Simon has been researching migration and refugee reception for nearly a decade, focusing most recently on the governance of irregular migration, border security, and refugee reception in Southern Europe and Central America. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Centre for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations at Coventry University, and has previously been visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Italy, the Pompeu Fabra University in Spain, and El Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Mexico. Simon holds a Ph.D. from King’s College London.
He is the author of Immigration and Citizenship in an Enlarged European Union (Palgrave, 2015), editor of The Handbook of International Political Economy of Migration (co-edited with Leila Talani, Edward Elgar, 2015), and co-author of Unravelling Europe's Migration Crisis: Journeys over land and sea (with Heaven Crawley, Franck Duvell, Katharine Jones and Nando Sigona, Policy Press, 2017), as well as numerous other academic and non-academic articles.