Miranda Kaufmann
Dr. Miranda Kaufmann is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She read History at Christ Church, Oxford, where she completed her doctoral thesis on 'Africans in Britain, 1500-1640' in 2011. As a freelance historian and journalist, she has worked for The Sunday Times, the BBC, the National Trust, English Heritage, the Oxford Companion series, Quercus publishing and the Rugby Football Foundation. She is a popular speaker at conferences, seminars and schools from Hull to Jamaica and has published articles in academic journals and elsewhere (including the Times Literary Supplement, The Times, The Guardian, History Today, BBC History Magazine and Periscope Post). She enjoys engaging in debate at the intersection of past and present and has been interviewed by Sky News and the Observer.
Highlights of her career to date include establishing the "What's Happening in Black British History?" series of workshops at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies with Michael Ohajuru, the Influential Black Londoners exhibition at the National Trust's Sutton House in Hackney, and an entry for John Blanke (fl.1507-1512) in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Her first book, Black Tudors: The Untold Story, was published by Oneworld in October 2017. It was shortlisted for the
Wolfson History Prize in 2018.
Miranda discovered rugby at Oxford, where she became college captain at Christ Church and eventually got two winning Blues, beating Cambridge 20-0 and 35-7 in 2005 and 2006. She enjoys travelling (highlights include bar-tending in Sydney during the 2000 Olympics, teaching English in Ecuador, and retracing Francis Drake’s steps in Colombia), dancing, cinema, theatre, art, and baking white-chocolate-chip chocolate Brownies.
Visit www.mirandakaufmann.com for Miranda's blog, published articles, podcasts, interviews and more.
