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About Miranda Melcher
I have had the pleasure of interviewing over 1,400 authors on the New Books Network, on a range of topics! I tend to interview authors of interdisciplinary books that seek to interrogate and subvert preconceptions about elements of history that have either been neglected in scholarship, or authors who are analysing history through a novel lens.
You can follow all of my episodes on the channel New Books with Miranda Melcher, available on all podcast players.
I completed my PhD in Defense Studies at King's College London, where I researched how to negotiate and implement peace treaties. My book on the topic was released in April 2024 from Bloomsbury: Securing Peace in Angola and Mozambique. Prior to my PhD, I earned an MA in Intelligence and International Security from the Department of War Studies at King's College London and a BA in Political Science from Yale University.
Dr. Miranda Melcher (Ph.D. in Defense Studies from Kings College London) is the host of New Books with Miranda Melcher where she interviews authors on a wide range of books related to history and politics.
NBN Episodes hosted by Miranda:
August 18, 2026
This World in a Teacup
Popular history tells the story of how the tea boycott during the American Revolution caused a transition in American taste from tea to coffee, …
August 18, 2026
Next Time on Dragon Ball
Since its debut in 1984, Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular, influential, and lucrative media franchises in the world. In Next Time on Dra…
August 17, 2026
Diversityland
Fort Bend County, Texas, looks like the America we claim to want: a suburb where Black, White, Asian, and Latinx families share cul-de-sacs, sch…
August 16, 2026
Pedagogies of Value
Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China (Berghahn, 2026) by Dr. Máximo Badaró explores how China is reshaping global hierarchies of …
August 15, 2026
Girl Without a Country
Should willingness to kill be a requirement for U.S. citizenship? Girl Without a Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship (P…
August 15, 2026
Shadow Negotiators
Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security (Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Matias E. Marguli…
August 14, 2026
A Perfectionist Impulse
Cultural studies of the nineteenth century often categorize their subjects as being motivated by one of two opposing notions: a wholehearted embrace o…
August 11, 2026
America's Wrong Turn
How can a nation with unmatched wealth and medical innovation also have the highest health care costs and the poorest health outcomes among its peers?…
August 11, 2026
The University
We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet whe…
August 9, 2026
Becoming Utopia
Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill,…
August 9, 2026
Near and Desired Things
Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums (Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museum…
August 7, 2026
Empire, Race, and Print Culture in the Black Pacific
Empire, Race, and Print Culture in the Black Pacific (Cambridge University Press, 2026) is an Element which centers the 'Black Pacific' as a generat…
August 6, 2026
Overlord
Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the reli…
August 4, 2026
Empire and Frontier
Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701 (Pegasus Books, 2026) by Samuel Marquis presen…
August 4, 2026
The Land of Happiness
The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanes…
August 4, 2026
Pink Crime
A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her newborn. Four…
August 3, 2026
Seeking Freedom in Indian Country
Dr. Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel’s Seeking Freedom in Indian Country: Slavery, Sovereignty, and Resistance within the Five Tribes, 1790–1861 (LSU Press, 2…
August 3, 2026
Palace of the Ether
Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922–1932 (Lund Humphries, 2026) by Dr. Elizabeth Darling is about the ar…
August 2, 2026
A Post-Liberal Peace
In A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Monalisa Adhikari shows how rising power…
August 2, 2026
Soldiers and Bushmen
Soldiers and Bushmen: The Australian Army in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Thomas Richardson examines the commitment to what was…
August 1, 2026
The Kiss
The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Katie Barclay tells the surprising history of our most intimate gesture: th…
August 1, 2026
Atomic Collective
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipal…
July 31, 2026
Coding Capitalism
Long before Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, computer technology shaped how people worked, how markets operated, and how businesses became big. After W…
July 29, 2026
Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives
The opening of Iraq's Ba'th Party archives revolutionized the study of Iraqi politics and history, offering scholars unprecedented access to the i…