THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
University of Michigan, PhD '11
Professor Poast's area of research and teaching is international relations. Please visit his personal website to learn more about his research, writing, and teaching. He studies international politics, focusing on international security (e.g. the economics of warfare; the motivations for border fortification), diplomacy (e.g. the formation of alliances; the purpose of international organizations), and the use of data to study international relations. He is the author or co-author of four books, The Economics of War (McGraw Hill-Irwin, 2006), Organizing Democracy (w/ Johannes Urpelainen, University of Chicago Press, 2018), Arguing About Alliances (Cornell University Press, 2019), and Wheat at War (w/ Rosella Capella Zielinski, Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2025), as well as papers in academic journals such as International Organization, World Politics, Political Analysis, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.