Dr Miranda Kaufmann is the author of the critically acclaimed and Wolfson History Prize shortlisted book Black Tudors: The Untold Story (Oneworld 2017). She read History at Christ Church, Oxford, where she completed her doctorate on 'Africans in Britain, 1500-1640', analysing her findings of records of over 360 Africans living in Britain in that period, and where she also won two Blues for rugby. She is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she has been co-convening the popular 'What's Happening in Black British History?' workshop series since 2014.
Historian Dr Kaufmann tells the intriguing tales of three Africans living in Tudor England – a diver employed by Henry VIII to recover guns from the wreck of the Mary Rose, a Moroccan woman baptized in Elizabethan London and a porter who whipped a fellow servant at their master's Gloucestershire manor house. Their stories shed light on key questions: how did they come to England? What were their lives like? How were they treated by the church and the law? Most importantly: were they free?