Simon is Associate Professor in International Politics at the University of Leeds (2022- ) Reader and Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Programme Director for the MA Leadership in Sports at the Institute for Sport Humanities and Visiting Professor at the Centre of Sports Law, Sports Policies and Sports Diplomacy of the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law (SLPD Centre). Simon has been the founding independent advisor to the United Kingdom’s Governmental Sports Diplomacy Working Group (2022-); has routinely led/contributed to research projects (e.g. Erasmus+ grant (1.3 million Euros) entitled ‘Towards a European Sports Diplomacy Strategy’); is a standing member of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Physical Education and Sport (CIGEPS) and Senior Advisor to the UNESCO Chair in Sports Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He developed the first MA module globally to address ‘Sport and Diplomacy: More than a Game’, following a role in the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) in 2012. Simon founded the Sport, Diplomacy, and Governance Hub, which provides for multi-directional knowledge exchange, and has established a strong multinational network of relevant contacts in the realms of Sport and Diplomacy. He co-directed, with Dr Lindsay S. Krasnoff, the Basketball Diplomacy in Africa Oral History Project. Overall, Simon has worked with numerous stakeholders from across the sporting and diplomatic realms including, UNESCO & UNITAR, foreign services, and government agencies from around the world, anti-doping organisations, bidding and organising committees.
Furthermore Simon, has gained over 20 years of experience in the realm of online and digital learning, having held the role of Head of Online Learning at SOAS University of London (2016-2020), and then Director of Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise (2020-2022), while also fulfilling the role of Acting Director of the University of London’s Centre for Online and Distance Education (CODE) having been a Fellow for over a decade since 2014.
He is a regular commentator across media outlets in the UK and overseas, author and editor of a numerous books and articles including the following:
- Sport and Diplomacy: Games within Games (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018):
- Human rights and the olympics: from an ideological paradox to a new anti-corruption legacy. with Dikaia Chatziefstathiou (2024) Frontier Sports Act. Living6:1365150. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1365150
- Sport Diplomacy and Sport for Development SfD: A Discourse of Challenges and Opportunity, Journal of Global Sport Management 2021
- Paris 24 https://olympicanalysis.org/paris-2024/the-sports-diplomacy-of-paris-24/ and Tokyo 2020 https://olympicanalysis.org/tokyo-2020/section-1/the-soft-power-of-the-olympics-in-the-age-of-covid-19/
- ‘Scholarship and Sports Diplomacy: the Case of Japan and the United Kingdom’ with Verity Postlethwaite, Diplomatica: A Journal of Diplomacy and Society.
- ‘The Untold Story of FIFA’s Diplomacy and the 1966 World Cup: North Korea, Africa and Sir Stanley Rous’. w/ Professor Alan Tomlinson, The International History Review, 2019 DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2019.1593218;
- ‘Sport and Diplomacy: A Global Diplomacy Framework.’ Diplomacy and Statecraft, 27 (2). pp. 212-230. 2016;