Gabriele Griffin

Gabriele Griffin is Professor of Gender Research and Director of Graduate Studies at the Centre for Gender Research. She is coordinator of the VR-funded PhD School 'Gender, Humanities, and Digital Cultures' (2023-2028). Her research focuses on women in research and innovation, gender and technology, female entrepreneurs, women's cultural production, feminist research methodologies, non-normative identities, and higher education and disciplinization.

Gabriele Griffin completed her BA in English, German and Psychology in 1979 at the University of Leicester, UK. Subsequently, she took an MA in Tradition and Innovation in 20th Century Literature at University College London (1983), a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and Curriculum Development in Higher Education at the Institute of Education, London (1986), and a PhD on the work of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch at the University of Leicester (1990).
Through her interest in contemporary women’s writing she moved into Women’s and Gender Studies, and she held a number of posts in British universities, either in English or in Women’s/Gender Studies, most recently the Anniversary Chair in Women's Studies at the University of York (2006-2016). Moving between the two intellectual locations of English Literature and Women's/Gender Studies has shaped her research which has partly focussed on contemporary women’s writing; women’s cultural production (esp. theatre); feminist methodology; and writing diaspora; and partly on Women’s/Gender Studies as a discipline and more sociological topics such as women’s employment, gender and technology, and violence against women.

Since 2017 she has been Coordinator of the Nordforsk-funded Nordic Centre of Excellence NORDWIT in which she also researches on gender and the digital humanities. She also coordinates the SIDA-funded capacity-building project on gender mainstreaming, with the partners Eduardo Montelane University, Mozambique and Free State University, South Africa. In 2016 she completed a reference work on Gender Studies for Oxford University Press.

- Coordination of Nordforsk-funded Nordic Centre for Excellence, entitled: ‘Beyond the Gender Paradox – Women’s Careers in Technology-Driven Research and Innovation In and Outside of Academe’ (2017-2022). This Centre, with core partners at Tampere University and the Western Norway Research Institute, and some 18 researchers, explores how changes in the labour market affected by its technologization impact on women’s careers. We are concerned to understand how regional and research-intensive science and innovation contexts shape women’s career opportunities in new labour environments such as e-health and Digital Humanities. We know very little about this to date, yet the Nordic countries are at the forefront of the development of work places such as e-health and the gaming industry.

- Female Entrepreneurship: following on from a Vinnova-funded project (2018), in collaboration with Anneli Hayren and HeraHub, on female entrepreneurs, co-working hubs, and decent work (UN Goal 2030), we now look at older female entrepreneurs' experience of entering the entrepreneur market in later life.

- SIDA-funded collaboration with Eduardo Mondelane University, Maputo, Mozambique, on gender mainstreaming.

- Contribution to British Library Exhibition on feminist activism (2020) on DIY feminist activist publishing and music cultures.