Ella Coon

Doctoral candidate, Columbia University

Commodity Chains, Political Economy, Multinational Corporations, history of computers, History of technology

Ella Coon is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Columbia University. Her research considers 20th century US history through the lenses of business history, international political economy, and the history of computing. She is writing her dissertation on Control Data Corporation, a Minnesota-based computer firm with global reach, tentatively titled Control Data: American Power and the Production of High Technology, 1957-1992.

Before coming to Columbia, Coon received an MA in Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research.

Recent Conference Participation

2026 BHC Meeting: Presenter, "All in the Family: Lao Family, Control Data, the Reagan Administration's efforts to Build a Hmong Diaspora in the American Heartland"
2025 BHC meeting: Presenter, "Electronics Assembly and the Rise and Fall of the US Developmental Empire in Korea, 1967-1982"
2024 BHC Meeting: Presenter, "The Struggle to Bring a Global Assembly Model to Computer Services: Control Data Corporation and Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative "
2023 BHC Meeting: Presenter, "The Struggle to Bring a Global Assembly Model to Computer Services: Control Data Corporation and Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative "
2020 BHC Meeting: Presenter, "Hardliners and High Technology: Conflicts over the Globalization of Computer Technology in the Communist World"