Joan Simon (1915–2005) was an English historian, specializing in education, the wife and close collaborator of the educationist and historian Brian Simon.
Joan Peel was born in 1915, a direct descendant of the 19th-century prime minister, Robert Peel.[1][2] She met her future husband Brian Simon while he was studying at Trinity College, Cambridge.[2] They married in 1941, and had two sons, Alan and Martin.[3] They entered into a close partnership in their work, which continued until Brian's death in January 2002.[2] It was said of Brian that " his partnership with Joan Simon cannot be extracted from Brian’s work as a whole".[4]
In the 1950s, she and her husband Brian investigated, described and publicized the views of A. R. Luria and L. S. Vygotskii, founders of cultural-historical psychology in the then Soviet Union.[5] In the Autumn of 1958 Brian was one of the founders of FORUM, a journal devoted to educational issues. She published articles in FORUM in 1964 and 1965 describing developments in comprehensive education in Bradford, Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester. In 1973 the magazine published a pamphlet written by Joan titled Indictment of Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State 1970–1973.[6] In 1986 she published a biography of her mother in law, Shena Simon, who had been active in education reform in England in the 1930s and 1940s.[7]
Joan Simon continued to work until a few months before her death in 2005. In 2007 the journal History of Education posthumously published her last article: An 'energetic and controversial' historian of education yesterday and today: A. F. Leach (1851–1915).[8]