Simon J. Bronner (born April 7, 1954 in Haifa, Israel) is an American folklorist, ethnologist, historian, sociologist, educator, college dean, and author.

In 2011, he was named the editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies online (published by Johns Hopkins University Press).

He also received the John Ben Snow Foundation Prize and Regional Council of Historical Societies Award of Merit for Old-Time Music Makers of New York State and the Encyclopedia of American Folklife was designated an outstanding academic title by Choice and "Editor's Choice" by Booklist/Reference Books Bulletin for 2006.

[1] He has been an advocate of "structuralist" and "symbolist" approaches to the interpretation of cultures integrating historical, ethnographic, sociological, and psychological perspectives with particular attention to developmental issues across the life course and ethnic process and practice.

He has also highlighted the politics of tradition and culture and the ways that contested public debates can be symbolically analyzed in behavioral, material, and verbal rhetoric to show systems of belief and communication in conflict.

[6] Many of his essays raise questions about traditions regarding the personal motivations and psychological states, historical conditions and precedents, social identities, and underlying mental processes that explain the function and persistence of cultural expressions.

Bronner’s major scholarly contributions have been in the topics of material culture and folklife (particularly in folk art and architecture) in books such as American Material Culture and Folklife, Folk Art and Art Worlds, The Carver’s Art, and Grasping Things, consumer culture (Consuming Visions), history and theory of folklore studies (Folklore: The Basics, Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Following Tradition: Folklore in the Discourse of American Culture, and American Folklore Studies: An Intellectual History), ethnic studies (particularly for Jews, Pennsylvania Germans, and African Americans), ritual and belief (Crossing the Line), masculinity studies (Manly Traditions), American roots music (blues and old-time music) in Old-Time Music Makers of New York State, animal-human relations (in practices such as hunting and gaming), and developmental psychology and culture across the life course (particularly in childhood and old age) in American Children’s Folklore, Piled Higher and Deeper: The Folklore of Student Life, and Chain Carvers: Old Men Crafting Meaning.

In 2018 he received a fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation related to his work on physical culture and previously he was a NEH fellow at the Winterthur Museum.

[7] His book Popularizing Pennsylvania (1996), for example, examined the links of Progressive politics, environmental conservation, and public history and folklore in the career of Henry W. Shoemaker (1880–1958), America’s first official state folklorist, chairman of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, ambassador to Bulgaria (1930–1933), and prominent newspaper publisher.