Vanessa Harding is professor of London history at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research has focused on death and burial in London and Paris and she has written widely on the subject in academic journals and in book form.

Harding was educated at the University of St. Andrews where she completed her PhD. She became professor of London history at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2009, having joined the college in 1984. In 2008, Harding contributed to the BBC Radio 4 In Our Time series on the Great Fire of London. In 2012, she became general editor of the British Academy Records of Social and Economic History series. She has lectured at Gresham College.