Professor: Ian Callison
4 credits
Why have nearly all major coffee-exporting countries experienced a civil war in the last 50 years? Is this relationship causal, coincidental, or a product of deeper historical and political forces? This course uses the global coffee industry as an entry point into the study of civil war and the broader challenge of explaining complex social phenomena. Bringing in scholarship from political science, economics, history, and geography, students will examine competing explanations for internal conflict, including colonial legacies, state institutions, geography, climate change, and commodity shocks.
Through comparative case studies of conflict-affected, coffee-producing countries, we will analyze how scholars construct and evaluate explanations in the social sciences. Along the way, students will assess competing arguments and evidence, develop their own analytical writing skills, and maybe even taste some coffee. Ultimately, the course asks not only why civil wars occur, but also how we determine whether relationships in the social world are causal, spurious, or something in between.
Ian Callison is a political scientist who specializes in strategic political violence, civil war, international law and institutions, and quantitative research methods. He will be completing his PhD at the University of Washington this spring and joining the CHC Faculty as a Visiting Instructor for the 2026-27 academic year.