Gary’s main area of research is the history of sport, particularly boxing and football. He has written two social and sporting histories of Liverpool FC (reviews of the 1946/47 title winning season and the 1985/86 double) and a two volume collection of biographies of former local boxers: Mersey Fighters 1 and Mersey Fighters 2. A third volume, aptly titled Mersey Fighters 3, is due to be published in November 2015.
Specific research on black sporting personalities include four biographies of pre-2WW black British boxers for the ODNB as well as one each from the 1950s & 1960s: middleweight Len Johnson – one of Europe’s best boxers in the late 1920s and who would later stand as a Communist Party candidate in five general elections; heavyweights Tommy Martin and Larry Gains – the former retiring a wealthy man in California the latter later publishing an autobiography entitled The Impossible Dream; Liverpool-based British Guinean Richie Kid Tanner – ranked in the world’s top 5 flyweights in 1939; and Nigerian world champions Hogan Kid Bassey and Dick Tiger.
He is currently researching the life and times of South African welterweight, Andrew Jeptha, the first black British boxing champion (1907) as well as a broader history of black boxers in Britain.
Research Keywords: Sport; Sports History; Boxing; Football.
Countries and Regions of Interest: UK, Liverpool, Merseyside.
Publications:
Mersey Fighters 1 (Milo Books, 2004)
Mersey Fighters 2 (Gary Shaw, 2007)
At the End of the Storm – the remarkable story of Liverpool FC’s greatest ever league title triumph (Gary Shaw, 2009)
On the March with Kenny’s Army – how Liverpool FC overcame tragedy and despair to win the league and FA Cup double 1985/86 (Gary Shaw, 2011)
Research Description: Music of African origin, History of Black British music, African art, Oral history and traditions, Notable cities and venues related to the arts in Black British History.
Research Keywords:
Countries and Regions of Interest: Africa (all countries), Caribbean (Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica, Europe (UK, Denmark and France), Americas (Brazil and the USA).
Research Description: Rural racism, writing by black and Asian Britons, regional sensibility, regional literary cultures, literary economy, community publishing, British country houses’ slavery connections.
Research Keywords: Writing by black and Asian Britons.
Countries and Regions of Interest: UK, Midlands, rural Britain, North-West Britain.
Publications:
Books:
Travel Writing and Ethics. Theory and Practice ed. by Corinne Fowler, Charles Forsdick and Ludmilla Kostova (Routledge, 2013)
Postcolonial Manchester: devolved literary cultures (Manchester University Press, 2013), with Lynne Pearce
Chasing Tales. Travel writing, journalism and the history of British ideas about Afghanistan (Rodopi, 2007)
Migration Stories ed. by Corinne Fowler, Muli Amaye and Martin de Mello (Crocus Books, 2009)
Special Journal Issues:
Region/Writing/Home: Relocating British Diasporas, Moving Worlds volume 9:2, 2009, ed. with Graham Mort
Journeys: ‘Travel and Ethics’ (4:1), 2003
Journal Articles:
‘Carers Cruising Cumbria and Meals on the Mile: Migrants in Fieldwork and Fiction’, Mobilities (7: 2) 2012, with Sondra Cuban
‘A Tale of Two Novels: devolving black British writing’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature (43:3) 2008, pp. 75-94
‘Articulation, Imagined Space and Virtual Mobility in Literary Narratives of Migration’, Mobilities (3:3) 2008, pp. 455-469, with Robert Crawshaw
‘Before Enduring Freedom: the legacy of nineteenth-century Anglo-Afghan encounters to British travel writing and journalism’ Studies in Travel Writing (7:1) 2007, pp. 155-175
Journalists in feminist clothing. Men and women reporting Afghan women’ Journal of International Women’s Studies (8:2) 2007, pp. 4-19
‘Recuperating narratives with troublesome titles. A critical meta-commentary on the problem of reading Beatrice Grimshaw’s From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands (1907)’ Ecloga 2006, pp. 25-45
‘Moving Manchester: relocating diaspora research’ International Journal of the Humanities (1:1), 2006, with Lynne Pearce
‘The return of the author: developing effective modes of collaboration between writing practioners and analytical theorists’, International Journal of the Arts in Society (1:1), 2006, with Graham Mort
‘Where ethnographers fear to tread: the counter-influence of ethnography on Christopher Kremmer’s The Carpet Wars and Christina Lamb’s The Sewing Circles of Herat’ Journeys (4:1) 2003, pp. 103-128
‘The Poetics and Politics of Spoken Word Poetry’ in The Cambridge Companion to Black British Writing, ed. Deirdre Osborne, 2015.
‘Travel and Ethics’ in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson, 2015.
‘Fiction and Affect: Anglophone Travel Writing and the Case of Paraguay’ in Travel Writing and Ethics. Theory and Practice, ed. Charles Forsdick, Corinne Fowler and Ludmilla Kostova (London: Routledge 2012)
‘Feminist imperialism: travel writing and journalism past and present’ in The Politics of Gender (Routledge, 2009)
‘The problem of narrative authority: Kate Karko and Catherine Oddie’ in Siegal, Kristi (ed) Gender, Genre and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing (Peter Lang Publishing) 2003, pp. 209-224
Creative Writing:
‘North, South: Britain’s alternative literary landscapes’, The London Magazine, March/April 2010
‘The Flood’, ArabesquesReview, 2007, pp. 29-35
‘Clackmannan Tower’ in Days Like This, Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2009, pp. 143-146
‘The Black Devon’, New Writing Scotland, volume 27, 2009
Migration Stories, ed. by Muli Amaye, Martin De Mello and Corinne Fowler (Crocus Books, 2009)
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