Melanie has been teaching on international conflict resolution and international security at UCL since 2010. She currently teaches her flagship course “From Cyberwarfare to Robots: The Future of Conflict in the Digital Age” that examines the nexus of disruptive tech, innovation and building defence and resilience. She also teaches courses on international negotiation and tech diplomacy, as well as acting as the Director for Careers & Alumni, organising the annnual Political Science Careers Week.
She provides practical insights and thought leadership for policymakers across the full spectrum of cyber policy, tech geopolitics, and defence innovation challenges. She has been teaching policymakers at HM Treasury problem-solving for policymaking for five years and four years at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where she set up the cyber policy function. She has advised leaders globally on cyber risks and resilience policy, the geopolitics of the internet, space, AI, and compute, the rise of tech companies as geopolitical actors, data governance as well as the future of defence. She currently directs research and insights at the ISTARI global cyber collective.
Melanie regularly provides commentary in on geopolitics and tech in podcasts, webinars and at major media outlets including Bloomberg, BBC, Sky, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, France 24, and DeutscheWelle.
She is an accredited mediator and prior to joining UCL has worked as a solicitor in the Dispute Resolution department of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where she was a member of the Commercial Disputes Group with experience in Public International Law, International Arbitration, and International Corporate Investigations, as well as teaching mediation and negotiation techniques. She has also worked as Director of Development and New Programmes for the Centre for Jewish Arab Economic Development (Israel), Director of Communications for Peaceworks LLC (New York), as well as for the People-to-People department of the Economic Cooperation Foundation (Israel), and the Education Programmes Department for the United Nations Association of the USA (New York.)
Melanie received her PhD from UCL and holds a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Medford, MA), specialising in conflict resolution and negotiation. She holds a BA (Hons.) in Oriental Studies from Girton College, Cambridge. She also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Law and is a solicitor under the Law Society of England and Wales.