Simon Hayhoe

Simon Hayhoe
Born	1969 UK
Nationality	British
Citizenship	British
Alma mater	Birmingham University, UK (PhD) Leicester University, UK (MEd) University of Bath, UK (PGCE) Coventry School of Art & Design, Coventry University, UK (BA)
Known for	Arts and Blindness Arts Education of the Blind Cultural/National Model of Disability Epistemological Model of Disability
Scientific career
Fields	Education SEN Social Psychology History of Education Blindness Visual Arts
Institutions	Institute of Education, University of London, UK Birkbeck, University of London, UK University of Toronto, Canada London School of Economics and Political Science, London University, UK
Doctoral advisor	Professor John Hull, Professor Ruth Watts

Simon Hayhoe (born UK, 1969) wrote the monograph, Arts, Culture and Blindness on social and cultural factors affecting the arts education of blind adults and school children, and God, Money and Politics, the first book on the history of English education for the blind, since Illingworth's History of the Education of the Blind in 1910. These and previous works on this topic has been cited in papers from subjects as diverse as perceptual psychology to human geography.
Hayhoe's work on the history and the epistemology of blindness is the subject of Course PSYC54 Cognition and Representation at the University of Toronto (Canada), and he has presented a number of guest lectures and seminars on this topic for the Province of Milan, the English Arts Council (through Art Through Touch), Harvard University, the London School of Economics, MIT, UC, Berkeley, Toronto University, the Free University, Brussels and Art Education for the Blind (New York, USA). In addition, his writing has been the topic of discussion on BBC Radio 4 in the UK and syndicated radio in the USA and a theatrical installation project in London by Extant and the Open University.

Early career

During his early work on blindness and arts education, Hayhoe was a student of Professor Maurice Galton, head of the Faculty of Education at Leicester University (now Senior Research Fellow at Homerton College, Cambridge University); and then of John M Hull, Professor of Religious Education at Birmingham University (now Emeritus Professor, and Honorary Professor of Practical Theology at The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education), author of the autobiographical book Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness. He then worked on two major research projects in the field of social exclusion in England for Birkbeck, University of London and the Institute of Education, University of London, and then in Canada at Toronto University, Scarborough, during which time he developed the BART (Blindness in Art) project, studying cultural and social exclusion of blind students in visual arts education, and wrote on the development of an epistemological model of disability.

Current work

Hayhoe is currently a lecturer at Sharjah Women's College, and a visiting academic in the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics, where he is researching the epistemology of disability and ability, with special reference to education.
Whilst teaching in London, he also developed the Four Senses project in conjunction with the Royal London School for the Blind (part of the Royal London Society for the Blind) and the Victoria & Albert Museum and designed the Computing and Blindness in Education project, which was the first research of its type to investigate the cultural and social factors affecting blind adults and school children using visual programming languages. This project was presented to BETT 2009 and 2011, at Kensington Olympia, London, in a lecture to the British Computer Society, and appears in books on Mulsemedia and IT in education. Its reports are also published in conjunction with the British Computer Association of the Blind (part of the RNIB).

Other posts and awards

Hayhoe's essays and articles also appear in standard works on education and blindness, such as the American Foundation for the Blind's Art Beyond Sight and, more recently, the Encyclopedia of American Disability History.. In addition, he is a consultant and chair of the Educational Psychology Research Group for Art Beyond Sight (New York, USA), the Beyond Sight Foundation (Mumbai, India) and the editor of the on-line knowledge base ECO: On Blindness and the Arts, which is contributed to by authors such as the neurologist Professor Oliver Sacks and the blind artist Eşref Armağan.

He has won a number of awards in this field, including a Fulbright All Disciplines Scholar's Award to conduct a fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA), an Occasional Lecturers Fund award from CIES, and was a finalist in the British Airways London 2012's Great Briton's Prize.