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.

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.