He later worked for a number of years as a journalist, broadcaster, campaigner and policy advisor, before going on to study history and complete his PhD on "South Asian doctors and the development of general practice in Great Britain (c.1948-c.1983)".
Julian Simpson was born in the North East of England in December 1970,[2] with his ancestry having roots in Ireland, Germany and the Indian subcontinent.
His early education was in France, following which he attended high school at the Lycée National Léon Mba in Gabon, with intermittent summer holidays back in Howdon, North Tyneside, where he first witnessed South Asian migrant doctors in general practice in an industrial working-class region.
[3][5] He illustrated how his background, upbringing and experiences of hostilities to migrants led him to believe that a "lack of historical awareness was at least partially at the root of such attitudes"[3] and this directed him to pursue a "critical engagement with the past".
This volume, published by Palgrave Macmillan (2018) is a series of essays by immigration historians who relate their work to contemporary policy controversies around migration.