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Cities Research Team

A diverse group of academics and professional services staff lead the Centre for Researching Cities.

Dr Gillian Jein

Reader in French Studies

Background

My background is in the Urban Humanities, a connective sub-discipline engaging issues in Urban Studies (planning, design, health, infrastructure, and environment) with questions developed in the Arts & Humanities (around aesthetics, belonging, meaning, care, justice, and ethics). Drawing on cultural geographical methods, I am interested in mapping experiences and imaginaries of urban ground, particularly sites that are marginalised and/or undergoing regeneration. I have published articles on travel writing, street art, urban theory, while a more recent focus is on cities and nature and I am writing about urban farming collectives and interspecies collaboration. My monograph, Alternative Modernities, examines travel writing in London and New York, and at the moment I am working on a second book entitled, 'Grounding Grand Paris: Visual Culture, Urbanism and the Right to the City', which draws on new materialist approaches to examine the socioecological culture of the Grand Paris Project.


Since coming to Newcastle in 2018, I have been developing two interconnected research projects. The first, 'Inventing Grand Paris' (IGP) treats of visual culture in regenerating disadvantaged urban territories in the context of the Grand Paris Métropole. This was funded by an AHRC Leadership Fellows award in 2018-2019. The second, project ‘Grounding Cities, Growing Resonance’, constitutes a local extension of IGP’s ecological research, and works with external partners and communities to explore urban growing practices in the North East. This has been supported by Newcastle University's Humanities Institute and a Knowledge Exchange Sabbatical. More about these projects can be found under the 'Research' tab.



IMPACT & ENGAGEMENT

I am the School of Modern Languages Director of Impact & Engagement, and passionate about the role which the Arts & Humanities can play in society.

This role involves supporting colleagues at different stages in their engagement with external partners.

For the last REF, our school shepherded three of the six Impact Case Studies for our Unit of Assessment (UoA) through REF2021, working with colleagues to shape their impact narratives, supporting them in collating evidence and presenting work, which for some was the cumulation of a lifetime dedicated to improving the lives of vulnerable people. As a result of ours and the broader team's joint efforts, our 4* research, impact and research environment all rank in the top 25% of universities across the UK. And our UoA's work ranks 5th in the UK for overall research power and impact power.



EDUCATION

2008 Ph.D, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (supervisor Prof. David H.T. Scott)

2002 Diplôme d’Études Approfondies (D.E.A. / M.Phil equivalent), Sorbonne Nouvelle Université Paris III, France (supervisor Prof. Philippe Hamon)

2001 B.A. Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (double first-class honours in French and History, dissertation in both disciplines)


ACADEMIC TEACHING QUALIFICATIONS

2017 F.H.E.A., Bangor University, Wales (Fellow of the Higher Education Academy / Advance HE).

2010 F.L.E. (Stage de perfectionnement en Français Langue Étrangère / Teaching French as a Foreign Language), Université de Laval, Québec. 

2005 T.E.F.L. (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), The Language Centre of Ireland, Dublin. 


PREVIOUS POSITIONS

Before coming to Newcastle in 2018, I was lecturer and senior lecturer at Bangor University in North Wales from 2012. I also served as Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Bangor from 2016–2018. Prior to Wales, I worked on fixed-term contracts at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland (2010–2012) and at the University of Stirling, Scotland (2009–2010).

Research

I am currently working on two interrelated research projects: Inventing Grand Paris (IGP) and Grounding Cities, Growing Resonance (GCGR).


'Inventing Grand Paris' was awarded an AHRC Leadership Fellowship Grand in 2018. Engaging with the visual and material cultural expressions surrounding the 'Grand Paris' project, it explores the diverse and often conflicting imaginaries pertaining to this Haussmannian-scale infrastructural reorganisation of the French Republican capital's relationship to its banlieues. This project was showcased to French UK Ambassador, Catherine Colonna, during her visit to Newcastle University in January 2019, and contributed to the evidence-base for excellence in UoA26’s REF2021 Environment Statement. In January 2020, I discussed the project at a British Academy Roundtable on ‘Urban Violence’. The research has thus far yielded an article and two book chapters, as well as three historical vignettes for the bestselling 30-Second Parisvolume (2018). A monograph is currently underway for this research entitled Grounding Grand Paris: Art, Urbanism, and the Right to the City. This project has enabled a creative research practice: in collaboration with digital and soundscape artists, we created a poetic documentary, Line 16, exploring the affective resonance of future metro sites in Seine-Saint-Denis.


The second project, ‘Grounding Cities, Growing Resonance’, emerged during the pandemic, when restrictions led me to consider applying my research questions and practices around land and displacement to sites closer to home. Together with a colleague in DCU, I helped organise partners for a public-facing, ‘urban ecologies’ workshop in Dublin. This workshop led to consistent engagement with partners based in the North East—the Newcastle Council Cities of Sanctuary initiative, and most notably, The Comfrey Project. The Comfrey Project is a charity constituting an urban garden and allotment space, engaging ecotherapeutic techniques to improve the well-being of refugees and people seeking asylum. In February 2022, the engagement efforts were awarded a HaSS Research Institute’s Pioneer Award (£1266) to conduct a co-creative workshop, 'Sowing Stories', along with artist Sara Cooper in collaboration with the charity. This workshop’s success led to the award of a HaSS Knowledge Exchange Sabbatical (January 2023) in partnership with the Comfrey Project. This sabbatical’s work led to the co-production of a project, The Comfrey Almanac, which is ongoing.


I'm involved in a number of research groups at Newcastle University and sit on the steering committee of our Centre for Researching Cities. I was co-founder of The Irish Centre for Transnational Studies and am a long-standing external member of its executive board. From 2019-2022, I sat on the editorial board of The Journal of European Popular Culture, and was editor at the Irish Journal of French Studies (2011–2020). I've also had the pleasure sharing my work in modest interventions for the BBC and the British Academy, and been a keynote speaker at several international conferences and a dedicated PGR conference in Belfast.



Teaching

UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING


I am the module leader on the following final-year undergraduate module:


FRE4020: Writing Elsewhere: Cultures of Travel in French

In this module, we explore how travel and travel writing in French has shaped experiences and understandings of the world. Traversing diverse landscapes through literary extracts, critical theory, film and photography across an array of time periods, students examine how travel writing not only reflects but also shapes our understanding of the 'global' and of other cultures. Through lectures, seminars, close analysis and fieldwork, students gain an understanding of concepts like "otherness", "orientalism", "exotic", "endotic" and "relation", and critically examine travel and its influence on identity formation and deconstruction. By the end of the module, the aim is for students to have a comprehensive understanding of the historical evolution of travel writing and its relevance to contemporary societal and ecological issues, and to emerge with enhanced linguistic skills, a refined critical eye, and a deeper appreciation for the transformative power of travel and travel writing as constructions of 'elsewhere'.


I also teach a unit on the theme of marginality in the second-year undergraduate module:

  • FRE2009: Paris

This module covers four topics which may include, for example: Modernisation, Marginality, Revolution, Visions of the City, Politics of the Town Hall and Language. Two topics will be covered in Semester 1 and two in Semester 2; there are also two essay-writing seminars and a feedback session, as well as a concluding overview session.

The lectures for this course are taught mostly in French and the seminars in English. The module is thematically organised into an introductory overview followed by four

sections. In lectures, students are given historical background and introduced to theoretical work which they are encouraged to apply to the study of texts from a variety of different media.


DOCTORAL SUPERVISION


I co-supervise two doctoral students:

Along with Prof. Shirley Jordan (SML), I supervise Sophie Ellis, who is a Northern Bridge postgraduate recipient. Sophie's work explores Hospitality in contemporary French and Francophone visual arts practices.


Along with my colleagues in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Profs. Simin Davoudi and Stephen Graham, I supervise Farhan Anshary, who is a NINE DTP recipient. Farhan's work explores Spatial Imaginaries of ‘City’ and ‘Non-City’ in the Jakarta City-Region.


I welcome enquiries from research candidates interested in the following themes/areas of modern and contemporary French & Francophone Studies: 

  • Cities
  • Visual Culture
  • Travel Writing


EXTERNAL EXAMINING

I've acted as external examiner on University of London’s Institute of Paris’s (ULIP) MA in Urban History and Culture (2019-2022) and am currently external examiner for the UG programme for French at MIC, University of Limerick.



 

Publications