Samantha Fox is an urban anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies at Lehigh University. Working in Germany and the United States, she studies the politics of collective provision, asking how infrastructure and urban design shape sociopolitical change.
Her book, The Afterlife of Utopia: Urban Renewal in Germany’s Model Socialist City (Cornell University Press, 2026), investigates how the German city of Eisenhüttenstadt reoriented socialist ethics toward the challenges of population loss and industrial contraction. Her current research follows these questions into the energy transition and ecological restoration.