Assistant Professor, Sociology
Dr. Fox is a sociocultural anthropologist whose work examines urban design and infrastructure using interdisciplinary methods. She is interested in how human beings use the built environment to achieve their sociopolitical ends and to develop novel imaginations of urban thriving. She engages with anthropological theory, particularly questions of history and temporality, as well as policy-based research on urban administration. Her first book, The Afterlife of Utopia: Urban Renewal in Germany's Model Socialist City will be published by Cornell University Press in 2025. The multi-modal ethnography examines Eisenhüttenstadt, a city founded in 1950 as Stalinstadt, an East German socialist utopia. The city lost over half its population during the 1990's, but has since been revitalized through large-scale urban restructuring that explicitly draws on the communitarian ethics of its foundational moment. In 2024, the European Parliament pledged €1.3 billion to transform Eisenhüttenstadt into the world's first carbon-neutral steel manufacturing site by 2050, a move that both reflects and enables the city's new identity as a paragon of sustainable shrinkage. Dr. Fox is also conducting research into the social effects of electricity deregulation in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and has conducted qualitative research for New York City and State.
At Lehigh, she is part of the Institute for Cyber Infrastructure and Energy (ICPIE) and the Small Cities Lab. With SCL, she is studying retail electricity deregulation and disability and wellbeing in small cities.