Nicholas J. Cull | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1964 (age 60–61) |
| Occupation | Public diplomacy professor Cultural andmedia historian |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | British |
| Citizenship | British |
| Education | University of Leeds |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (Harkness Fellow) |
| Period | 1995–present |
| Subject | Propaganda theory Mass media history Cold War |
| Notable works | Selling War (1995) The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (2008) |
Nicholas J. Cull (born 1964) is a historian and professor in the Master's inPublic Diplomacy program at theAnnenberg School for Communication and Journalism at theUniversity of Southern California. He was the founding director of this program and ran it from 2005 to 2019.
Cull earned both hisB.A. andPh.D. at theUniversity of Leeds. As a graduate, he studied atPrinceton University as aHarkness Fellow of theCommonwealth Fund of New York. From 1992 to 1997, he was lecturer inAmerican history at theUniversity of Birmingham, and from 1997 to 2005, chair inAmerican studies and director of the Centre for American Studies at theUniversity of Leicester.
Cull's research and teaching interests are broad and inter-disciplinary, and focus onpublic diplomacy, the role ofadvocacy, culture, exchange, broadcasting, and public opinion research inforeign policy. Cull has also worked more broadly on thehistory of propaganda,film,television andradio history and the role ofmass media as a source for historical study. He is best known for detailed historical studies of the institutions behind public diplomacy and for emphasizing the importance of "listening" as a pre-condition for successful public diplomacy. He coined the termreputational security for a category of enhanced security that comes to an international actor when they are well thought of by external audiences.
Cull is past president of theInternational Association for Media and History (2004-2019), and has worked closely with theBritish Council's Counterpoint Think Tank. He sits on the board of thePublic Diplomacy Council and is a Fellow of theRoyal Historical Society. In April 2008, Cull's University of Southern California program was a co-winner of theBenjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy, awarded by theU.S. Department of State. In January 2012, he succeededSimon Anholt as editor of theJournal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy (published byPalgrave) and continued in this role until January 2019. He has been featured in a number of documentary films includingMemory: The Origins of Alien (2019).
He has held visiting appointments atUniversità Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano's Rome program and atGreen Templeton College/Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism,University of Oxford.
Both Cull's first book,Selling War (Oxford University Press, 1995), andThe Cold War and theUnited States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge University Press, 2008) were recognized byChoice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries as outstanding academic publications of the year.
Cull is the co-editor ofPropaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500–present (2003), which was one ofBook List magazine's official reference books of the year, andAlambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (2004; withDavid L. Carrasco).
WithJames Chapman, he has co-authoredProjecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2009) andProjecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction and Popular Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2013).
His most recent single authored works arePublic Diplomacy: Foundations for Global Engagement in the Digital Age (Polity, 2019) andReputational Security: Refocusing Public Diplomacy for a Dangerous World (Polity, 2024)His most recent edited works are withNancy SnowRoutledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2020) andMichael HawesCanada's Public Diplomacy (Palgrave, 2020).
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