Jo Fox | Humanities Futures

"A war against the humanities"; a "crisis of the humanities"; "'Young people are being sold a false dream'; PM vows to crack down on so-called rip-off 'Mickey Mouse' degrees"; "the humanities are facing a credibility crisis": the news headlines of recent months in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Debates have raged over whether the latest crisis of the humanities is rhetoric or reality. In either case, perceptions matter, and such perceptions have real consequences.

So what should be done?

This lecture explores recent efforts in the UK to defend and reinvent the humanities, to imagine and then make real a new vision for and prominence of the humanities in public life. It will examine whether these efforts are bearing fruit and where the opportunities and challenges lie. It will argue for a more confident, bold approach to the humanities that moves beyond the defensive and resistant.

About the Speaker:
Jo Fox is the Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Engagement) and Dean, School of Advanced Study, University of London. The School of Advanced Study is the UK’s national center for the promotion and facilitation of research in the humanities. It has eight specialist research institutes and four internationally recognized research libraries, and organizes the UK’s only Festival of Humanities research, Being Human.

Prior to her current role, Fox was the first female Director of the Institute of Historical Research, first female Professor of Modern History and first female Head of Department at Durham University, where she began her academic career in 1999. She is an expert in propaganda, mis- and disinformation and rumor, and has published widely on this subject, as well as running several high-profile grants, most recently on the anatomy of COVID vaccine disinformation.

She has previously served as the Honorary Communications Director of the Royal Historical Society. She is a National Teaching Fellow (2007), a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Manufactures and the Arts (FRSA). She has recently concluded a term on the early career research panel at the Wellcome Trust.

About the Series:
All This Rising: The Humanities in the Next Ten Years features ideas and methods that will mark new paths for the humanities in the next decade. Visitors present their work in both unmediated and "meta" modes. They consider the motives and conventions of the work in progress, how it converses with its discipline, and what it portends for the humanities.