William Simson

University of Virginia, BA, 1983
Georgia State University, MA
Georgia State University, Ph.D.

World and American history survey instructor
Colonial American and American South
Antiquity
World History
American Political Tradition
American Labor History

A migrant to Atlanta from Virginia in 1983, William Simson, Ph.D., began teaching at Perimeter College in the summer of 2000 and has been the History Curriculum Chair since 2018. This is his second career; he worked in retail management and buying in the 1980s and had the honor of getting non-violent, civil disobedience training as a representative and activist with Act Up in the late 1980s at the Martin Luther King Center.

He returned to school in the 1990s to earn his Master of Arts and PhD in History from Georgia State University studying under the University’s fine History professors including Matthews, Schwenk, Rapp, Steffan, and his dissertation advisor, Michelle Brattain. During this time he also assisted in the opening of the then newly renovated Atlanta History Center Museum, gave tours of the city and region, and began his research into the industrial/labor/cultural history of the East Tennessee Copper Basin. His mentor for over 22 years was the late Dr. J. Brien Key (Hopkins, Ph.D.), who guided Simson through graduate school and in his academic career at Georgia Perimeter College, and sundry wonders of Southern life.

Since the early 2000s, Simson has been grateful to be the faculty advisor for the Perimeter College Outdoor Adventure Club whose mission includes using healthful recreation to familiarize students with environmental, sustainability, and historical developments of Appalachian North Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. He is an avid gardener, hiker, roller-coaster enthusiast, and sings in OurSong (The Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Chorus), and with his church.