Dr Melina Mandelbaum

Melina is one of our Research Fellows, elected in 2025, and Director of Studies in Modern Languages. At the University, she is part of the Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty in the German section, as Affiliated Lecturer in German.

Biography

Melina grew up in Northern Germany and read International Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, before completing an MSc in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. She subsequently moved to the University of Cambridge, where she undertook an MPhil in European Literature and Culture, followed by a PhD supported by scholarships from the AHRC, King’s College Cambridge, and a Vice–Chancellor’s Award. Prior to her current appointment, she held an AHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship and served as Schröder Research Associate at Cambridge.

Research

Melina’s interdisciplinary background bridges international politics, political theory, and literary studies. This foundation informs her scholarship on how conceptions of citizenship, belonging, and political agency are represented and contested across literature, political theory, and policy discourses—both historically and in relation to imagined futures. She also has a broader research interest in the history of modernism in literature and culture, particularly in its relationship to the history of technology.

Melina’s research currently has two main strands. The first investigates historical imaginaries of citizenship in twentieth–century German literature. The second examines contemporary, future–oriented visions of progress and citizenship as they emerge in literary fiction, cultural artifacts, and policy documents in Germany and internationally.

Her work contributes to the international EU Horizon/UKRI project The Cartography of the Political Novel in Europe, which explores the political novel as a medium for protest, participation, and political imagination. She is also co–convenor of the interdisciplinary seminar Cultural Production and Social Justice, which brings together scholars across faculties to consider how the arts and humanities can shape more ethical and sustainable futures.