Claire Fox

Director, Institute of Ideas

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’, and is also a passionate supporter of the arts, strongly believing 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 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 presents 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 and features in ‘Who’s Who’. Claire recently came number 64 in Time Out’s 2006 ‘London Movers and Shakers’ list, and is named as the capital’s No.3 activist.