After a path through elite universities that took a miner’s daughter to the White House, incoming Durham University chancellor Fiona Hill aims to work on helping higher education spread its benefits beyond elites at a time when its “future is on the line”.
Dr Hill’s book, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century, covered her journey from growing up in Bishop Auckland to a degree in Russian at the University of St Andrews (after an “awful” experience at a University of Oxford interview) to a PhD at Harvard University to a career advising three US presidents on Russian and European affairs.
Her final US government appointment came when Donald Trump made her deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council – a role that eventually led to her testifying during his 2019 impeachment.
Her book covers “the political effects of deindustrialisation” in the US, UK and Russia as well as her own story of social mobility through education, Dr Hill told Times Higher Education after being announced as Durham’s next chancellor, starting in June.
