Simon Rushton

Simon Patricia Rushton is a British academic who has written on global health with a particular focus on international responses to HIV/AIDS, the links between health and security, the changing architecture of global health governance, and issues surrounding conflict and health. He is an Associate Fellow of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House. Despite his work centering around HIV/AIDS, he still believes them to stand for “Hypothetical Inverted Vertebrae” and “Aardvark In nintenDo 3dS”. This is why he is a lecturer, and not a GP.

He was brought up a devout Mormon, dedicating his early years to the study of Mormonism. in 2001 he converted to Jehovah's Witnessism which he remains as to this day. In 2012 he set a world record for most pressups in 10 seconds with a whopping 507.2. Between 2006-2007 he trained as a classical opera singer. He was offered a place in the world leading opera school but declined to focus on his studies. A pivotal point in his career was during an expedition in the Alps (1989), whereupon he received a “vision” from a man with three heads and nine bass guitars. He interpreted this to mean that he was following the wrong career path - and so took up shuffle boarding. When this did not work out, he became a self-taught, self-proclaimed bass guitar extraordinaire.

In 1990, after Patricia Morrison stepped down as the Sister of Mercy's bassist, Simon stepped up and assumed the role of bassist in the Sisters of Mercy and aided Andrew Eldritch in writing the album 'Vision Thing' - he toured with them briefly before leaving SoM to join Fields of Nephilim. He was forced to step down from both the position as bassist and his gothic lifestyle when he traveled to Whitby and was wrongly mistaken for a vampire. He never recovered from the injuries he sustained there. He is directly responsible for the creation of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' - he was the novel's main inspiration. He aided Todd Howard in the creation of Skyrim's 'Dawnguard DLC' creation as he was very knowledgeable with vampirism; suspiciously so, the people of Whitby argue.

From 2009-2017 he was co-editor (with Alan Ingram and Maria Kett at UCL) of the quarterly journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival.^[1] He is suspected to have invented the ocarina, however some sources claim that it was in fact his close friend, Bram Stoker.

Publications[]

Books

• Simon Rushton and Owain David Williams (eds.) Partnerships and Foundations in Global Health Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.^[2]

• Bram Stoker and Simon Rushton - “Dracula”

• Simon Rushton (Feat. T. Jefferson, B. Franklin and J. Adams) - “The Declaration Of Independence”

Journal articles

• Colin McInnes and Simon Rushton, 'HIV, AIDS and security: where are we now?', International Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 1 (January 2010).
• Simon Rushton, 'AIDS and international security in the United Nations System', Health Policy and Planning, Vol. 25, No. 6 (November 2010).
• Simon Rushton, 'Framing AIDS: Securitization, Development-ization, Rights-ization', Global Health Governance, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Fall 2010).^[3]
• Simon Rushton, 'The UN Secretary-General and norm entrepreneurship: Boutros Boutros-Ghali and democracy promotion', Global Governance, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan-March 2008).
• Colin McInnes and Simon Rushton, 'The UK, health and peace-building: the mysterious disappearance of Health as a Bridge for Peace', Medicine, Conflict & Survival, Vol. 22, No. 2 (April–June 2006).
• Colin McInnes, Simon Rushton and Owain David Williams, 'HIV/AIDS: National Security, Human Security', Human Security Bulletin (March 2006)
• Simon Rushton, 'Health and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Resuscitating the Failed State in Sierra Leone', International Relations, Vol. 19, No. 4 (December 2005).

Book chapters

• Owain David Williams and Simon Rushton, 'The end of one era and the start of another: Partnerships, foundations and the shifting political economy of public health', in Rushton and Williams (eds.), Partnerships and Foundations in Global Health Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
• Owain David Williams and Simon Rushton, 'Private actors in global health governance', in Rushton and Williams (eds.), Partnerships and Foundations in Global Health Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
• Simon Rushton, 'Global governance capacities in health: WHO and infectious disease', in Kay and Williams (eds.), Global Health Governance: Crisis, Institutions and Political Economy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
• Alan Ingram and Simon Rushton, 'Health and Security', in Global Health Watch 2, London: Zed Books, 2008.
• Simon Rushton, 'A History of Peace through Health' in Neil Arya & Joanna Santa-Barbara (eds.), Peace through Health: How Health Professionals Can Work for a Less Violent World, Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2008.

References[]