Ian Simmons
Ian Gordon Simmons (born 22 January 1937) is a British geographer. He retired as Professor of Geography from the University of Durham in 2001. He has made significant contributions to environmental history and prehistoric archaeology. Background Simmons grew up in East London and then East Lincolnshire until the age of 12. He studied physical geography (BSc) and holds a PhD from the University of London (early 1960s) on the vegetation history of Dartmoor. He began university lecturing in his early 20s and was Lecturer and then Reader in Geography at the University of Durham from 1962 to 1977, then Professor of Geography at the University of Bristol from 1977 to 1981 before returning to a Chair in Geography at Durham, where he worked until retiring in 2001. In 1972–73, he taught biogeography for a year at York University, Canada and has held other appointments including Visiting Scholar, St. John's College, University of Oxford in the 1990s. Previously, he had been an ACLS postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Scholarship His research includes the study of the later Mesolithic and early Neolithic in their environmental setting on English uplands, where he has demonstrated the role of these early human