Elizabeth Jane Kelsey is a New Zealand academic and activist who has promoted critical examination of the relationship between social, political and economic issues and how these can impact on human rights and justice.
She has published widely on these and other issues, and in 2020 won the Global category of the New Zealand Women of Influence Award.
[1] In 1991 she completed a PhD from the University of Auckland, titled Rogernomics and the Treaty of Waitangi: the contradiction between the economic and Treaty policies of the fourth Labour government, 1984-1990, and the role of law in mediating that contradiction in the interests of the colonial capitalist state.
[3] She is also actively involved in campaigning for the New Zealand Government's full recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi and opposed the controversial seabed and foreshore legislation.
Kelsey is an outspoken critic of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks, of which New Zealand is a part.