Maximilian Martsch studied history at the University of Vienna with a focus on economic and global history. He spent part of his studies at the University of Antwerp on an ERASMUS scholarship. His master's thesis focused on trade relations between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia in the context of European imperialism in the modern era.

After graduating with honors (2013), he was a Junior Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna from 2015 to 2017. As part of the fellowship, he spent a year as a visiting scholar at the Culinaria Research Center at the University of Toronto and the Free University of Brussels.

After teaching at the Institute for Social and Economic History at the University of Vienna and doing project work at the Institute for Rural History in St. Pölten (IGLR), he came to the JKU Linz as a PhD student in 2019. Since 2022, he is a collaborator in the FWF project "Soy and Agro-Food Transitions. Austria from a Multi-Level Perspective, c. 1870s-2020s" (duration until 2025). He is writing his dissertation on the history of soybeans in Austria from the end of the 19th century to the 1950s.

His research focuses on the economic and social history of the Habsburg Monarchy since the 19th century, as well as food and global history.