Career
Before becoming a university lecturer, Fox intended to use her historical training to work in heritage, but changed her mind after a student at Kent told her, "you have been an inspiration to all of us! You should be teaching!"
Fox entered academia as a lecturer at Durham University in 1999, later becoming professor of modern history, and the first female professor in Durham's history department, in 2010 and then the first female head of the history department in 2016.
In 2007, Fox was appointed a National Teaching Fellow. She is also a member of the Council for the International Association of Media and History and is on the editorial board of their academic journal, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. She is the honorary director of communications for the Royal Historical Society. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), she is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).
Her interest in using new learning technologies influenced others within Durham University, and in other institutions. Notably, she contributed a case study to the National Blackboard Conference, chaired by Lord Dearing.
Fox's most significant published work is Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany: World War II (2007), in which she compares the use of cinema in propaganda in Britain and Germany in the Second World War.
In 2018, Fox was appointed director of the Institute of Historical Research at the School of Advanced Study, University of London (the institutes's first female director). She then became dean of the School of Advanced Study and the University of London's pro vice chancellor for research and public engagement in 2020.
In 2025, Fox moved to Newcastle University as pro-vice-chancellor for humanities and social sciences.
