Remembering Roona

It was with great sadness that we learned  today of the death of Roona Simpson, a research fellow in Sociology at the University of Glasgow. Roona was one of Ros Gill’s close-knit group of PhD students at the LSE in the early 2000s.  Roona was passionate about gender studies and her PhD focussed upon women’s experiences of being single. She was among a small group of scholars who challenged the stigma of terms like ‘spinster’ and helped us to understand singlehood as – sometimes – elective and – always – a distinctive way of living, that is as important and valuable as any other household or family form. Her work made a valuable contribution to debates about transformations of intimacy. Roona studied alongside Roisin Ryan Flood, Maki Kimura,  JongMi Kim, Karen Throsby and other  PhD students of the time  who have all gone on to have distinguished careers, and kept in close touch over the years. She was loved by her friends and colleagues and will be sadly missed.