Simone Durham was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. She moved to Baltimore, MD in 2011, where prior to attending the University of Maryland she earned a B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Morgan State University, a Historically Black University (HBCU) in Baltimore. Simone currently lives in Atlanta, GA, where she is completing the dissertation phase of her doctoral program with the support of the UMD Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship.

Simone has worked in higher education both as an adjunct faculty member and an administrator. She has taught undergraduate courses at Morgan State University, Anne Arundel Community College, and the University of Maryland. Courses she teaches include: Introduction to Sociology, Introduction to Anthropology, Social Problems, Social Psychology, Sociology of Race Relations, and Sociology of Sports. At Morgan, she served as the coordinator for the university financial literacy program and graduation cohort tracking initiative through the Office of Student Success and Retention.

Simone is a critical race scholar, focusing on identity, meaning making, mental health, and social movements. Her second year paper was an examination of racial projects taken on by polarized news media sources through coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement. Her dissertation project uses interviews to examine Black millennial perspectives on and engagement with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This project covers a variety of topics, including collective identity, participation, evaluations of present and future success, media influence, and how her respondents conceptualize BLM as a racial project. She is also currently working on a co-authored reference book on BLM. Simone's other projects have examine(d) how social characteristics correlate with levels of support for #BlackLivesMatter, multiracial identity development, crimmigration as a racial project, slave rebellions as a form of (social movement) resistance, and the role of Black death imagery in Black liberation movements.