Nick Cull has lectured widely around the world, frequently as a guest of diplomatic academies or foreign ministries/public diplomacy agencies including those of the UK, Canada, India, Korea, Mexico, South Africa and Switzerland. He is a regular guest speaker at the Foreign Service Institute of the United States and the Center for Executive Education at the US Naval Postgraduate School. He is an active film historian who has been part of the movement to include film and other media within the mainstream of historical sources. His film work includes (with James Chapman) Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (I. B. Tauris, 2009) and Projecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction and Popular Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2013).
He took both his BA and PhD at the University of Leeds. While a graduate student he studied at Princeton in the U.S. as a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York. From 1997 to 2005 he was Professor of American Studies and Director of the Centre for American Studies in the Department of History at Leicester. He is President of the International Association for Media and History and a member of the Public Diplomacy Council.