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.

Miranda's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Miranda:

Maggie Messitt, "Newspaper" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

May 9, 2024

Newspaper

Maggie Messitt
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Newspaper (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Dr. Maggie Messitt is about more than news printed on paper. It brings us inside our best and worst selves, from censo…

Julia Havas, "Woman Up: Invoking Feminism in Quality Television" (Wayne State UP, 2022)

May 8, 2024

Woman Up

Julia Havas
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

While American television has long relied on a strategic foregrounding of feminist politics to promote certain programming's cultural value, Woman Up:…

Kris Butler, "Drink Maps in Victorian Britain" (Bodleian Library, 2024)

May 8, 2024

Drink Maps in Victorian Britain

Kris Butler
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

What is a ‘drink map’? It may sound like a pub guide, yet it actually refers to a type of late nineteenth-century British map designed specifically to…

John Powers, "Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture" (Oxford UP, 2023)

May 4, 2024

Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture

John Powers
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

The Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories, and low-budget optical printers were the small-gauge media technologies tha…

Michael Gilson, "Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

May 3, 2024

Behind the Privet Hedge

Michael Gilson
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Britain is a nation of gardeners; the suburban garden, with its roses and privet hedges, is widely admired and copied across the world. But it is litt…

Nadine A. Sinno, "A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut" (U Texas Press, 2024)

May 2, 2024

A War of Colors

Nadine A. Sinno
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Over the last two decades in Beirut, graffiti makers have engaged in a fierce “war of colors,” seeking to disrupt and transform the city’s physical an…

Jennifer M. Black, "Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

May 1, 2024

Branding Trust

Jennifer M. Black
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In the early nineteenth century, the American commercial marketplace was a chaotic, unregulated environment in which knock-offs and outright frauds th…

Hanne Elliot Fønss Nielsen, "Brand Antarctica: How Global Consumer Culture Shapes Our Perceptions of the Ice Continent" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

May 1, 2024

Brand Antarctica

Hanne Elliot Fønss Nielsen
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Antarctica is, and has always been, very much “for sale.” Whales, seals, and ice have all been marketed as valuable commodities, but so have the stori…

Adia Harvey Wingfield, "Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It" (Amistad Press, 2023)

April 30, 2024

Gray Areas

Adia Harvey Wingfield
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to adv…

Jaume Aurell, "What Is a Classic in History?: The Making of a Historical Canon" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

April 30, 2024

What Is a Classic in History?

Jaume Aurell
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

What is a classic in historical writing? How do we explain the continued interest in certain historical texts, even when their accounts and interpreta…

Victoria Sparey, "Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture" (Manchester UP, 2024)

April 30, 2024

Shakespeare's Adolescents

Victoria Sparey
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Shakespeare's Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Victoria Sparey…

Michael De Groot, "Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2024)

April 28, 2024

Disruption

Michael De Groot
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Michael De Groot argues that…

John H. Cable, "Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi" (UP of Kansas, 2023)

April 28, 2024

Southern Enclosure

John H. Cable
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Historians of the American South have come to consider the mechanization and consolidation of cotton farming—the “Southern enclosure movement”—to be a…

Michael De Groot, "Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2024)

April 28, 2024

Disruption

Michael De Groot
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Michael De Groot argues that…

Sarah A. Bendall, "Shaping Femininity: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

April 28, 2024

Shaping Femininity

Sarah A. Bendall
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments cal…

Ross Perlin, "Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024)

April 27, 2024

Language City

Ross Perlin
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and—because many have never been recorded—when they’re gone, it will be for…

Tabea Alexa Linhard, "Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2023)

April 26, 2024

Unexpected Routes

Tabea Alexa Linhard
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Tabea Alexa Linhard chronicles the refugee journeys of six write…

Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, "Tracks on the Trail: Popular Music, Race, and the US Presidency" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

April 26, 2024

Tracks on the Trail

Dana Gorzelany-Mostak
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

From Bill Clinton playing his saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show to Barack Obama referencing Jay-Z's song "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," politicians have u…

Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema" (U California Press, 2024)

April 24, 2024

Unhomed

Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines Ameri…

Danielle Taschereau Mamers, "Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art" (Fordham UP, 2023)

April 23, 2024

Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing

Danielle Taschereau Mamers
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

How do bureaucratic documents create and reproduce a state’s capacity to see? What kinds of worlds do documents help create? Further, how might such d…

Gary S. Cross, "Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal" (NYU Press, 2024)

April 23, 2024

Free Time

Gary S. Cross
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Free time, one of life’s most precious things, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park…

Julie Peakman, "Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis" (Reaktion, 2024)

April 22, 2024

Libertine London

Julie Peakman
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Julie Peakman investigates the sex lives of women from 1680 to 1830…

John Tolan, "England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

April 22, 2024

England's Jews

John Tolan
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied importa…

Fumilayo Showers, "Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

April 21, 2024

Migrants Who Care

Fumilayo Showers
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

As the U.S. population ages and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increase…