I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and the Arrighi Center for Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Using comparative-historical methods, my research focuses on the dynamics of historical capitalism, social conflict, and war-making.

I am co-editor of the book World-Systems Analysis at a Critical Juncture (forthcoming, Routledge). My work has appeared in Political Power and Social Theory, the Journal of Labor and Society, the Journal of World-Systems Research, and several edited volumes.

A paper which I co-authored won the 2020 Distinguished Article Award from the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association.

Selected Recent Publications

Beverly J. Silver & Corey R. Payne. (2020). “Crises of World Hegemony and the Speeding Up of Social History” in Hegemony and World Order: Reimagining Power in Global Politics, P. Dutkiewicz, T. Casier, & J.A. Scholte, eds. Routledge.

Corey R. Payne (2020). “War and Workers’ Power in the United States: Labor Struggles in War-Provisioning Industries, 1993-2016,” Journal of Labor and Society. Vol. 23, Issue 1: 111-130.

Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz & Corey R. Payne. (2019). “Sugar, Slavery, and Creative Destruction: World-Magnates and ‘Coreification’ in the Longue-Durée,” Journal of World-Systems Research. Vol. 25, Issue 2: 395-419.

Research Projects

My research currently falls into three related projects:

  • My dissertation project on the changing social relations of the U.S. military-industrial complex in the neoliberal era, and how such changes are intertwined with U.S. militarism in the twenty-first century.
  • Collaborative work on the world-historical dynamics of global governance, geared towards understanding the role of social movements in shaping geopolitics.
  • The World-Magnates Project, collecting data on the richest individuals in the modern world-system (the historical analogs of today’s billionaires) since the sixteenth century.