Dr Mary L. Shannon is collaborating with Dr Ben Marsh (University of Kent), musician Angeline Morrison, and artist Selena Scott to turn research for her book Billy Waters Is Dancing: Or, How A Black Sailor Found Fame in Regency Britain (Yale, 2024) into a series of educational resources for KS3 and KS4.
Billy Waters was a Black celebrity busker and street performer, once famous around Britain and America, but now overlooked by history. Mary’s initial research was funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and a Linda H. Peterson Fellowship as well as grants from the Paul Mellon Fund and Houghton Library Harvard. Her work is currently supported by the Susannah Wesley Foundation. Designed and created by a collaborative team of historians, artists, and musicians, Billy Waters: Songs from the Shadows is a set of brand-new FREE educational resources consisting of a graphic novel and a sonic resource intended for students aged 11-16. The resources and accompanying lesson plans and curriculum maps can be downloaded for FREE here:
Mary is also advising on several museum-sector projects on Billy Waters including with the Disability Trailblazers Trail, Chatham Historic Dockyard; Dyspla (a neurodivergent-led award-winning arts studio); and the London Archives.
In March 2026 Mary is organising a performance to celebrate Waters’ life – ‘Jump Billy!’ – at Cecial Sharp House in London. This special show draws together researchers and creatives who have worked together on all these various projects described above to highlight the life of this Black disabled Regency celebrity.
As co-founder and founding president of the international GWM Reynolds Society, Mary has organised public events to raise the profile of this once-famous Victorian popular writer, who outsold Dickens but is no longer known to the general public. You can find out more on the website here. Together with society Vice President Jennifer Conary, Mary co-edited G.W.M. Reynolds Reimagined: Studies in Authorship, Radicalism, and Genre (Routledge, 2023).
Mary regularly speaks on TV and radio and numerous podcasts about Regency and Victorian popular culture: you can listen to her speak about Billy Waters and GWM Reynolds here via her website.