Maximilian Fink is a research collaborator at the Blavatnik School. While engaged in various Blavatnik School projects, his current work focuses on how governments can manage and respond to increasingly cross-cutting crises. His larger areas of interest lie in public administration, institutional politics and phenomena, and matters of global governance.

Max co-authored Crisis Preparation in the Age of Long Emergencies: What COVID-19 teaches us, a 300-page report report coming out of a Wellcome Trust funded project examining how various countries dealt with COVID-19 in order to learn lessons. He is part of the School’s research stream on crisis preparation and response.

Max is a current PhD student, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in economics (first class honours) from King’s College London, during which he spent a term at the National University of Singapore and received multiple awards, including the departmental best student prize. At Oxford, Max completed, as a German National Academic Foundation Scholar, the MSc in Global Governance (with distinction), also being awarded the cohort’s highest overall grade.

Max has spent time working for the UNDP Crisis Bureau and gained experience in the German Ministry of Defence, to which he was transferred from Ursula von der Leyen’s Bundestag Office. He has been involved in research projects at various institutions, such as the IGC, the LSE CARR, the Economic Advisory Department of EY, and Chatham House. He is currently also assisting in the establishment of a social enterprise in Nepal.