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About Miranda Melcher
I have had the pleasure of interviewing over 1,300 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:
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…
July 28, 2026
Authoritarian Markets
Authoritarian Markets explores the political foundations of China's banking boom and its far-reaching impact on the Chinese economy. In 1978 China …
July 26, 2026
Heritage Fever
The early twenty-first century ushered in a period of change in Bolivia. The country welcomed its first Indigenous president, a new constitution, …
July 26, 2026
Whispers from Celtic Seas
What if the legends of submerged cities, land-making witches and sea-crossing bishops are not mere inventions but echoes of real events? Whispers …
July 25, 2026
Casting War As Love
Casting War As Love: Russian Colonialism in Familial Terms (Palgrave Macillan, 2026) by Dr. Galina Bogatova unpacks the hidden imperial logic behind R…
July 25, 2026
Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English"
Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed Germa…
July 25, 2026
Agrarian Superpower
The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second Wor…
July 23, 2026
The Authority of International Courts
Why do some international courts wield broad authority while others face pushback or fade into irrelevance? The Authority of International Courts: A B…
July 22, 2026
Aviationland
Aviationland: Heathrow and the Making of an Airport Landscape (Paul Mellon Centre, 2026) by Professor Mark Crinson is the first critical study to …
July 21, 2026
Dream the Size of Freedom
Dream the Size of Freedom: How African Liberation Mobilized New Left Internationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) by Dr. R. Joseph Parrot…
July 20, 2026
Art and Citizenship in Conflict
Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939-45 (Manchester UP, 2026) by Dr. Lucy Curzon examines the work of women war artists in…
July 18, 2026
Sand, Snow, and Stardust
Deserts, the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s thr…
July 18, 2026
The Barberini Butchers
In 1644 four norcini or pork butchers were accused of killing not pigs, but seven of their fellow citizens, stripping the meat from the bones, the…
July 17, 2026
San Francisco Seafood
For early San Franciscans, seafood was an important source of nutrition and a feature of social life, inspiring culinary developments that remain comp…
July 17, 2026
SimPolitics
This book is available open access. For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nati…
July 15, 2026
Glasses
Glasses are among the oldest and most commonplace prosthetics we have invented. But what does it mean to wear glasses? There is more to the answer tha…
July 15, 2026
Recipes for the Melting Pot
In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a g…
July 14, 2026
The Fifth Crusade
In 1217, the crusader states were in a highly fragile condition. The Fourth Crusade had failed, and Jerusalem had not been recovered. The crusad…
July 13, 2026
Cats
For more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life. But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them bec…
July 12, 2026
Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959
Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959 (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) by Dr. Sara Farhan offers a rigorous social and cu…
July 11, 2026
Too Good to Waste
Paper was a precious commodity in the eighteenth century: every sheet was made by hand. There was therefore a significant market in recycling su…
July 10, 2026
Grounding the Cloud
Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow…
July 8, 2026
Cookstove Chronicles
Stove improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient” biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to …
July 8, 2026
Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri
In Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri: The Rise and Fall of Manufacturing in America’s Hometown, 1890–1970 (LSU Press, 2026), Dr. Gregg Andrews examin…