Simon Chapman is Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney. He is a sociologist with a PhD on the semiotics of cigarette advertising, author of 14 books and major government reports and 352 oublications in peer-reviewed journals.

Simon's main research interests are in tobacco control, media discourses on health and illness, and risk communication. He teaches annual courses in Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control in the University of Sydney's Master of Public Health program.

Books authored by Simon include: Public Health Advocacy annd Tobacco Control: Making Smoking History (Oxford:Blackwell, 2007); Over our dead bodies: Gun law reform after Port Arthur (Sydney : Pluto, 1998); The Last Right? Australians take sides on the right to die (Sydney : Mandarin, 1995); The Fight for Public Health: Principles and Practice of Media Advocacy (BMJ Books, 1994 with Deborah Lupton); Tobacco in the Third World: a resource Atlas (Penang:International Organization of Consumers Unions, 1990); Great Expectorations: Advertising and the tobacco industry (London : Comedia, 1986); and The Lung Goodbye: tactics for counteracting the tobacco industry in the 1980s (International Organization of Consumers Unions, 1983).

From 1984-2002, Simon was a member of the World Health Organization's Expert Advisory Panel on Tobacco and Health. In 1997 he won the World Health Organization's World No Tobacco Day Medal, and in 2003, his international peers voted him to receive the Luther Terry medal for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control (shared with Mary Assunta). Simon was a member of the Governing Council of the Australian Consumers' Association 1982-2002. He is editor of the British Medical Journal's specialist journal, Tobacco Control. He is a staff elected fellow of the Senate at the University of Sydney. In 2008 he won the NSW Premier's Award for Outstanding Cancer Research. Click here to view video of the award.

Since 1991, he has run dozens of training workshops in Australia, the United States and Great Britain in media advocacy for public health. He was a key member of the Coalition for Gun Control (1994-1996), which won the 1996 Australian community Human Rights award.