Lauren Burrell Cox received her PhD in English with a concentration in film and media studies from the University of Florida. She was awarded the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Michael Aschoff Dissertation Fellowship. Her hybrid dissertation project “Reactivating the Film Archive” focused on archival documentary films and how they activate and engage with film history. For the project, she also created her own film, Sundrop. The film is an experimental documentary film that reflects on her hometown of Merritt Island, Florida’s history as well as her personal experiences growing up there. Lauren has shown films at the Key West Film Festival and in Gainesville, Florida.

Lauren has worked in a variety of public humanities roles. Before coming to the Obermann Center, she was the Humanities Program Manager at the University of Florida Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (UF CHPS), where she managed the UF Synergies Speaker Series and the Humanities Engagement Scholars program. Prior to that, she served as the program coordinator for UF CHPS and the Public Relations Coordinator for the Andrew W. Mellon Intersections program. 

She is an avid podcaster and has co-created both narrative and interview-based podcasts. With Dr. June Ke, and sponsored by the University of Florida Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere and the University of California Humanities Research Institute, she co-created the podcast series Under Review: Rethinking Humanities Graduate Education. Putting graduate education under review, the podcast examines pressing issues such as the tenure-track jobs crisis, economic outcomes for humanities PhDs, future directions for graduate education, and professional development that takes into account diverse paths and the current realities of the job market. Under Review serves as a resource for helping graduate students in the humanities feel more empowered as they navigate the academy and take the next steps in their careers. The podcast has been written about in Ytori Magazine. Lauren also co-created The Hipp Six podcast with Gabrielle Byam, Director of Education at the Hippodrome Theatre. The podcast tells the story of the founding of the theatre by six University of Florida students in the 1970s, and it was awarded a Florida Humanities Community Project Grant with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In the summer of 2020, she was a fellow at the National Humanities Center Podcasting Institute. With other graduate students from across the country, she produced Pod.Cast.Zoom - Shifting Intimacies Under COVID. In 2021, she co-produced an episode on the future of artificial intelligence and the humanities for the NHC’s In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities conference.

Lauren received her M.A. in English with a concentration in film and media studies from the University of Florida and a B.A. in English, summa cum laude, with a Spanish minor from the University of Florida. She has taught film and literature in the UF English department, and was awarded Best First Year Teacher for teaching in the University of Florida Writing Program.