Simon Hayhoe

Simon Hayhoe
Born	1968 UK
Alma mater	Birmingham University, UK (PhD) University of Bath, UK (PGCE) Leicester University, UK (MEd) 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	Leicester Grammar School, UK Orchard House School, UK Institute of Education, University of London, UK Birkbeck, University of London, UK Toronto University, Canada Prince Henry's High School, UK
Doctoral advisor	Professor John M Hull

Dr Simon Hayhoe (born 1968, UK) wrote the first monologue on social and cultural factors affecting the arts education of blind adults and school children, entitled Arts, Culture and Blindness. However, he is perhaps best known for being the first author to write a book about the history of English education for the blind, since Illingworth's History of the Education of the Blind in 1910.. This and previous work on this topic has been cited in papers from subjects as diverse as perceptual psychology to human geography . Hayhoe's work on the history of the epistemology of blindness is also the subject of university courses, most notably, PSYC54 Cognition and Representation, at Toronto University, and he has been invited to present many international guest lectures and seminars on this topic for the Province of Milan, the English Arts Council (through Art Through Touch), Vrije University (Brussels), Toronto University (Canada) and Art Education for the Blind (US). In addition, God, Money and Politics has been the topic of discussion on BBC Radio 4 in the UK.

During his early work on blindness and arts education, Hayhoe was a student of Professor Maurice Galton, then head of the Faculty of Education at Leicester University - now Senior Research Fellow at Homerton College Cambridge University - and then Professor John M Hull, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Birmingham University - now also Honorary Professor at Queen's College, Edgbaston - and author of Touching the Rock. During this time he developed his epistemological model of the history of blindness. After this early research, he worked on two major research projects in the field of social exclusion in England for Birkbeck, University of London and the Institute of Education, and then in Canada at Toronto University, Scarborough, during which time he developed the BART (Blindness in Art) project, studying cultural and social exculsion of blind students in visual arts education.

Since returning to the UK, Hayhoe became a head of department at Leicester Grammar School, and 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. In addition, he is currently developing the COMBINE (Computing and Blindness in Education) project, which is 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 recently presented to BETT 2009, at Kensington Olympia, London - the world's largest educational technology show - and its reports are published in conjunction with the British Computer Association for the Blind (part of the RNIB).

Hayhoe's work has gained international recognition over the past fifteen years, and his 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 a research group for Art Beyond Sight (New York, US) and Blind Art (London, UK), as well as editor of the on-line academic resource 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.