Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast

In The City's Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939, Robert Yee examines how the City of London maintained its status as an international financial center. He traces the role of the Bank of England in restructuring the domestic, imperial, European, and international monetary systems in the aftermath of the First World War Responding to mass unemployment and volatile exchange rates, the Bank expanded its reach into areas outside the traditional scope of central banking, including industrial policy and foreign affairs. It designed a system of economic governance that reinforced the preeminence of sterling as a reserve currency. Drawing on a range of archival evidence from national governments, private corporations, and international organizations, Yee reevaluates our understanding of Britain's impact on the global economic order.

Scholars of international relations, political thought, and India's international and diplomatic history are increasingly interested in the relevance of non-alignment in Indian foreign policy. The origins of such policies and debates can be traced back to Nehru's conceptualization of non-alignment at the height of the Cold War. In this deeply researched study of his years as Prime Minister, 1947–64, in The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Swapna Kona Nayudu utilizes archival research in multiple languages to uncover Indian diplomatic influence in four major international events: the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, and the Congo Crisis. Through this detailed examination, she explores the contested meaning of non-alignment, a policy almost unique in its ambiguity and its centrality to a nation's political life. The resulting history is a thoughtful critique of India's diplomatic position as the only non-aligned founding member of the UN. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

How healthy you are is dependent on where you live. Americans suffer more cancers, heart disease, mental illness, and other chronic diseases than those who live in other wealthy nations, despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Why? Embark on a journey to unravel the profound impact of public policies on American health from before birth in Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation (Cambridge UP, 2026). Delve into the intricate web where economic inequality weaves a tapestry of sickness stemming from a highly stressed society. This compelling read illuminates the need for transformative change in social safety nets and public policies to uplift national health and well-being. Through vivid storytelling, the book unveils the symptoms, diagnosis, and 'medicine' required to steer the nation toward a healthier future. Join the movement for a healthier America by embracing the insightful revelations and empowering calls to action presented within the pages of this eye-opening book. Contact the author at: sabez@uw.edu 

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with their inexorable link to sex, were so stigmatizing that it was commonly called 'the secret disease.' How do we capture everyday experiences of a disease that so few people admitted having? In The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London (Cambridge UP, 2026), Dr. Olivia Weisser presents a remarkable history that invites readers into the teeming, vibrant pox-riddled streets of early modern London. She uncovers the lives of the poxed elite as well as of the maidservants and prostitutes who left few words behind, showing how marks of the disease offered a language for expressing acts that were otherwise unutterable. This new history of sex, stigma, and daily urban life takes readers down alleys where healers peddled their tinctures, enters kitchens and gardens where ordinary sufferers made cures, and listens in on intimate exchanges between patients and healers in homes and in taverns. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

In Corporate Power and the Politics of Change (Cambridge UP, 2025), Matteo Gatti examines how corporations have taken on roles traditionally reserved for governments - advocating on social issues, setting internal norms, and stepping in where public institutions fall short. This phenomenon, called corporate governing, takes two forms: socioeconomic advocacy, when companies take public stances, and government substitution, when they deliver services or protections the state does not provide. Drawing on legal doctrine and insights from the social sciences, Gatti shows how this shift reflects broader pressures within firms and deep dysfunction outside them. The rise of corporate governing has also triggered political, legal, and cultural backlash that challenges its legitimacy and reach. Clear-eyed and timely, this book offers a framework for understanding how corporate power reshapes policymaking and what that means for business and democracy.

Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Simon Devereaux provides the first comprehensive account of execution practices in England and their extraordinary transformation from 1660 to 1900. Agonizing execution rituals were once common. Male traitors were hanged, disembowelled while still alive, then decapitated and quartered. Female traitors were burned alive. And common criminals slowly choked to death beneath wooden crossbeams erected at the margins of towns. Some of their bodies were either left to rot on roadside gibbets or dissected by anatomy instructors. Two centuries later, only murderers and traitors were executed – both by hanging – and they died alone, usually quickly, and behind prison walls. In this major contribution to the history of crime and punishment in England, Dr. Devereaux reveals how urban growth, and the unique public culture it produced, challenged and largely displaced those traditional elites who valued the old 'Bloody Code' as an instrument of their rule. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Laura Robson and Joe Maiolo challenge histories of the League of Nations that present it as a meaningful if flawed experiment in global governance in The League of Nations (Cambridge UP, 2025). Such accounts have largely failed to admit its overriding purpose: not to work towards international cooperation among equally sovereign states, but to claim control over the globe's resources, weapons, and populations for its main showrunners (including the United States) – and not through the gentle arts of persuasion and negotiation but through the direct and indirect use of force and the monopolisation of global military and economic power. The League's advocates framed its innovations, from refugee aid to disarmament, as manifestations of its commitment to an obvious universal good and, often, as a series of technocratic, scientific solutions to the problems of global disorder. But its practices shored up the dominance of the western victors and preserved longstanding structures of international power and civilizational-racial hierarchy. Laura Robson is Elihu Professor of Global Affairs and History at Yale University. Joe Maiolo is Professor of International History at King's College London. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

How did politicians deal with mass communication in a rapidly changing society? And how did the performance of public politics both help and hinder democratization? In Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire (Cambridge UP, 2025), Dr. Betto van Waarden explores the emergence of a new type of politician within a system of transnational media politics between 1890 and the onset of the First World War. These politicians situated media management at the centre of their work, as print culture rapidly expanded to form the fabric of modern life for a growing urban public. Transnational media politics transcended and transformed national politics, as news consumers across borders sought symbolic leaders to make sense of international conflicts. Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire historicizes contemporary debates on media and politics. While transnational media politics partly disappeared with the World Wars and decolonization, these 'publicity politicians' set standards that have defined media politics ever since. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Based on applied economics and from the perspective of an innovator seeking to develop a new digital business, Digital Innovation Strategy (Cambridge UP, 2023) is aimed at audiences interested in innovation strategy and competition in digital industries. Step-by-step, the book guides innovators through a dynamic market analysis and business model design, leading to an assessment of the future evolution of the market and the broader innovation ecosystem, and what the innovator can do to position the innovation for continued success. Each chapter defines and provides references for key concepts. Real-world case studies further facilitate forming a comprehensive view on how to resolve strategic challenges of digital innovation. The topics covered are essential for managers, consultants, entrepreneurs, technologists, and analysts.

How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences? From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality (Cambridge UP, 2025) examines these key questions with a unique global perspective. Kerry Goettlich argues that linear boundaries are products of particular colonial encounters, rather than being essentially an intra-European practice artificially imposed on colonized regions. He reconceptualizes modern territoriality as a phenomenon separate from sovereignty and the state, based on expert practices of delimitation and demarcation. Its history stems from the social production of expertise oriented towards these practices. Employing both primary and secondary sources, From Frontiers to Borders examines how this expertise emerged in settler colonies in North America and in British India – cases which illuminate a range of different types of colonial rule and influence. It also explores some of the consequences of the globalization of modern territoriality, exposing the colonial origins of Boundary Studies, and the impact of boundary experts on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–20. Dr Kerry Goettlich is an International Relations scholar whose work draws on original historical research to reframe theoretical debates about international politics, particularly around issues of territory and borders. His current work deals with the history of the legal and moral prohibition of territorial conquest. He is an associate professor at City St George's, University of London. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here