Max Kelly is an Associate Professor of Humanitarianism and Development at Deakin University, Australia. She is Associate Director of Research and Learning at the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership, and the Discipline Convenor for Development, Humanitarian and International Studies in the School of Social Sciences. She brings a range of practical experience from global development, aid policy and practice, crisis and post conflict contexts, emergency preparedness, response and recovery, and agriculture and food security.
Her research is primarily concerned with the experience of those at the forefront of crisis, disaster and humanitarian contexts, and intersections with national and global systems, resources and power structures. Her current program includes a twin focus on global geopolitical and geoeconomic contexts for aid and development, and local leadership of humanitarian, disaster and crisis contexts. Current projects are focused on Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Australia.
In addition to her academic research, she teaches into the Master of Humanitarianism and Development, supervises Doctoral and dissertation students, and maintains an ongoing program of advisory work. She has consulted and volunteered with a wide range of organisations, from international NGOs, multilateral organisations, and government departments, through to farm extensions services and local community based organisations.
She is the author of 3 books Reframing the Global South in an Evolving World Order: Geopolitics and geoeconomics of the BRICS bloc (With V.Jakupec and J. Mckay, Springer, Forthcoming 2026) Foreign Aid in a World in Crisis : Shifting Geopolitics in the Neoliberal Era (with V.Jakupec and J. Mckay, Routledge, 2025), and Foreign aid in the age of populism: political economy analysis from Washington to Beijing (with V.Jakupec, Routledge, 2019), as well as 4 edited volumes, multiple journal articles, book chapters, and presentations.
