Judith Kelley

Dean, Sanford School of Public Policy

Judith Kelley is the ITT/Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy, Dean and Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, and Professor of Political Science.

Kelley is an expert on international relations, and researches how international actors can promote democratic and human rights reforms. Kelley is also a senior fellow with the Kenan Institute for Ethics and an elected member of the board of the journal International Organization. 

Her work focuses on how states, international organizations, and NGOs can promote domestic political reforms in problem states, and how international norms, laws and other governance tools influence state behavior. Substantively, her work addresses human rights and democracy, international election observation, and human trafficking. Past work has focused on the International Criminal Court, the European Union, and other international organizations. Details on her election monitoring project are on the web at Project on International Election Monitoring. 

Her newest work focuses on the global fight against human trafficking. She is leading a major research project to study the effectiveness of the diplomacy of the United States on human trafficking. She is the PI on a grant from the National Science Foundation for this project. Her work has been published by Princeton University Press, Cambridge University Press, and in journals such as American Political Science ReviewAmerican Journal of Political ScienceInternational Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Common Market Studies

Her book, Monitoring Democracy: When International Election Observation Works and Why It Often Fails (Princeton 2012) was "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013" and also received the Chadwick F. Alger Prize, which is awarded by the International Studies Association to recognize the "best book published in the previous calendar year on the subject of international organization and multilateralism." Her newest book, Scorecard Diplomacy: Grading States to Influence their Reputation and Behavior (Cambridge University Press, 2017), is on human trafficking and the rising phenomenon of global ratings and rankings. More about the book can be found at www.scorecarddiplomacy.org.

In 2012, Kelley was inducted into the Bass Society of Fellows at Duke, which recognizes faculty for excellence in both teaching and scholarship. Kelley has also been awarded the Sanford School’s Susan E. Tifft Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring Award, and she was the 2016 inaugural recipient of the Brownell-Whetten Award for Diversity and Inclusion. The Smith Richardson Foundation has supported her as a Policy and Strategy Fellow. In 2009-2010 she was a visiting fellow at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. She also was elected Chair of the Editorial Board of International Organization.

She earned her PhD (2001) and MPP (1997) in Public Policy at Harvard University, and a BA in Communication with honors and distinction (1995) from Stanford University.