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Staff Profile

Professor Jo Fox

PVC of Humanities & Social Sci

Background

Professor Fox joined Newcastle University in June of 2025 as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.


Jo is Professor of Modern History specialising in propaganda, disinformation, and psychological warfare. She is the author of several books and articles on these subjects and regularly appears in the media to discuss the impact of disinformation in contemporary society. Most recently, she was PI on an AHRC funded project analysing disinformation during the COVID pandemic and Co-I (with colleagues in Durham) on a Leverhulme-funded project on the Political Warfare Executive. Jo has also advocated nationally and internationally for the value and importance of the humanities. 

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). From 2019-2023, Jo was Chair of the Humanities Early Career Research Awards panels at the Wellcome Trust.


Beginning her career at Durham University, Jo started as a lecturer in Modern European History. She became Durham History Department’s first female professor in 2010 and its first female Head of Department in 2016. In 2018, she became the first female Director of the Institute of Historical Research, the UK’s national centre for History, and in 2020, Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Public Engagement) at the University of London and Dean of its School of Advanced Study, a national centre for the promotion and facilitation of humanities research. 

Publications

  • Articles

    • Fox J. ''Fake News’ – the Perfect Storm. Historical Perspectives’. Historical Research 2020, 93(259), 172-187.
    • Coast D, Fox J. 'Rumour and Politics'. History Compass 2019, 13, 222-234.
    • Fox J. ‘Confronting Lord Haw-Haw: Rumor and Britain’s Wartime Anti-Lies Bureau. Journal of Modern History 2019, 91(1), 74-108.
    • Fox J. 'From documentary film to television documentaries: John Grierson and This Wonderful World'. Journal of British Cinema and Television 2013, 10(3), 498-523.
    • Fox J. ‘“To Be a Woman”: female labour and memory in documentary film production, 1929–50'. Journal of British Cinema and Television 2013, 10(3), 584-602.
    • Fox J. ‘Careless talk: tensions within British domestic propaganda during the Second World War’. Journal of British Studies 2012, 51(4).
    • Fox J. ‘Propaganda and the flight of Rudolf Hess, 1941-45'. Journal of Modern History 2011, 83(1), 78-110.
    • Fox J. ‘Heldinnen des Alltags: Heroic motherhood in Nazi film - Mutterliebe (1939) and Annelie (1941)’. Historical Reflections/ Réflexions Historiques 2009, 35(2), 21-39. In Preparation.
    • Fox J. ‘John Grierson, his “Documentary Boys” and the British Ministry of Information, 1939-1942’. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2007, 25(3), 345-369.
    • Fox J. 'Millions Like Us? Accented language and the 'Ordinary' in British films of the Second World War'. Journal of British Studies 2006, 45(4), 819-845. In Preparation.
    • Fox J. ‘"Heavy hands and light touches”: approaches to the study of cinematic culture in the Third Reich'. History Compass 2005, 1(1).

  • Authored Books

    • Fox J. Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II. Oxford: Berg, 2007.
    • Fox J. Filming Women in the Third Reich. Oxford: Berg, 2000.

  • Book Chapters

    • Fox J. Foreword. In: Corse E; Garcia Cabrera M, ed. Propaganda and Neutrality: Global Case Studies in the Twentieth Century. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, pp.xiv-xvii.
    • Fox J. The Future of News. In: Harrison J. and McKernan L, ed. Breaking the News: 500 Years of News in Britain. London: British Library Publishing, 2022.
    • Fox J. Propaganda, Art and War. In: Bourke, J, ed. War and Art. A Visual History of Modern Conflict. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2017.
    • Fox J. The Propaganda War. In: Bosworth, R.J.B; Maiolo, J, ed. The Cambridge History of the Second World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
    • Fox J. 'German cinema and the United Kingdom, 1933-45'. In: Vande Winkel, R; Welch, D, ed. Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of the Third Reich Cinema. Basingstoke, 2007, pp.289-305.
    • Fox J. Winston Churchill and the “Men of Destiny”: Reflections on leadership and the role of the prime minister in the British wartime feature films. In: Gottlieb, J; Toye, R, ed. Power, Personality and Persuasion: The Impact of the Individual on British Politics since 1867. London: I B Tauris, 2005, pp.92-108.
    • Fox J. '"The Mediator”: images of radio in feature film in Britain and Germany, 1940-1941’. In: Connelly, M; Welch, D, ed. War and the Media: Reportage and Propaganda. London: I B Tauris, 2005, pp.92-112.

  • Edited Books

    • Connelly M, Fox J, Goebel S, Schmidt U, ed. Propaganda and Conflict. War, Media and Shaping the Twentieth Century. Bloomsbury, 2019.
    • Fox J, Welch D, ed. Justifying War: Propaganda, Politics and the Modern Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013.

  • Online Publication

    • Fox J. ‘Making sense of the war'. 2015. Available at: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/making-sense-of-the-war/?format=pdf.

  • Review

    • Fox J. ‘Resistance and the Third Reich’. Journal of Contemporary History 2004, 39, 271-285.