Jennifer Yip

Jennifer Yip is an Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore. She was previously a 2022–2023 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jennifer obtained a B.A. (Hons.) in History at the National University of Singapore, a Master of Philosophy in World History at the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a historian of modern war, strategy, and the socio-economic effects of war mobilization, with expertise in Republican China (1911–1949). Her current research examines the Chinese Nationalist government’s military grain procurement and transportation policies during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). It highlights the seizure of grain as the lynchpin of the three-way struggle among the Nationalists, Chinese Communists, and Japanese. The project departs from the conventional emphasis on airpower and island hopping as modes of mobility in the Pacific, and examines instead the amassing of premodern resources across China’s vast landmass. More broadly, Jennifer is interested in the weaponization of food as a persistent theme in statecraft and strategy, and the impact of provisioning on the outcomes and experiences of twentieth-century warfare.