Personal Profile

After studying for a BSc in Computation at UMIST and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Essex, Simon spent several years as a business intelligence consultant working on data warehouse projects for a number of large companies including Nestlé and Linklaters. Simon then abandoned the corporate world, first to pursue a theology diploma at Heythrop College (a modern Catholic college, now sadly closed), followed by an MA in Jewish Studies and then a PhD in “Religions and Theology” at the University of Manchester. Simon now works as the administrator for the European Association for Jewish Studies and as an independent scholar with a general interest in religion(s), philosophy, myth(s) and fantasy, and a particular research interest in the history of grim stereotypes and dark mythical and fantastical 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 AHRC grant and successfully defended in 2012, 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 G.K. 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 can be found 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” LGBT 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]