[email protected]

PhD (King's College London), MA (King's College London), PGCE (Institute of Education), BA (Hons) (Cambridge)

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

I am a cultural historian, literary critic, writer, and broadcaster. I research and write about Regency and Victorian popular culture, fiction, plays, images, and the press. I'm fascinated by the cultural world of nineteenth-century London and its teeming history: the places, the architecture, the people, and the streets. My latest book is an award-winning biography of 1820s African-American London busker Billy Waters, Billy Waters is Dancing: Or, How A Black Sailor Found Fame In Regency and Victorian Britain (Yale 2024). This work is funded by grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. I speak on the Radio and TV about nineteenth-century culture and I do historical consultancy work.

Together with Dr Alex Bubb (Roehampton) and Dr Briony Wickes (Royal Holloway) I co-convene the London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar at the Institue of English Studies, Senate House, University of London.

Latest media:

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, King of the Beggars - The Music of Billy Waters

Famous People You've Never Heard Of podcast: https://tinyurl.com/y7xjtyrm

Billy Waters FREE KS3 teaching resources: billywaters – The Stuff of History

I'm always delighted to hear from students wishing to pursue PhDs in any of these areas:

• nineteenth-century literature, magazines, and popular culture
• cultural geography and literary London
• architectural history and theory
• Black British history
• disability history
• drama and theatre and performance
• creative responses to any of these areas

Feb 2024 - Aug 2027: Susanna Wesley Foundation Grants

'Assessing Research Impact Through the Life of Billy Waters'

Jan 2024- December 2024: 'Songs From the Shadows: Billy Waters' (in collab. with University of Kent Impact Accelerator Scheme)

Jan. 2022 - April 2023: Leverhulme Research Fellowship

‘The Celebrated Billy Waters and the circulation of popular culture 1800-1860’

Sept. 2021 - Dec. 2021: Linda H. Peterson Fellow, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals 

https://www.roehampton.ac.uk/humanities-and-social-sciences/news/research-latest-dr-mary-shannon-wins-second-prestigious-research-award-in-three-months/

‘Billy Waters, Periodicals, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture’

Upcoming projects:

'Gardening Like A Victorian' (for a sneek preview see Instagram )

2025 NYC Big Book Award for Billy Waters Is Dancing (Yale, 2024)

2016 Colby Prize for Dickens, Reynolds and Mayhew on Wellington Street: The Print Culture of a Victorian Street (Ashgate, 2026)

Research Consultant to nineteenth-century historical fiction writers:

English Literature

Architectural History and Theory

Creative & Professional Writing

Popular Culture and Media History

Children's Literature

I have a PGCE in Secondary English teaching

GWM Reynolds Society (founding President)

Romantic Illustration Network (original facilitator)

Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (Executive Board Member)

British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS): Executive Committee member 2010-14

North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA)

British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS)

American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR)

https://linktr.ee/marylshannon

Watch my talk about Billly Waters.

Watch my Colby Lecture at the 2016 Research Society for Victorian Periodicals international conference in Kansas City.

View Romantic Illustration Network website

View GWM Reynolds Society website