Background

Gillian is Reader in French and Cultural Geography. In her research and teaching, she explores the material imaginaries of cities through the lens of cultural production and community action. She is working on two projects. The first, ‘Inventing Grand Paris: Visual Culture, Regeneration and the Right to the City’ examines visual art in the context of the political ecologies of the Grand Paris Project. This research was funded by an AHRC Leadership Fellowship Grant (2018–2019), and she is developing a monograph based on this work. The second project, ‘Grounding Cities, Growing Resonance’, is developing research through community engagement with a horticultural therapy charity working alongside people who have become refugees or are seeking asylum. When time permits, she is collating field notes using the blog format here under the title ‘Sowing Stories’. Interested in developing research through practice, she has collaborated with visual artists on projects exploring issues such as surveillance, infrastructure, and urban nature.

Affiliations

• Theme Lead for Newcastle University Centre for Researching Cities (Defining and Experiencing Cities) (2019– )
• Member of the Anthropocene Research Group (Newcastle University)
• Member of The Comfrey Project
• Co-Editor Irish Journal of French Studies (2011–2019)
• External member and co-founder of the Irish Centre for Transnational Studies (2010–2021)
• Member of the Executive Committee, Association des études françaises et francophones d’Irlande (ADEFFI) (2011-2014)

Education

• PhD in French Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. Supervised by Prof. David Scott and fully funded by the TCD Ussher Fellowship.
• Diplôme d’études approfondies (DEA), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle—Paris III. Supervised by Philippe Hamon. Pensionnaire at the École Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, Paris.
• B.A. Two Subject Moderatership in French & History, Trinity College, Dublin. Funded by the Drogheda Credit Union Scholarship.
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.