Miranda Kaufmann
Image credit: Rosie Collins
Dr. Miranda Kaufmann is the author of the critically acclaimed, Wolfson History Prize and Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize shortlisted, book Black Tudors: The Untold Story (Oneworld 2017). She has taken her work into schools, working with teachers to create teaching resources through her Teaching Black Tudors project, and to the world with her a FREE online Black Tudors course with FutureLearn.
Kaufmann is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she co-convened the popular "What's Happening in Black British History?" series with Michael Ohajuru from 2014 to 2022. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the University of Liverpool and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Arts.
She read History at Christ Church, Oxford, where she completed her doctoral thesis on 'Africans in Britain, 1500-1640' in 2011, and where she also won two Blues for rugby.
As a freelance historian and journalist, she has worked for The Sunday Times, the BBC, the National Trust, English Heritage, the Oxford Companion series, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Quercus publishing and the Rugby Football Foundation. Highlights include researching English Heritage properties' links to Enslavement and Abolition, the Influential Black Londoners exhibition at the National Trust's Sutton House in Hackney, writing the entry for John Blanke (fl.1507-1512) in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, interviewing artist Graeme Mortimer Evelyn about his work Call and Responses: The Odyssey of the Moor at Kensington Palace for History Today and making a short video, The story of black migrants in England in Tudor times, for BBC Bitesize with David Olusoga.
Kaufmann is a popular speaker at public institutions, festivals, conferences, seminars and schools from Edinburgh to Jamaica and has published articles in academic journals and as well as mainstream media (including the Times Literary Supplement, The Times, The Guardian, History Today, BBC History Magazine, History Revealed and Periscope Post). She enjoys engaging in debate at the intersection of past and present and her expert commentary has been sought by media outlets including Sky News and The Observer, the BBC and Al Jazeera, and she has acted as a consultant for TV programmes including David Olusoga’s BAFTA award-winning series Black and British: A Forgotten History (BBC2, November 2016); by museums such as the National Maritime Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, and also by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
She was the lead historian on the Colonial Countryside project which worked with 10 National Trust properties, local primary schools, and creative writers, to explore the houses’ histories of links with Caribbean enslavement and the East India Company, directly consulting with Buckland Abbey, Penryhn Castle and Speke Hall.
Kaufmann's next book: Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery will be published by Oneworld in the UK and Pegasus in the USA in September 2025.
Kaufmann 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, spending time with her family, and making wild garlic pesto.
Kaufmann is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she co-convened the popular "What's Happening in Black British History?" series with Michael Ohajuru from 2014 to 2022. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the University of Liverpool and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Arts.
She read History at Christ Church, Oxford, where she completed her doctoral thesis on 'Africans in Britain, 1500-1640' in 2011, and where she also won two Blues for rugby.
As a freelance historian and journalist, she has worked for The Sunday Times, the BBC, the National Trust, English Heritage, the Oxford Companion series, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Quercus publishing and the Rugby Football Foundation. Highlights include researching English Heritage properties' links to Enslavement and Abolition, the Influential Black Londoners exhibition at the National Trust's Sutton House in Hackney, writing the entry for John Blanke (fl.1507-1512) in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, interviewing artist Graeme Mortimer Evelyn about his work Call and Responses: The Odyssey of the Moor at Kensington Palace for History Today and making a short video, The story of black migrants in England in Tudor times, for BBC Bitesize with David Olusoga.
Kaufmann is a popular speaker at public institutions, festivals, conferences, seminars and schools from Edinburgh to Jamaica and has published articles in academic journals and as well as mainstream media (including the Times Literary Supplement, The Times, The Guardian, History Today, BBC History Magazine, History Revealed and Periscope Post). She enjoys engaging in debate at the intersection of past and present and her expert commentary has been sought by media outlets including Sky News and The Observer, the BBC and Al Jazeera, and she has acted as a consultant for TV programmes including David Olusoga’s BAFTA award-winning series Black and British: A Forgotten History (BBC2, November 2016); by museums such as the National Maritime Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, and also by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
She was the lead historian on the Colonial Countryside project which worked with 10 National Trust properties, local primary schools, and creative writers, to explore the houses’ histories of links with Caribbean enslavement and the East India Company, directly consulting with Buckland Abbey, Penryhn Castle and Speke Hall.
Kaufmann's next book: Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery will be published by Oneworld in the UK and Pegasus in the USA in September 2025.
Kaufmann 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, spending time with her family, and making wild garlic pesto.
