Kelly McFarland

Kelly M. McFarland is a U.S. diplomatic historian and the director of programs and research at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD). Dr. McFarland manages the Institute's research agenda, which includes a series of scholar-practioner working groups on current foreign policy issues, and he is working on a number of other major writing projects. He also manages ISD's library of case studies in diplomacy, oversees its online magazine (The Diplomatic Pouch), and hosts its podcast (Diplomatic Immunity). He also teaches a number of graduate and undergraduate courses in the School of Foreign Service.

Prior to Georgetown, Dr. McFarland served for seven years at the U.S. Department of State. After two years in the Office of the Historian, where he edited a volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States series, he served five years in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research as an Arabian Peninsula intelligence analyst. He also spent one year on detail to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as a Presidential Daily Briefing Book (PDB) briefer for Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy Secretary Antony Blinken, and other senior state department officials.

He has written for a number of broad outlets to include The Washington Post, The Conversation, War on the Rocks, American Purpose, and Responsible Statecraft. He has also provided analysis on a number of foreign policy issues on television and radio. He is the co-editor of Shaping a Peaceful World: American Post-Conflict Diplomacy Since 1789 (forthcoming: Cambridge University Press, 2026), and he is currently working on a book on the uses and abuses of history, and another on America's current geopolitical and transnational challenges.