur to Hamburg. Five Hundred Years of British and English Violence in Europe, Brendan Simms and David Trim, (eds), Hurst Publishers and Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 185-200.

Cox, M.E. Book Review. Ingrid de Zwarte,The Hunger Winter: Fighting Famine in the Occupied Netherlands, 1944–1945. Cambridge University Press, 2020. Central European History vo. 56, Issue 4, 2023, pp. 649-650.

Cox, M.E. ‘Food’ The British Home Front and the First World War, Hew Strachan, (ed), Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 469 – 486.

Cox, M.E. ‘Statistics’ Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method Articles. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.

Cox, M.E. ‘The Forgotten Story of Christmas 1918’ The New York Times. December 25, 2019.

Cox, M.E. Hunger in War and Peace: Women and Children in Germany, 1914-1924. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.