Miranda Clare Kaufmann (born 1982) is a British historian, journalist and educator, whose work has focused on Black British history. She is the author of the 2017 book Black Tudors: The Untold Story, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize and the Wolfson History Prize. She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (part of the School of Advanced Study at the University of London), where since 2014 she has co-convened the workshop series "What's Happening in Black British History?" with Michael Ohajuru.[1]
Biography
Miranda Kaufmann was born in 1982 in a Jewish family in London, about which she has said: "I think it gave me an international outlook and curiosity about other people and cultures. It was also a hugely intellectually stimulating place to grow up. I benefited from all the museums, galleries and theatres; and just walking down a London street is often a history lesson in itself.[2] She read history at Christ Church, Oxford, becoming interested in Black history as a research topic during her final undergraduate year,[2] and going on to complete in 2011 her doctoral thesis entitled "Africans in Britain, 1500–1640".[3][4]
Since 2014, Kaufmann has been co-convenor, together with art and cultural historian Michael Ohajuru,[5] of the workshop series "What's Happening in Black British History?" at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.[1] Kaufmann along with Stephen B. Whatley inspired the "John Blanke Project",[6] an art and archive initiative of which Ohajuru is the founder and director;[7] the Project celebrates and is linked to images of John Blanke, the Black trumpeter to the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII.[8][9][10]