Workshops
Our workshops are followed by social scientists and scholars throughout the New York area’s many universities, as well as by government, nonprofit, and private research and policy organizations. ISERP sponsored workshops are free and open to the public. For further information, have a look at our calendar of events or select from the list below.
Mainstream Western news outlets are currently oversaturated with crises, from the prolonged war in Ukraine and ever-developing conflict and humanitarian disaster in the Middle East, to the U.S. presidential election and geopolitical tensions between the world’s most powerful states. While some stories persistently occupy the front page of major newspapers, other conflicts and crises are either buried from Western audiences or absent from the regular news cycle altogether.
In response to this coverage gap, professors of political science and international affairs at Columbia University, along with researchers at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, are holding a series of workshops during the Spring 2025 and Fall 2025 semesters spotlighting regions of conflict not regularly covered by Western news outlets to better inform the Columbia community and beyond.
Fall 2025
Schedule to be announced
Faculty Sponsor(s)
The Diversification of Criminal Political Economies Working Group examines the role of armed groups in shaping formal economic structures. Participants explore how criminal actors engage in strategic sectors such as mining, oil transportation, and agriculture, as well as the implications of their presence for governance, investment, and economic predictability. The working group also considers how illicit/licit economic spheres interact in contexts of sustained violence, drawing on comparative perspectives from Mexico, Latin America, and beyond.
Fall 2025
Schedule to be announced
Faculty Sponsor(s)
This newly-designed workshop builds on its earlier version (International History Workshop) but aims to expand its scope - geographically, chronologically, and methodologically. A key new feature is the inclusion of a respondent for each guest speaker, fostering deeper engagement with the presented work.
Our goal is to bring together a diverse group of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty members interested in comparative, transnational, global, and international subjects. The workshop will meet weekly on Wednesdays, from 5:00-6:30pm, in Fayerweather Hall, Room 413 unless otherwise specified, and will serve as a forum for discussing work-in-progress.
September 11th (Friday)
Presenter: Emile Chabal (University of Edinburgh)
Topic: Chapter from The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian
Respondents: Adam Tooze and Mark Mazower (Columbia University)
September 30th ***6:00pm–7:30pm
Presenter: Mario Del Pero (Sciences Po)
Topic: Chapter from In the Shadow of the Vatican: Texan Evangelical Missionaries in Cold War Italy
Respondent: Sandrine Kott (NYU/University of Geneva)
October 7th ***6:00pm–7:30pm
Presenter: Sandrine Kott (NYU/University of Geneva)
Topic: “Moralizing Global Capitalism: Christian Actors and the International Rise of Corporate Social Responsibility (1970-2000)”
Respondent: Małgorzata Mazurek (Columbia University)
October 14th
Presenter: Seokju Oh (Columbia University)
Topic: “The 1917 New England Sugar Shortage as Transimperial Crisis”
Respondent: Samantha Iyer (Fordham University)
October 21st
Presenter: Lezhi Wang (Harvard University)
Topic: “Addicted to Modern: Accumulation and Dependence in Hinterland Borneo’s First Towns”
Respondent: TBD
October 28th
Presenter: Paul Gootenberg (Stony Brook University)
Topic: Introduction to Cities of Drugs: The Origins of Global Trafficking in the Twentieth Century
Respondents: Amy Chazkel and Pablo Piccato (Columbia University)
November 4th
Presenter: Kamini Masood (Columbia University)
Topic: “'One Catastrophe after Another’: the 1828 Earthquake and Beyond in Tarikhs of Kashmir”
Respondent: TBD
November 18th
Presenter: Sohini Chattopadhyay (Union College)
Topic: Excerpt from Refused Deathscapes: Bombay, Calcutta, and the Regional Limits of Technologies
Respondent: Kalyani Ramnath (Columbia University)
December 9th
Presenter: Aimee Gennell (Boston University)
Topic: “Ending the Ottoman Capitulations, 1914-1923”
*Tentative Title*
Respondent: TBD
Faculty Sponsor(s)
Coordinator(s)
Suhail Gharaibeh, PhD student, History
Umrat Khan, PhD student, History
Minwoo Kong, PhD student, History
Ton-Nu Dinh Nguyen, PhD student, History
Vikram Vinod, PhD student, History
The interaction of international politics and international economics has always been a topic of great interest to scholars (and others). Over the past decade or so, it has risen rapidly to the top of both scholarly attention and the new cycle. Geopolitical relations among nations play a central role in international economic developments; international economic trends have a powerful impact on geopolitics; and domestic politics has fundamentally transformed the structure of the international economic order. This workshop consists of a wide array of presentations on topics related, in one way or another, to the relationship between international economic and political affairs.
Fall 2025
Schedule to be announced
Faculty Sponsor(s)
Computational social science has the potential to address pressing challenges, but interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial. The DSI Computational Social Science Working Group invites researchers to a new meeting series exploring the intersection of data science and the social sciences. Sessions will provide an informal space for sharing work in progress and discussing new methods, collaborations, and shared interests.
To learn more, please visit the Data Science Institute website.
*special discretionary award
Fall 2025
Schedule to be announced