Christopher Newton

Visiting Fellow

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Headshot of Chris Newton

Chris Newton is a Visiting Fellow at the Feinstein Center and currently works for the International Crisis Group as a senior analyst in early warning.

He worked for a range of humanitarian organisations prior, including the World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organisation, and REACH. This included extensive work in South Sudan, in addition to Nigeria, Afghanistan, and other countries.

His research focuses on early warning, food security, famine, and conflict, particularly the use of starvation as a weapon of war. He holds a Master of Science in Nutrition from the Friedman School at Tufts University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

COURSES TAUGHT

SELECTED JOURNAL AND BOOK PUBLICATIONS

MOST RECENT EXTERNAL PUBLICATIONS

  • Howe, Paul, Theo Anastopoulo, and Christopher Newton. “Seeing famines: An exploration of the spatial dimensions of severe hunger crises.” Global Food Security (2025): 100878.
  • Blecher, Robert, and Chris Newton. “The Gaza Starvation Experiment.” International Crisis Group, June 6, 2025. https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/gaza-starvation-experiment.
  • “‘Not Never Again, but Next Time’: Armed Conflict and Mass Starvation in South Sudan 2013–2019”, in Bridget Conley, and others (eds), Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law, Oxford Monographs in International Humanitarian & Criminal Law (Oxford, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 15 Dec. 2022).
  • Sarkar, Aditya, Benjamin J. Spatz, Alex De Waal, Christopher Newton, and Daniel Maxwell. “The political marketplace framework and mass starvation: how can humanitarian analysis, early warning and response be improved?.” Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 3, no. 3 (2021): 43-55.

NEWS STORIES

FEINSTEIN PUBLICATIONS

Seeing in the Dark: Real-Time Monitoring in Humanitarian Crises

This paper reviews real-time monitoring (RTM), how it fits into a humanitarian information system, how systems quickly adjusted toward RTM in 2020, and provides a series of case studies of RTM systems, their objectives, and their outcomes. 

FEINSTEIN RESEARCH PROJECTS

Rebuilding the Humanitarian Information Ecosystem

This project includes studies on early warning and assessment of crises, specifically looking at real-time monitoring, anticipatory action, political constraints, data collection and analysis, and the validity of indicators.

A mother and daughter stand with their herd of goats in El Baraf, Somalia

Humanitarian Information Systems: Anticipating, Analyzing, and Acting in Crisis

This study seeks to understand the availability and quality of information, and the external influences on data collection and analysis for the classification of food emergencies.