Dr Michael Shaw

I was born in Stirling, raised in nearby Tullibody, and spent a fair bit of my childhood chasing ducks around the university campus. I undertook my MA and PhD at the University of Glasgow, as well as an MA at Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2016, I was Research Assistant on the Carnegie-funded project 'The People's Voice: Scottish Political Poetry, Song and the Franchise 1832-1918', before taking up the post of Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Kent in 2017. I returned to Stirling in 2019, joining the university as Lecturer in Scottish Literature.

In 2020, I was CI on the RSE workshops project 'Scottish Cosmopolitanism at the Fin de Siècle' (PI: Dr Matthew Creasy). Over 2021-23, I was CI on the the RSE network grant, 'The Scottish Revival Network' (PI: Dr Scott Lyall).

Over 2023-24, I held an RSE Personal Research Fellowship for my project 'Homosexuality and the Scottish Periodical Press 1885-1928'.

I am currently Director of the Scottish Centre for Victorian and Neo-Victorian Studies and, from 2016-18, I served on the advisory board of the AHRC Popular Occulture in Britain 1875-1947 network.

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Current PhD Supervisees

Neil Conway, The Melancholic Solitary in Modern Scottish Poetry

Isla Macfarlane, Books, Borrowers and Visitors at the Library of Innerpeffray, 1855-1897

Katie MacLean, Adapting Jane Austen on Stage: 1895-2002

My research focuses on Scottish literature and art in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the 1890s. My current research project is concerned with the representation of homosexuality in Scottish literature from 1880 to 1930.

My research interests also include the Celtic Revival and literary decadence in Scotland. My monograph, The Fin-de-Siècle Scottish Revival: Romance, Decadence and Celtic Identity (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), explored the ways in which dissident fin-de-siècle styles and ideas were embraced by Scottish writers and artists hoping to develop a comparable cultural revival to the Irish Literary Revival. With Dr Scott Lyall (Edinburgh Napier University), I am currently editing a volume of essays devoted to the Scottish Literary Revival, which emerged from our RSE network grant, 'The Scottish Revival Network'.

In 2020, I completed an edition of literary correspondence between Robert Louis Stevenson and J. M. Barrie (Sandstone Press, 2020). This project began in 2016, when I held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Beinecke Library, Yale University.

In the 2024-25 academic year, I will be teaching the following modules:

ENGU9T1: Oscar Wilde and the Decadents (convenor)

ENGU9WH: Scotland and Empire (convenor)

ENGU9HC: British Literature 1700-1830

ENGU9A1: Introduction to Literary Studies: Genre

HISU9H3: Key to the Kingdom: The History and Heritage of Stirling

ENGU9DP: Dissertation Preparation

ENGU9A8: English Studies Dissertation