Claire Fox
Director, Institute of Ideas & journalist
Claire Fox is the director of the Institute of Ideas (IoI), which she established to create a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint. Claire initiated the IoI while co-publisher of the controversial and ground-breaking current affairs journal LM magazine (formerly Living Marxism). The IoI has since worked with a variety of prestigious institutions in Britain and abroad.
Claire has a particular interest in education and social issues such as crime and mental health. She is highly critical of authoritarian developments such as New Labour's 'antisocial behaviour orders'. She is also a passionate supporter of the arts, and strongly believes that they should be valued for their own sake. She argues that efforts to dilute the arts for the benefit of 'the socially excluded' are patronising rather than democratic.
Claire convenes the yearly Battle of Ideas festival, which will next take place in London in November 2008. She is a panellist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze and is regularly invited to comment on developments in culture, education and the media on TV and radio programmes such as Question Time, Any Questions?, and BBC Breakfast. Claire writes regularly for national newspapers and a range of specialist journals. She has a monthly column in the MJ (municipal journal) and presented ‘Claire Fox News’ on the internet TV channel 18 Doughty Street.
Claire previously worked as a mental health social worker and as a lecturer in English literature. She was a judge on the panel for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 (download her speech given to the 2006 Orange Prize Libraries Seminar) and features in the ‘Who’s Who’ almanac 2007. Claire was number 64 in Time Out’s 2006 London Movers and Shakers list, and was named the capital’s No.3 activist. Claire also features in the Telegraph's list of Britain's 100 most influential people on the Left.
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