Quadriga | 23.06.2007
Melinda Crane
Melinda Crane hosts the English edition of QUADRIGA. She has interviewed international figures ranging from Mother Teresa and members of a Serbian "Chednik" militia, to Ethiopian farmers.
After studying history at Brown University, Melinda Crane graduated from Harvard Law School and worked briefly for law firms in New York and Washington before obtaining an additional degree at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Fieldwork for a dissertation on the political economy of development assistance took her throughout Africa and proved invaluable when she returned later, as a journalist.
It is nearly 20 years since Melinda Crane arrived in Germany for what was supposed to be a three month stay on a DAAD "Kurzstipendium" or "short stipend"!
As a student of history and politics, she found one aspect of the country's culture particularly fascinating: the high degree of introspection, of often painful sensitivity to questions of history and identity. Being part of that process is one of the attractions of her current work DW-TV, helping to shape Germans' view of the world, and the world's view of Germany.
Until joining the "Journal" several years ago, Melinda Crane worked mostly on the other side of the camera. As a producer and writer of documentary films and magazine reports, she covered many of the major changes that have transformed Germany and Europe over the past decades.
As a counterpoint to her work as host of DW TV's "Quadriga", she is a frequent guest on German discussion programs, including WDR's "Presseclub" and Phoenix TV's "Berliner Phoenixrunde", as well as the radio programs of Deutschland Radio, WDR, SWR and Radio.
