Kevin Keller

Kevin Keller is a PhD candidate in global history. His research focuses on Chinese lending to the Global South from the 1990s through the present. Through this work, he explores changing ideas about how to structure the global economy.

He is currently an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He earned previous degrees from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and Arizona State University. As an undergraduate, he received support from the Government of China and the U.S. Department of Defense to spend two academic years in China. Before becoming a lawyer, he worked for several years in international development. From 2022-2023, he served as a Legal History Fellow at Yale Law School.

He is in the very early stages of two additional projects. The first is a history of U.S. empire in China in the early twentieth century. The second is a history of Chinese corporations since 1978. His work is published or forthcoming in the Journal of American-East Asian Relations, the Harvard Law Review, and an edited volume about the legacy of the 1955 Bandung Conference.

His interests include law, economic growth, international relations, and finance. His regional area of specialization is China, and he has conducted research in Argentina, Kenya, and the Philippines.