Dr Melina Mandelbaum is a literary and cultural scholar whose interdisciplinary research bridges political theory, literary studies, and cultural analysis. With a foundational background in international politics, her work examines how conceptions of citizenship, belonging, and political agency are represented and contested across literary texts, political theory, and policy discourses – both in historical contexts and in relation to imagined futures.

Melina holds the position of Schröder Research Associate and Affiliated Lecturer in the German section of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, and is also a College Research Associate at King’s College, Cambridge. Her current research encompasses two major strands: the first investigates historical imaginaries of citizenship in twentieth-century German literature; the second examines contemporary future oriented visions of citizenship as they emerge in literary fiction, cultural artifacts, and policy documents in Germany and internationally.

Her research is aligned with 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 the lead convenor of the interdisciplinary research seminar Cultural Production and Social Justice, which brings together scholars across faculties to examine how the arts and humanities can inform more ethical and sustainable futures.

Before taking up her current role, Melina held an AHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cambridge. She also completed her PhD in Cambridge, supported by scholarships from the AHRC, King’s College, and an honorary Vice-Chancellor’s Award. Her earlier academic training spans international relations, comparative politics, and European literature and culture, with degrees from Goldsmiths (BA in International Studies), the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc in Comparative Politics), and the University of Cambridge (MPhil in European Literature and Culture).