Dr Stefanie Shackleton

PauperHistorian

Working-class historian of working-class culture and society – specializing in Britain and Ireland in the long 19th century.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion advocate.

Download CV

Current Projects

‘Poor and Obstinate’

Ann Hicks in the Victorian British World

This multi-media project explores Victorian culture and society as experienced by one extraordinary woman – Ann Hicks – from 1840s London to 1870s Melbourne.

Ann Hicks, a London refreshment seller, stumbled into the center of some of the biggest cultural discussions of her time. She corresponded with some of the prominent names of Victorian history, including Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Robert Lemon, and was used in arguments in Parliament. She had run-ins with the new London constabulary of the 1830s, became the face of controversy around the Great Exhibition of 1851, spent time in the Gold Fields of colonial Australia, and featured in local stories and memoirs for decades after her death. She publically called for responsible actions from elites, demanded respect and recongnition for her her respectability as a labouring woman, and was known for her creative – sometimes questionable – ways of making ends meet for herself and her family.

As interesting and eventful as her life was, however, in many ways Hicks serves as an example of any labouring woman in the period – while also being the exception at every turn. This project explores British life and society during a time of dramatic change, while staying grounded in the experiences and connections of one “poor and obstinant” woman, from London to Melbourne.

Presentations and Publications

Publications and Digital Content

  • Article – ‘Honest, Clean, and Industrious’: Understanding Respectability in Victorian Working-Class Communities Through the Case of Ann Hicks
  • Labours, Letters, and Locations – ArcGIS Storymap
    • Timeline from 1805-1875
    • Letters and Articles
    • Maps
      • Hyde Park and the Great Exhibition of 1851
      • Working-Class Lodgings to Million-Pound Flats
  • Book in Progress – ‘Hicks is Poor, and Obstinant‘: Class, Labour, and Gender in the Victorian British World

Past Presentations

  • “‘Woe-begone and very shabby:’ Responsibility and Respectability at the Threshold of the Exhibition of 1851” – Presentation at the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association “Thresholds” conference, 2024.
  • “Honest, Clean, and Industrious: Working-Class Respectability” – Workshop at the Institute of Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, 2023.
  • “Class, Gender, and Empire Through the Life of Ann Hicks” – Presentation at the Empires of Diversity Workshop, University of Bristol, 2020.
  • “‘Your Humble Petitioner’: Working Class Respect and Female Voice at the Height of the British Empire” – Presentation at the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality at the University of Texas, 2019.

‘For the Education and Improvement of the People’

Working-Class Knowledge and Culture in the 19th-Century British World

Dissertation 2022,
and Book in Progress

Focusing primarily on the words and actions of working-class men and women in their autobiographies, letters, and documents, I reconstruct their exercise of autonomy in learning and culture creation in a variety of local cultural environments. This work challenges a historiography that has minimized worker agency, and also revisits foundational works in social history with newer methodologies from empire studies, local studies, history of science, and history of education. The monograph expands the original project into Australia and Canada (research originally postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic), as I contend that the construction of ideas around what made a working-class group or individual respectable, learned, and ‘British’ in the Victorian period occurred within the networks of exchanges between the capital and the periphery.

Past Presentations

  • “Space and Place in Working-Class Adult Learning” – Imperial Education in the 19th and 20th century British Empire” Panel – North American Conference on British Studies Conference. November, 2024.
  • “The Cultured British Citizen: Working-Class Learning in Ireland and Australia” – Social Science History Association conference. November, 2022. (Cancelled due to COVID19.)
  • “Nothing if Not Resourceful: Working-Class Autonomy Through Middle-Class Learning Initiatives” – In Search of Britain Seminar, Université de Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, France. March, 2022.
  • “’Studying earnestly, silently, and with the most perfect order:’ Learning and the Construction of Working-Class Respectability” – “Shaping Knowledge: Learning and Empire in the 19th and 20th Centuries” panel at the North American Conference on British Studies. November, 2020.

Selected Advocacy and Service Roles

Diversity and Inclusion Committee Chair (Voting Council Member), North American Conference on British Studies, 2023-2025. NACBS

Virtual Writing Group Administrator, Coordinating Council for Women in History, 2020-2025

Mentorship Coordinator for the Coordinating Council on Women in History (CCWH), 2021-2023. CCWH

Association of American Universities (AAU) PhD Education Initiative, History Department Graduate Representative, 2020-2022.

Panel Chair and Panelist, “What Comes Next? Graduate School Q&A,” College of Liberal Arts Undergraduate Research Conference, April 2022.

University of Texas College of Liberal Arts Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, Elected Graduate Student Representative, Undergraduate and Graduate Student Committees, 2020-2021. (Task Force website and report taken down following implementation of SB 17)

2022 Annual Meeting Program Committee Assistant, American Historical Association, Spring 2021.

Panel Member, First-Generation College Student Panel and Discussion, Spring 2019.

Career Diversity Advisory Committee, Department of History, UT Austin 2017-2018, funded by AHA Career Diversity Institute.

Recent Public Talks

Historians at the Library Series
Cedar Park Public Library, 2023-2024

  • “Victorian Ghosts and Fairies (Belief in Other Worlds in Victorian Britain)”
  • “Belfast and the Troubles”
  • “Disorderly Women”
  • “The Great Exhibition of 1851.”