Simon Hayhoe is the author of six monographs on disability and the arts: Cultural Heritage, Ageing, Disability, and Identity, which features case studies of the Statue of Liberty, Yosemite National Park, Boston Museum of Fine Art and school students and adults from the US and UK; Blind Visitor Experiences at Art Museums, which features a study of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, its teachers, and its visitors who are blind; Grounded Theory and Disability Studies on the application of grounded methodology in his study of blindness; Arts, Culture and Blindness on social and cultural factors affecting the arts education of blind adults and school children; Philosophy as Disability & Exclusion and God, Money and Politics, the first books on the history of Englisheducation for the blind in England since Illingworth's History of the Education of the Blind in 1910. These and previous works on this topic have been cited in papers on subjects such as perceptual psychology and human geography. Hayhoe's work on the history and epistemology of blindness is the subject of numerous international academic courses, including PSYC54 Cognition and Representation at the University of Toronto, THST 422a: Senses in the Museum and Theater at Yale University, amongst a number of others. In addition, his writing has been the topic of discussion on BBC Radio 4 in the UK and syndicated radio in the US, news articles in the US, and a theatrical installation project in London by Extant and the Open University.
Current and recent work
Simon Hayhoe is currently a reader in education at the University of Bath, a temporary advisor for the World Health Organisation, a centre research associate in the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics and an associate of the Scottish Sensory Centre, University of Edinburgh. Through these posts he continues to research and teach participatory and grounded methodology, and epistemology of disability and ability, with special reference to education, inclusion, technology and the arts. Hayhoe's other research interests include inclusive and assistive technology, mobile technology and disability, religion and disability - with a focus on Christianity and Islam - and museums and disability. He has also recently finished an international project investigating the use of mobile technologies as a tool of inclusion for disabled people in museum environments. This project is sponsored by a Horizon 2020 grant from the European Union. The research is partnered with TreeLogic, the Open University, and national museums in London, Madrid and Vienna., Over the past fifteen years, Hayhoe has conducted projects in the field of disability and cultural and artistic inclusion in the US, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Austria, Republic of Ireland, Russia, Mexico and the UK. He has also presented his research and writing on inclusive technical capital, the epistemology of disability, and passive & active exclusion to further educational conferences and expositions in Europe, North America, the Far East / East Asia and the Middle East.
Other posts and awards
Hayhoe's articles on disability and blindness appear in works such as the American Foundation for the Blind's Art Beyond Sight, the Encyclopedia of American Disability History, Global Sustainable Communities Handbook, and Learning in a Digitalized Age,., The Routledge Handbook of Visual Impairment and The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media amongst many others. In addition, his articles appear in special issues of Optometry and Vision Science, the Harvard Educational Review, the British Journal of Visual Impairment, the Society for Disability Studies' Disability Studies Quarterly, and the National Federation of the Blind's Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research amongst numerous others. He is also a consultant and chair of the Educational Psychology Research Group for Art Beyond Sight, the Beyond Sight Foundation and the editor of the on-line knowledge baseECO: On Blindness and the Arts, which is contributed to by authors such as the neurologist Oliver Sacks and the blind artist Eşref Armağan. He has won a number of awards in his field, including a Fulbright All Disciplines Scholar's Award to conduct a fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and he was a finalist in the London 2012's Great Briton's Prize. He has also delivered guest lectures at the Institute of Child HealthGreat Ormond Street Hospital/University College London, Harvard University, the London School of Economics, MIT, UC, Berkeley, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Government of the Province of Milan, Italy, v-a-c Foundation, Moscow, and St Petersburg State's Manege Exhibition Hall, Russia, amongst many others.
