Kaeten Mistry

I am a scholar of the United States and the world.  My research and teaching interests lie in the forces shaping U.S. foreign relations, especially the interaction of national and transnational factors and domestic and foreign influences.

My current research project is on the culture of state secrecy. It explores how the United States went from a system of government that prided itself on openness at the turn of twentieth century to one with the largest organised secrecy regime in human history at the start of the twenty-first century. The monograph will be published by Harvard University Press.

I have led an AHRC-supported project on national security whistleblowing, which included the volume (with Hannah Gurman) Whistleblowing Nation: The History of National Security Disclosures and the Cult of Secrecy (Columbia University Press, 2020).  My first book was The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and I guest edited a special issue on U.S. foreign relations, intelligence, and international history for Intelligence and National Security (2011).  My articles have appeared in journals including Journal of American History, Diplomatic History, Cold War History, and Modern Italy.  In addition to my scholarly work, my writing has appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Process, The Conversation, and Washington Post.

I am happy to supervise research students working on the U.S. and the world; national security and secrecy; the international and transnational cold war; U.S. foreign relations; protest and dissent; intelligence, surveillance, and transparency; modern Italy.

I joined UEA after positions at the University of Warwick and University College Dublin.  I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham and studied at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Padua.  I have held visiting positions at University of Bologna, University of Oxford, University of Missouri, and New York University.

I teach courses on American and international history, the U.S. and the World, the Cold War, Empire, foreign relations, interventionism and secrecy, and protest and dissent.

U.S. and international history; America and the World; U.S. foreign relations; the Cold War; national security, intelligence and secrecy; protest and dissent; civil liberties and transparency; intelligence; modern Italy.