David O'Shaughnessy is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, the University of Galway, and the University of Oxford. After his doctorate, he was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford where he co-edited The Diary of William Godwin, 1788-1836 which was awarded the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Digital Prize for 2012. He also published William Godwin and the Theatre (2010) and a complementary edition of Godwins plays from manuscripts held at the Huntington Library in California and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the latter facilitated by a Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr Research Grant awarded by the Keats-Shelley Association of America.

After his work on Godwin, he developed an interest in Irish writing in eighteenth-century London, particularly theatre. He held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Warwick (2010-12) where he edited a special issue of the journal Eighteenth-Century Life titled 'Networks of Aspiration: the London Irish of the Eighteenth Century' (2015). He also edited Ireland, Enlightenment, and the English Stage, 1740-1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), a volume which assesses the contribution Irish theatrical practitioners made to the Georgian stage, particularly those theatres in London, and argues that we can consider it an important strand of Irish Enlightenment activity. He took up a lecturership at Trinity College Dublin in 2012 when he was also awarded a Marie Curie Career Integration grant (2013-17) for The Censorship of British Theatre, 1737-1843. This project brought together manuscripts held at the Huntington Library and the British Library in an award-winning online resource that allows scholars to map theatre censorship across the period ( British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Digital Prize for 2022). In 2019 he convened a conference on theatre censorship at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles which led to a volume of essays The Censorship of Eighteenth-Century Theatre: Playhouses and Prohibition, 1737-1843 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). David was awarded a Marie Curie Global Fellowship in 2017 which facilitated a sabbatical at the Huntington Library and Caltech to work on the history play of the eighteenth century. During his time in the US, he collaborated with Ian Newman on Irish actor and playwright Charles Macklin and this resulted in a co-edited volume Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London for Liverpool University Press (2022). David was also the dramaturg for two productions of Macklins great comedy Love à la Mode (1759) at Smock Alley in 2016 and 2017.

He is a general editor, alongside Michael Griffin (UL), of The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 8 vols (Cambridge University Press, 2024- ), the first two volumes of which have been published, accompanied by Oliver Goldsmith in Context, ed. Griffin and OShaughnessy (Cambridge University Press, 2024).This follows their Letters of Oliver Goldsmith (Cambridge University Press, 2018). In 2020 he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant (€2m) to work on the finances of London theatres. 'Theatronomics: the business of theatre, 1732-1809' brings together a postdoctoral team of humanities and economics scholars to apply econometric analysis to the financial archives of Covent Garden and Drury Lane. The project will apply these economic methodologies so that new perspectives on the careers of managers, playwrights, actors, and plays emerge. 

Eighteenth-century literature, especially theatre; Irish Enlightenment; London-Irish playwrights; theatre censorship; theatre finance; William Godwin; Oliver Goldsmith.