DrLeanne Kelly

Leanne Kelly is a pracademic scholar working across development studies, humanitarianism, evaluation, conflict, disasters, and community resilience. Her research examines how civil society organisations respond to complex crises, including environmental disasters, armed conflict, displacement, and violent extremism, and how evaluation can strengthen evidence-informed practice in crisis-affected settings. She brings more than 20 years’ experience as an evaluator and humanitarian-development practitioner, including as National Evaluation Advisor at Australian Red Cross from 2020 to 2025, where she led work on social impact, disaster resilience, recovery, and evidence use.

Leanne’s work is distinctive for translating research into practical tools, frameworks, and policy-relevant evidence. Her research has informed practice with organisations including Plan International, Australian Red Cross, the Asian Development Bank, the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, and civil society partners across Australia, Asia, and Africa. She has contributed expert evidence to Australian parliamentary inquiry processes on development and conflict prevention and works closely with international development actors to strengthen conflict sensitivity, evaluation use, and community resilience in complex settings.

Leanne holds international institutional roles as Adjunct Professor at Mindanao State University–Iligan Institute of Technology and Visiting Fellow at Universitas Indonesia. These roles support collaborative fieldwork, joint publications, teaching, and research partnerships across Southeast Asia. Her work with Mindanao State University received a 2025 Deakin Faculty of Arts and Education commendation for partnerships.

She currently holds a full-time three-year Deakin University Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and is a Chief Investigator on ARC Linkage Project LP200100433 with A/Prof Anthony Ware and Prof Greg Barton among other projects.