Dr Luke Kelly

Research interests

Most of my research has been in the history of humanitarian aid. My doctoral thesis looked at the efforts of churches, pressure groups, charities, politicians and journalists to promote religious and political liberty and to relieve the victims of famines in late-tsarist and early communist Russia. It analysed these actors' methods and motivations for helping faraway peoples, particularly highlighting the role of Christianity, liberalism and notions of civilisation in shaping their humanitarian engagements. Parts of the thesis have been published as articles and as a book.

I have also worked on research projects about child migration in the British empire, the history of the British charity Merlin, and pet-keeping in British families.

My current research on the K4D project looks at a number of topics relevant to the humanitarian sector.

Publications:

K4D Research: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/13022/browse?authority=5e497b69-bc58-4209-b9f9-42fff7c9d853&type=author

Article: “Humanitarian sentiment and forced repatriation: the administration of Hungarians in a post-war DP camp,” Journal of Refugee Studies (2017), Vol. 30, issue 3, 387–406, doi.org/10.1093/jrs/few009

Article: “‘George Woodcock and the Doukhobors: peasant radicalism, anarchism, and the Canadian state,” Intellectual History Review (with Matthew Adams, Loughborough University), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2017.1361189

Article: “British Humanitarianism and the Russian Famine, 1891–2.” Historical Research (2016), Vol. 89, issue 246, 824-845, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2281.12140/abstract

Article: “Christianity and Humanitarianism in the Doukhobor Campaign, 1895-1902,” Cultural and Social History (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2016.1180234

Book: “British Humanitarian Activity in Russia, 1890-1923,” Palgrave MacMillan (2018).