Professor Nicholas J. Cull took both his BA and PhD at the University of Leeds. While a graduate student he studied at Princeton in the USA as a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York. From 1992 to 1997 he was lecturer in American History at the University of Birmingham. Since September 1997 he has been Professor of American Studies and Director of the Centre for American Studies in the Department of History at Leicester. His research and teaching interests are broad and inter-disciplinary, growing from interest in what is now known as Public Diplomacy, the role of culture, information, news and propaganda in foreign policy. His specific interest is in US and British Public Diplomacy. His first book, Selling War , published by OUP New York in 1995 was a study of British information work in the United States before Pearl Harbor, and was named by Choice Magazine as one of the ten best academic books of that year. Since then he has published numerous articles on the theme of propaganda, public diplomacy and politics/foreign policy. He is also an active film historian who has been part of the movement to include film and other media within the mainstream of historical sources. He is the co-editor (with David Culbert and David Welch of Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500-present (2003) which was one of Book List magazines reference books of the year, and co-editor with David Carrasco of Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2004).

He is president of the International Association for Media and History, and has worked closely with the British Council's Counterpoint Think Tank.

April 12, 2007: Cull teaches students to "listen to understand"

May 18, 2007: Adaptation of Cull's WWII book to air as PBS show