Staff Profile

I am Reader in French and Cultural Geography. I explore how narrative and visual culture have shaped modern urban imaginaries in the past, and how they might provide tools for helping us reimagine cities for the future. My current work focuses on the visual ecologies of Grand Paris, as well as on community gardens here 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 at Trinity. These experiences of moving between languages, places and intellectual traditions continue to inform my approach to cities as complex, layered, naturalcultural spaces.

Before joining Newcastle in 2018, I taught at Bangor University. I was promoted to Reader in 2023 and served as Director of Impact and Engagement for the School of Modern Languages (2019–2025), as well as Theme Lead for “Defining and Experiencing Cities” at the Centre for Researching Cities (2020-2025). I am currently a co-Director of the Centre for Researching Cities. In these roles, I seek to foster interdisciplinary and community-based conversations around urban belonging, spatial justice and ecological care.

My current projects reflect this commitment. I am preparing a monograph which looks at urban gardens, farms and allotment spaces and contemporary art's role in reanimating such places with ecological thinking for cities. Additionally, The Comfrey Almanac—a 144-page illustrated book co-created with participants at The Comfrey Project in Gateshead—explores the urban community garden as a site of resilience, memory and socio-ecological belonging. This book is the public-facing instrument of my scholarship and an attempt to bring theory into accessible, everyday practices built around actionable care.

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. 

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

'Inventing Grand Paris' was awarded an AHRC ECR Leadership Fellowship in 2018. Engaging with the visual ecologies of the 'Grand Paris' project, it explores the visualities and countervisualities pertaining to this Haussmannian-scale infrastructural reorganisation of the French capital. The 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 Paris volume (2018). A monograph is currently underway for this research entitled Grounding Grand Paris: Ecologies of Attention for the 21st-Century City. This project has also enabled a creative research practice, and in collaboration with digital and soundscape artists, we created a poetic documentary, Line 16, exploring in 2019 the affective resonance of then-speculative metro sites across Seine-Saint-Denis.

The second project, ‘Grounding Cities, Growing Resonance’, emerged during the pandemic when restrictions led me to consider applying questions around land ethics related to my work in French studies to sites closer to home. In 2021, together with a colleague in DCU, I recruited partners for a public-facing, ‘urban ecologies’ workshop at Airfield Farm 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 was co-founder of The Irish Centre for Transnational Studies and am a long-standing external member of its executive board. I sit 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 have been a keynote speaker at international conferences including the 'Mobilities and Moorings' in Belfast, the UCD Humanities Institue's 'The Transnational Neighbourhood' conference, and the University of Oregan's Urban Architecture Research Lab's conference 'Making Do in Urbanism and the Arts'.

I am involved in a number of research groups at Newcastle University and co-director (since May 2025) of the Centre for Researching Cities (NUCoRE) where I lead the strand on 'Living Cities', which is driven by arts and humanities frameworks for understanding cities as complex, relational and more-than-human assemblages.

UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING

I am the module leader on the final-year undergraduate module, Global France: Intercultural Encounters in French Literature and Film (FRE4020)

In this module, we explore French and Francophone perspectives on foreign cultures and environments, examining how such encounters have shaped understandings of the modern and contemporary world. Crossing diverse landscapes in literature, film and photography, students examine how travel representations not only reflect but also shape 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 intercultural relations in the French and Francophone world and their relevance to contemporary societal and ecological issues. Students emerge with enhanced linguistic skills, a refined critical eye, and a deeper appreciation for the transformative power of travel and travel representations as forms of world-making.

I also teach a unit on the theme of marginality in the second-year undergraduate module: Paris: Aspects of History and Culture.

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

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.

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

• Representations of the City
• Visual Culture
• Travel Writing

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).

• Articles

  • Jein G. A Honeycomb Conjecture: Hexagonal Imaginaries and Interspecies Storytelling for Le Grand Paris. French Studies 2024, 78(4), 623–643.
  • Jein G, Rorato L, Saunders A. Introduction: City Margins, City Memories. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 2017, 25(4), 405-411.
  • Jein G. (De)Facing the Wall. The Traditions, Transactions and Transgressions of Street Art. Irish Journal of French Studies 2012, 12(1), 83-111.

• Authored Book

  • Jein G. Alternative Modernities in French Travel Writing: Engaging Urban Space in London and New York, 1851–1986. London, UK: Anthem, 2016.

• Book Chapters

  • Jein G. Speculative Spaces in Grand Paris: Reading JR in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil. In: Christoph Lindner; Gerard F. Sandoval, ed. Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2021, pp.221-246.
  • Jein G. Urban Dystopias. In: Anna-Louise Milne; Russell Williams, ed. Contemporary Fiction in French. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp.199-218.
  • Jein G. 'The Modern Period'; 'Rungis—Les Halles'; 'La Défense'. In: John Flower, ed. 30-Second Paris: The 50 key elements that shaped the city, each explained in half a minute. London, UK: Ivy Press, 2018, pp.3.
  • Jein G. Suburbia Interrupted: Street Art and the Politics of Place in the Paris Banlieues. In: Jordan S; Lindner C, ed. Cities Interrupted: Visual Culture and Urban Space. London: Bloomsbury, 2016, pp.87-104.
  • Jein G. From Legislative to Interpretive Modes of Travel: Space, Ethics and Literary Form in Baudrillard’s America. In: Charles Forsdick; Ludmilla Kostova; Corinne Fowler, ed. Travel and Ethics: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 2014, pp.31-51.
  • Jein G. Dislocating Travel: New York as anti-domus in Simone de Beauvoir’s Amérique au jour le jour. In: Connon,D;Jein,G;Kerr,G, ed. Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009, pp.33–52.

• Edited Book

  • Connon D, Jein G, Kerr G, ed. Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.

• Exhibition

  • Devlin R, Flukiger M, Dickenson A, Edwards C, Jein G, Bakir V, McStay A. Veillance. 2017. Bangor University: White Box, Pontio, 1.

• Online Publication

  • Jein G. (De)facing the Suburbs: Street Art and the Politics of Spatial Affect in the Paris banlieues. Dublin: Sinéad Furlong-Clancy, 2015. Available at: http://thedsproject.com/portfolio/defacing-the-suburbs-street-art-and-the-politics-of-spatial-affect-in-the-paris-banlieues/.