James Simpson is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Research Professor of English at Harvard University (2004-). He was formerly based at the University of Cambridge, where he was a University Lecturer in English (1989-1999) and Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English (1999-2003). He is a Life Fellow of Girton College and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Prof. Simpson was educated at Scotch College Melbourne, Melbourne University (BA) and the University of Oxford (MPhil). He holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. His books include: Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (Longman, 1990) (second, revised edition, 2007); Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1995); Reform and Cultural Revolution, volume 2 in the Oxford English Literary History (Oxford University Press, 2002) (winner of the British Academy Sir Israel Gollancz Prize, 2007); Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Harvard University Press, 2007); Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2010); and Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019). His translation of Reynard the Fox was recently published by Liveright (2015).