Professor Simmons’ research focuses on the history, geography, and relationships of the Chinese dialects. He has received numerous grants and awards to support his scholarship, including a multi-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Simmons’ publications include Chinese Dialect Classification—A Comparative Approach to Harngjou, Old Jintarn, and Common Northern Wu (1999, with a Chinese translation published in 2010), Issues in Chinese Dialect Description and Classification (1999), Chinese Dialect Geography: Distinguishing Mandarin and Wu in Their Boundary Region (2006), Handbook for Lexicon Based Dialect Fieldwork (2006), and Shanghainese Dictionary And Phrasebook (2011).
