Prof Katy Shaw

CC Team Lead

Katy Shaw is Director of Creative Communities, Professor of Contemporary Writings and Director of Cultural Partnerships at Northumbria University.

Katy’s research interests include contemporary literature, especially working-class literature, cultural representations of post-industrial regeneration and the languages of comedy. She is the author of five monographs about contemporary culture and has written several national reports on the creative industries, including the 2021 ‘Case for Culture: an all-party parliamentary group for northern culture inquiry’ report into post-COVID cultural recovery.

She is an expert in twenty-first century literature and has written two books on crime author David Peace, a monograph on representations of the Credit Crunch in contemporary culture, and a collection on the teaching of twenty-first century genre fiction. Her latest book Hauntology (2018) explores the persistent role of the past in the present of contemporary English Literature.

Outside of the Creative Communities programme, Katy is also a consultant on the Michael Sheen, Daily Mirror, New Statesman and Joseph Rowntree-funded project ‘A Writing Chance’, which aims to enhance routes into writing for working class authors. She has written for the New Statesman, the Big Issue, the Times Higher Education and The Independent, and is currently a contributing Commissioner to the Commission on Culture and Local Government. She is a public intellectual, literary festival host, media presenter and keen Twitterer.
As Director of Cultural Partnerships at Northumbria University in Newcastle she connects a portfolio of galleries, museums, theatres and writing development organisations to university teaching, research and civic engagement.