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, in twentieth century international history.

I recently led a project on the history, politics, and culture of national security whistleblowing, which included co-editing 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 Diplomatic History, Cold War History, Modern Italy, and Journal of American History.  In addition to my scholarly work, my writing has appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Process, The Conversation, and Washington Post.

My current research project is on the culture of state secrecy, which will be published as a monograph by Harvard University Press.

I am happy to supervise research students working on the U.S. and the world; cultures of secrecy; the international and transnational cold war; U.S. foreign relations history; 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 recently completed a research project examining the long history of U.S. national security whistleblowing.  It explored the political, legal, cultural, and social dimensions of disclosures in the public interest from World War I to the present.  The project, supported by the AHRC, led to the co-edited volume with Hannah Gurman, Whistleblowing Nation: The History of National Security Disclosures and the Cult of Secrecy (Columbia University Press, 2020).  Other publications appeared in Journal of American History, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Washington Post.

My first book, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare (Cambridge University Press, hb 2014, pb 2016), examined the origins of “cold war” through the multi-faceted U.S.-Italian relationship and American attempts at waging a war “short of war.”  Analysing the alliance between Rome and Washington, alongside an increasingly prominent transnational network of business, labour, and religious protagonists, it explored the U.S. embrace of political warfare against the Italian left.  The struggle supposedly offered a blueprint for defeating communism around the world.  I’ve discussed the book in interviews with fifteen eighty-four and New Books Network.

I have also examined the intellectual and cultural struggle to shape understanding of American interventionism.  Supported by the Leverhulme Trust, it resulted in a dual special issue of Intelligence and National Security that I guest edited.

I teach courses on American history, U.S. and the world, the cold war, secrecy culture, interventionism, and protest and dissent.

U.S. history; America and the World; U.S. foreign relations; Cold War; cultures of secrecy; civil liberties and government transparency; intelligence; modern Italy.