Barbara Lucy Kelly (born 2 June 1966)[1] is a musicologist specializing in 19th- and early 20th-century French music, an area in which she is widely regarded as a leading authority.

[2] Remaining a visiting professor at Keele, Kelly was then appointed Director of Research at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester in April 2015.

She has published on composers including Darius Milhaud, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, and Igor Stravinsky as well as on issues such as music and war, national and religious identity, and anti-Semitism in France.

[2] Based on her 1994 doctoral thesis and subsequent research, her first monograph, Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud (1912–1939) (2003), was preceded by a number of articles in books and journals, not least important biographical entries in the 2001 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, including the one on Ravel.

The study covers the musical development and aesthetics of Milhaud between 1912 and the composer's emigration at the outbreak of World War II, with insights into his early works, national and religious influences, and rarely performed compositions.

[2] The book has been hailed as "a magnificent contribution to the study of the work and aesthetics of Darius Milhaud, and [...] enlarging it in concentric circles, it helps to better understand the group Les Six, the emergence of neoclassicism in France, and the music of the inter-war period".