Personal Profile

Simon’s first career was in business systems. After earning a BSc in Computation at UMIST and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Essex in the 1990s, Simon spent over a decade as a business intelligence consultant, working on projects for several large multinational companies, including Nestlé and Linklaters.

Driven by a deep-rooted interest in philosophy, religion, myth and fantasy, Simon then left his corporate career to pursue a scholarly vocation, first studying theology and philosophy at Heythrop College (a college within the University of London, known for its modern Catholic and interfaith ethos), followed by an MA in Jewish Studies and a PhD in Religions and Theology at the University of Manchester, which he completed in 2012. In 2016, Simon took on the job of managing the day-to-day operations of the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS). Simon is now the chief administrator for the EAJS, and an independent scholar with a general interest in religion and philosophy, and a particular research interest in the history of grim stereotypes and dark mythical characters (e.g., “the Jewish Antichrist,” “the Luciferian Freemason,” “the Jewish-Masonic Conspirator,” “the Catholic Antichrist,” etc.) in modern religious discourses.

Simon’s PhD, which was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant, examined how Jews were stereotyped and mythicized in a variety of English Catholic discourses during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Simon is currently preparing a book based on an extension of this research.

The following are some of the projects Simon has worked on since completing his PhD:

1. An examination of Jewish stereotypes in the literature and journalism of the English author Gilbert Keith Chesterton. The results of this study can be found in Simon’s short book: Chesterton’s Jews.

2. An examination of anti-Judaism and anti-Catholicism in the bible commentaries and sermons of Adam Clarke (1762-1832), a prominent Methodist preacher and bible scholar from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This project was funded by a seed corn fellowship from the John Rylands Research Institute. An article based on this research into Adam Clarke’s discourse was published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library [link to journal volume] [link to author accepted manuscript]

[Dr Adam Clarke, c. 1806]

3. An examination of Jewish stereotypes in English Catholic newspapers during the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. This was funded by two research grants from the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism.

4. Transcribing and summarising life story interviews as a volunteer for the “Rainbow Jews” Anglo-Jewish oral history project.

5. An examination of the life and protean discourse of the esotericist author, journalist and Freemason Dudley Wright.

[Dudley Wright, c. 1919]