Julie Gay
British Literature
Julie Gay is a senior lecturer in British literature at the Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale and a member of the research team HLLI. She explores the relationship between space and literary form at the turn of the 19th century, focusing on authors such as R.L. Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, and H. G. Wells. Her PhD thesis, which she completed at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne in 2019, was published with L’Harmattan Editions under the title L’île dans la littérature d’aventures victorienne : Explorations insulaires et renouveau littéraire à la « Fin de siècle », and was awarded the SELVA book prize. She has also co-edited a recent issue of the online Journal E-Rea, entitled “Shifting lines in Travel Writing”, as well as a collective volume on Stevenson and Pleasure published with Scottish Literature International (2026).
The project she is pursuing during her stay at the MFO examines the representation of coastal spaces and waterscapes in British and Irish literatures at the turn of the 19th century, within the framework of the Blue Humanities. The bibliographical work undertaken here will enable her to lay the groundwork for a monograph on the subject, by refining her methodological approach and narrowing down a corpus of study.