Skip to main content

Cities Research Team

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

Dr Gillian Jein

Reader in French and Cultural Geography

Background

I am a cultural geographer of modern and contemporary France whose research examines the aesthetics and politics of urban transformation. I have a particular focus on cultures of infrastructure and ecology in Grand Paris, examining how these assemblages are shaping the politics and imaginaries of more just urban futures. This work is extended through practice and engagement with community gardens in the suburbs of the North East of England. 


Originally from Ireland, and the first in my family to attend university, I studied at Trinity College Dublin (BA French & History), the Sorbonne, and New York University, before completing my PhD on urban travel writing at Trinity. These experiences of moving between languages, places and disciplines still inform my research and teaching, and may be responsible for my feeling a strong commitment to forms of learning that are rooted in place and lived experience.


Before coming to Newcastle University in 2018 and relocating to the North East, I worked at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Bangor University (2012–2018), Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick (2010–2012) and the University of Stirling (2009–2010).



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. 


Research

I am a cultural geographer of modern and contemporary France whose research examines the aesthetics and politics of urban transformation, with particular interests in visual culture, infrastructure, ecology and urban justice. Working across French and Francophone studies and cultural geography, I explore how cities are imagined, represented, and contested through cultural forms; examining how those forms shape debates around spatial inequality, ecological change, and metropolitan futures.


Current Projects

I am currently working on two interrelated research programmes: 'Inventing Grand Paris' and 'Grounding Cities, Growing Resonance'. Together, they address the cultural politics of urban transformation at different scales, from the visual and infrastructural remaking of the Paris region to collaborative, place-based work on ecology, cultivation and care in local urban contexts.

Inventing Grand Paris (AHRC Leadership Fellowship - Early Career Route) examines the visual cultures through which large-scale metropolitan change is imagined, legitimised and contested. Situated at the intersection of cultural geography and visual culture, the project explores the visualities and counter-visualities that accompany the reconfiguration of ‘Grand Paris’, with particular attention to infrastructure, public space and urban farms in the banlieues. It has generated peer-reviewed publications, public-facing writing and creative practice, and is now informing a monograph on the cultural politics of mega-scale urbanism.

Grounding Cities, Growing Resonance extends these concerns into translocal and collaborative research on urban ecology, cultural production and grounded practice. Linking questions first developed through work on Grand Paris to projects in the UK and Ireland, this programme asks how urban ground is inhabited and (re)imagined through cultivation, storytelling and making. It has developed through partnerships with cultural and community organisations, most notably The Comfrey Project, and has generated funded co-creative research, public engagement activity and the collaborative publication The Comfrey Almanac. This project has been funded by the North East Combined Authority, the ESRC-Impact Accelerator Account, a Newcastle University Knowledge Exchange Sabbatical, and the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University.


Across these programmes, I am interested in how urban infrastructures acquire aesthetic and political force, how ecological questions are mediated through art and visual culture, and how more just urban futures become perceptible through literature, film, photography, as well as situated cultural practice.


Activities

Alongside my research, I contribute to academic leadership and sector-facing activity. I was co-founder of The Irish Centre for Transnational Studies in 2010 and remain an external member of its executive board. I sit on the editorial board of The Journal of European Popular Culture and served as editor of the Irish Journal of French Studies (2011–2020). I have contributed to public and policy-facing conversations through work with organisations including the BBC and the British Academy, and have delivered invited keynote lectures at international conferences.

At Newcastle University, I am active across interdisciplinary research networks and, since May 2025, serve as Co-Director of the Centre for Researching Cities (NUCoRE). Within NUCoRE, I advance arts and humanities approaches to understanding cities as complex and relational systems, and support challenge-led collaboration with external partners around just urban transitions. In this role, I am the organiser of the cross-sector, cross-disciplinary symposium Urban Ground.


Supervision

I welcome enquiries from prospective research students interested in modern and contemporary French and Francophone studies, especially in the following areas:

·      urban cultures and urban transformation

·      visual culture and photography

·      the aesthetics and politics of infrastructure

·      ecology, environmental humanities and eco-cultures

·      art, activism and ecological urbanism

·      French and Francophone cultural geographies

·      travel writing, mobility and place

·      spatial justice, inequality and the politics of representation

·      collaborative, practice-based and creative methods

·      Grand Paris



Teaching

UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING

  • I am module leader on the final-year UG course, Global France: Intercultural Encounters in French Literature and Film (FRE4020)
  • I am module leader on the first-year UG course, France and the Francophone World (FRE1006)
  • I teach a unit on the theme of marginality in the second-year module, Paris: Aspects of History and Culture (FRE2009).
  • I teach a unit on Spatial (In)justice on the final-year module, Social Justice in French Contexts (FRE4022)
  • I also teach French language at Level B (FRE1076)



DOCTORAL SUPERVISION

  • Completed (November 2025). Along with Prof. Shirley Jordan (SML), I supervised Dr Sophie Ellis, a Northern Bridge postgraduate recipient. Sophie's work explores Hospitality in contemporary French and Francophone visual arts practices. Sophie graduated with 'No corrections' and been nominated for the university's dissertation prize.


  • 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.



EXTERNAL EXAMINING

I have acted as external examiner on University of London’s Institute of Paris’s (ULIP) MA in Urban History and Culture (2019-2022) and as external examiner for the UG programme for French at MIC, University of Limerick (2021–2025).



 

Publications