Dr Gillian McFadyen PhD (Aberystwyth University) MSc Postcolonial Politics (Aberystwyth University) MSc International Politics (University of Glasgow) BA(Hons) Social Science (Glasgow Caledonian University) , HEA Fellow

Dr Gillian McFadyen is a Lecturer in International Politics. She is the Deputy Director of Recruitment, Admission and Marketing for InterPol and sits on the Aber University Research Ethics Panel.  Gillian's research focuses on the international refugee regime, with a particular focus on the British refugee system. 

Gillian has a PhD from Aberystwyth, as well as degrees from Aber (MSc), Glasgow (MSc) and Glasgow Caledonian (BA Hons). She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a 2020/2021 alum of the Welsh Crucible. 

Gillian's research engages with the area of refugee studies. She is particularly interested in refugee law, the British Asylum system, EU asylum process, as well as applying theories such as hospitality, labelling and postcolonialism to the refugee regime. She also has an interest in memory, trauma, silence and their application to refugee politics. In addition, she has written on the hostile environment, propaganda, bureaucracies of knowledge in humanitarian practices, and has a keen interest in simulation pedagogy for active learning. Gillian's first book, Refugees in Britain: Practices of Hospitality and Labelling was published with Edinburgh University Press (2020).  The book intertwines theories of hospitality and labelling, and applies them to the British refugee regime, arguing that the British refugee regime has developed towards an externalised humanitarian hospitality. The book also examines counter-discourses by examining local practices of British hospitality and showing acts of solidarity and resistance that challenge the statist logic. The result is a theoretically informed account of the British approach to externalisation and geographical seclusion of refugees, particularly in response to the current Mediterranean Crisis 

A secondary field of research, sees her focuses on political embroidery, using stitching and craftivism as a method of resistance, memory, activism and story-telling. This research has seen her work on multiple projects at the national and international level, with exhibitions at the Tate Modern, Liverpool (2018), British Refugee Council Archives, London (2019) plus Bordando Por la Memoria Project, as well as collaboration with the Seemia Theatre company (2019).

As of Autumn 2021, Gillian has starting a new funded interdisciplinary project with researchers from Swansea and Northumbria University, Maternal Guilt Quilt- an innovative project that explores maternal emotional experiences, through textile crafting, following in the Welsh, feminist quilting tradition of visual culture. The project will explore mothers' experiences of feeding their babies with audio recordings and written texts being incorporated into a co-created interactive digital quilt to be exhibited across Wales. The projects uniqueness is that it departs from dominant breastfeeding literature that tends to focus on positive emotions related to bonding, and offers space for amplifying mothers voices and their range of experiences surrounding feeding. 
 

Expertise: refugee, asylum, hospitality, labelling, memory, trauma, language, detention, postcolonialism, human rights, political embroidery, propaganda, biometric data, 

Gillian is the Deputy Director of Recruitment, Admission and Marketing for InterPol and sits on the Aber University Research Ethics Panel. 

Gillian teaches in the area of International Politics and Global Development, covering modules on Global Politics, Global Development and Refugee Politics/Simulation. In 2020 she won the Aber SU Student and Staff Award for Creative Teaching.