Fireside Chat with H.E. Kevin Rudd, Ambassador of Australia to the U.S.
The Honorable Kevin Rudd, Ambassador of Australia to the United States
Join the conversation as Ambassador Kevin Rudd sits down for a fireside chat with Edmund Malesky, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Duke Center for International Development.
About the speaker:
Born and raised in country Queensland, Kevin Rudd became Australia’s 26th Prime Minister in 2007 after leading the Australian Labor Party into government after more than eleven years in opposition. He served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Minister for Foreign Affairs, before a second term as Prime Minister in 2013. In March 2023, he assumed his role as Australia’s Ambassador to the United States in Washington DC.
Kevin is recognised as a leading analyst of China and, prior to his ambassadorship, served as the inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York from 2015. In 2020, he was appointed President and CEO of the Asia Society globally and, in 2022, he founded the Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
Kevin’s new book, On Xi Jinping: How Xi's Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World, is based on his Oxford doctoral thesis. It is published by Oxford University Press.
He holds honorary positions at the Asia Society; Atlantic Council; Bloomberg New Economy Forum; Center for Strategic and International Studies; Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation; Chatham House; Friends of the Paris Agreement; Museum of Australian Democracy; Paulson Institute; Paris School of International Affairs; and Stephen A. Schwartzman Education Foundation. He is co-chair of an Australian charity, the National Apology Foundation, and a trustee of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City.
In 2019, Kevin was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia for eminent service to Indigenous reconciliation, innovative economic initiatives, and major policy reform, and through senior advisory roles with international organisations.
Kevin started his diplomatic career in 1981 with postings to Beijing and Stockholm. In 1988, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Hon. Wayne Goss and served him as Premier of Queensland. He was Director-General of the Cabinet Office from 1991 to 1995, and Senior China Consultant for KPMG from 1996 to 1998. He graduated with Honours in Asian Studies from the Australian National University and received his PhD from Oxford University in 2022. He also studied at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei.
About the facilitator:
Edmund (Eddy) Malesky is a Professor of Political Economy at Duke University and the Director of the Duke Center for International Development (DCID). A leading voice in international and comparative political economy, Malesky has produced groundbreaking research on governance, markets, and institutional reform in developing and authoritarian regimes, with a particular emphasis on Southeast Asia.
Malesky’s scholarship centers on critical questions in foreign direct investment (FDI), investment incentives, authoritarian institutions, transparency, and anti-corruption. He has been at the forefront of developing practical tools that translate academic insights into measurable governance improvements. Most notably, he pioneered the Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI), which has become a widely adopted model for assessing subnational economic governance from the perspective of private firms. Building on this foundation, he contributed to the design of the Provincial Administrative Performance Index (PAPI), which captures citizen experiences with government performance. These indices have since been replicated and adapted in a growing list of countries, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Senegal.
Malesky’s academic publications span the top journals across multiple disciplines. In Political Science, his work appears in American Political Science Review (APSR), American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), Journal of Politics (JOP), and Quarterly Journal of Political Science (QJPS). His Economics publications include the Economic Journal and Journal of International Economics. In Management and International Business, he has published in the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) and the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS). His work is characterized by empirical rigor, cross-disciplinary relevance, and a commitment to real-world impact.
As the founding member and current chair of the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG), Malesky has helped foster a dynamic community of scholars dedicated to empirical research on Southeast Asia. Through SEAREG, he has mentored early-career researchers and contributed to shaping a new generation of area studies scholarship that integrates quantitative methods and field-based insight.
Malesky’s contributions have been recognized through numerous prestigious awards. He is a recipient of a state medal awarded by the Government of Vietnam for his contributions to the country’s governance reforms. His research has earned best article awards from the International Political Economy Society, the American Political Science Association (APSA) Political Economy Section, and the APSA Southeast Asian Politics Section. His commitment to policy engagement was recognized by the Academy of Management’s ONE-SIM Outreach Award, honoring outstanding real-world impact based on a published academic paper. He has also received the Duke Teaching Award for Top 5% of all instructors, based on undergraduate teaching evaluations, three times. Early in his career, he was honored with the Gabriel Almond Award for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics, awarded by APSA.
Through his scholarship, institutional leadership, and policy engagement, Edmund Malesky continues to drive new thinking about the political underpinnings of economic reform and institutional accountability in emerging markets.