Vale Janice Langan Fox

We are sad to announce the passing of Professor Janice Langan Fox on 28 June, 2025, aged 79.

Professor Janice Langan-Fox, who recently passed away (79, June 28 2025) was a researcher and lecturer in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne. In 1991, she obtained a full-time tenured position in the sub-discipline of Industrial/Organisational Psychology in the then labelled Department of Psychology, at this university. In 2005, she left to take up a Research Professor position in the Faculty of Business and Enterprise at Swinburne University of Technology. Janice made substantial contributions in teaching, academic research, research student supervision, and community/business relationships.

In teaching, both in the undergraduate and graduate programs at Melbourne, she achieved distinction with the 2004 University-wide David White Award for Teaching Excellence. A notable feature of her work with students at the senior undergraduate level and postgraduate level was their inclusion in her research and publications. A number of these students have gone on to academic careers.

In academic research she was awarded (as Chief Investigator) nationally competitive Australian Research Council (ARC) grants in such diverse fields as Preventing Adverse Events in Hospitals, and Air Traffic Controller Competencies and Selection. In research with a community/business focus she was awarded an ARC collaborative grant (with Australia Post) to study Team Mental Models, Personality and Intelligence, and a large competitive international grant to study the Usability of the Vodafone Network. She published nine books, 24 book chapters, and 48 peer reviewed international journal articles.

Hers was not the traditional route to an academic career. Janice left school at 16 and for 10 years was employed in various roles in industry. After 10 years, then married with one child and living in England, she finished her high school education at night school. Subsequently she completed an undergraduate double degree in East Anglia. Then, with a family of two children, she completed an M.Phil (by research) at Nottingham University. Upon returning to Australia, she commenced full-time PhD studies while engaged in sessional lecturing at various institutions. On completion of the PhD she obtained a position at Monash University as a Research Fellow which she held until she obtained the tenured position at Melbourne University.

She was widely respected by her colleagues for the breadth of her engagement with the pragmatic world of commerce and industry and will be remembered with affection by the many students she supported in both their classroom learning and introduction to research and careers in academia or Industrial-Organisational Psychology.

Find details of Janice's funeral services and tributes here.