Biography - Simon Jarrett

I am a writer and historian who specialises in writing about the history of disability, particularly the history of people with learning disabilities. Before becoming a writer I spent many years working in projects involving people with learning disabilities and autistic people. I write about people with learning disabilities and the arts for Community Living magazine and I am the chair of the dance company Corali, who are leaders in dance created by people with learning disabilities.

I work with the museum sector to improve representation of disability in their displays. I am the co-curator, with my colleague Helen Atherton, of a major travelling exhibition called ‘Finding Ivy: a Life Worthy of Life, which tells the life stories of 13 British-born victim of the German Nazi state’s killing programme against disabled people, which took place between 1939 and 1941.

My book ‘Those They Called Idiots’ explores the lives of people with learning disabilities in the period before asylums and institutions were built to segregate people from society.  I argue that people mostly lived integrated and accepted lives in that period, and there is much we can learn from it today.

Publications

Books

Those they called idiots: the idea of the disabled mind from 1700 to the present day (Reaktion: 2020)

A history of disability in England from the medieval period to the present day (Historic England 2023)

(Edited, with Jan Walmsley) – Intellectual disability in the twentieth century: transnational perspectives on people, policy and perspectives (Policy Press: 2019)

Articles

Consciousness reduced: The role of the ‘idiot’ in early evolutionary psychology, History of the Human Sciences, 33:5, 2020  (Open access)

The British Journal of Learning Disabilities: a history, British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50:2, 2022, (122-31) 

(With Elizabeth Tilley) The history of the history of learning disability, British Journal of Learning Disabilities 50:2, 2022, (132-142)

The myth of marginality (Reimagining Disability series) History Workshop, July 2024 (Open access) 

(With Helen Atherton): Finding Ivy: a life worthy of life- learning from the stories of victims of the Nazis’ Aktion T4 Killing Programme Learning Disability Practice May 2024