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About Miranda Melcher
I completed my PhD in Defense Studies at King's College London, where I researched how to negotiate and implement peace treaties. My book is forthcoming in 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.I have had the pleasure of interviewing over 400 authors on the New Books Network, on a range of topics! I tend to interview authors of 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.
Dr. Miranda Melcher (Ph.D., Defense Studies, Kings College, London) studies post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with deep analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
NBN Episodes hosted by Miranda:
July 26, 2024
Surviving the Islamic State
How did ordinary Iraqis survive the occupation of their communities by the Islamic State? How did they decide whether to stay or flee, to cooperate or…
July 26, 2024
Happy Death Club
Playwright Naomi Westerman was an anthropology graduate student studying death rituals around the world when her whole family died, turning the end of…
July 24, 2024
Nothing But Nets
Distributed to millions of people annually across Africa and the global south, insecticide-treated bed nets have become a cornerstone of malaria contr…
July 24, 2024
Displaced Comrades
Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Ebony Nilsson explores the lives o…
July 23, 2024
Rival Wisdoms
In this elegantly written study Rival Wisdoms: Reading Proverbs in the Canterbury Tales (Penn State University Press, 2024), Dr. Nancy Mason Bradbury …
July 21, 2024
Beyond Complicity
Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Francine Banner is a fascinating cultural …
July 20, 2024
Reading Tolkien in Chinese
Approaching translations of Tolkien's works as stories in their own right, Reading Tolkien in Chinese: Religion, Fantasy and Translation (Bloomsbury, …
July 19, 2024
Ransom Kidnapping in Italy
For over thirty years, modern Italy was plagued by ransom kidnappings perpetrated by bandits and organised crime syndicates. Nearly 700 men, women, an…
July 19, 2024
Scottish Society in the Second World War
Surprisingly little is known about Scottish experiences of the Second World War. Scottish Society in the Second World War (Edinburgh University Press,…
July 18, 2024
Parks for Profit
A new kind of city park has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Postindustrial parks transform the derelict remnants of an urban past into dist…
July 17, 2024
The Politics of Emotion
The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Nuria Silleras-Fernandez…
July 17, 2024
Ageing and New Intimacies
The 'baby boom' generation, born between the 1940s and the 1960s, is often credited with pioneering new and creative ways of relating, doing intimacy …
July 16, 2024
Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence
Grounded in new archival research documenting a significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, Voice, Slavery, an…
July 16, 2024
The Abrahamic Vernacular
Contemporary thought typically places a strong emphasis on the exclusive and competitive nature of Abrahamic monotheisms. This instinct is certainly b…
July 14, 2024
Tip of the Spear
In Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962 (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Alfred Peredo Flores argues th…
July 14, 2024
The Red Shoes
Endlessly fascinating, dark and bright, The Red Shoes (1948) employs every branch of the cinematic arts to sweep the audience off its feet, invigorate…
July 13, 2024
The Making of Foreign Policy in Iraq
How is foreign policy made in Iraq? Based on dozens of interviews with senior officials and politicians, The Making of Foreign Policy in Iraq: Politic…
July 12, 2024
The Enclosure of Knowledge
The rise of agrarian capitalism in Britain is usually told as a story about markets, land and wages. The Enclosure of Knowledge: Books, Power and Agra…
July 11, 2024
The Slow Violence of Immigration Court
Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings…
July 10, 2024
Model Cases
In Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Dr. Monika Krause asks about the concrete material resear…
July 9, 2024
Devil's Contract
From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain—the exchange of one’s soul in return for untold riches and power—has exerted …
July 9, 2024
The Northeast Corridor
Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far bey…
July 7, 2024
Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism
Despite its persistence and viciousness, anti-Semitism remains undertheorized in comparison with other forms of racism and discrimination. How should …
July 7, 2024
Catland
In 1900, Britain and America were in the grip of a cat craze. An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had …