Dr. Molly-Claire Gillett

Molly-Claire Gillett completed an interdisciplinary PhD in Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts in 2022. Her project, supervised by faculty in the Departments of Art History, Design and Computation Arts, and Art Education, in affiliation with the School of Irish Studies, focused on pedagogy and place-making in Irish lacemaking communities, from the late-nineteenth century to the present day. Her thesis won the Adele Dalsimer Award for Distinguished Dissertation from the American Conference for Irish Studies, and published a monograph expanding on the project: Irish Lacemaking: art, industry and cultural practice (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). She continues to research and teach on issues of making and place, with an emphasis on Ireland. In 2023, in collaboration with Elaine Cheasley Paterson, she organized Home/Making: intersections of craft and home, a transdisciplinary initiative that included workshops, an exhibition, and a symposium. An edited volume emerging from this series is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic in 2026.

As Scholar-in-Residence in Interdisciplinary Studies and Practices in the Fine Arts, she co-taught the Faculty of Fine Arts' introductory course, 'Keywords: reading the Arts Across Disciplines' with area coordinator Dr. Sandra Huber, as well as a newly-commissioned course that explores the notion of 'home' through interdisciplinary arts practice. Together, Gillett and Huber continued the redesign of this foundational course; they also developed and led a pedagogy training program for the course's twenty Tutorial Leaders and conduct research on interdisciplinary, feminist, and creative pedagogy in the postsecondary Fine Arts. They have presented this work internationally, hosted a hybrid pedagogy symposium in March 2024, and published an article in Pedagogy, Culture and Society entitled 'Knots: composition in the Fine Arts classroom.' They are working on a co-edited special issue further exploring themes of writing, technology, and the arts.

Now a Social Sciences and Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow working between the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway and Centre for Aging and Society, Trent University, she maintains active research collaborations in Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts and engAGE Centre for Research on Aging. She can be reached at: mollyclairegillett@trentu.ca

FFAR298 Home: Place and Practice (Interdisciplinary Fine Arts)

FFAR250 Keywords: Reading the Arts Across Disciplines (Interdisciplinary Fine Arts)

IRST398 Irish Materialities: critical perspectives of spaces, places and things (School of Irish Studies, Cross-Listed with Geography, Design and Computation Arts, and Art History)

ARTH263 Nineteenth-Century British Illustration and Graphic Arts (Department of Art History)

Monographs

(2025) Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice (Bloomsbury Academic).

Edited collections

(forthcoming 2026) co-edited with Elaine Cheasley Paterson. Craft and Home: Making, Place, and the Domestic         (Bloomsbury Academic).
(forthcoming 2026) co-edited with Sandra Huber. Expanded Practices: Writing, Pedagogy, and the Creative Arts. Special         issue of Airea: Arts and Interdisciplinary Research.

Articles

(accepted 2025, forthcoming 2026) with Marlene Chan. “‘There ain’t no quick fix’: reimagining intergenerational and community-engaged research collaboration.” Journal of Global Ageing (Special Issue: Creative and   Participatory Approaches to Ageing in Global Contexts)
(accepted 2025, forthcoming 2026) “Crafting local heritage and global networks: the Irish Countrywomen’s       Association and the Associated Countrywomen of the World Conference, 1965.” Éire-Ireland: an       Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies.
(2026) with Sandra Huber. “Knots: composition in the Fine Arts classroom.” Pedagogy, Culture and Society 34:1     (2026): 255-271, https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2025.2488028.
 (2025) “‘Only a canvas between you and the sea’: the currach in feminist and ecocritical Irish art practice.” Irish          University Review (Special Issue: Irish Studies Beyond the Text, guest edited by Emily Mark Fitzgerald and Emma Radley) 55: 1 (2025): 99-112, https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2025.0711.
(2025) “Hibernia the lacemaker: reading gender, class and empire in the discourse of nineteenth-century Irish lace.” Journal of Design History 38:3 (2025): 225-239, https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epaf005.
(2022) “‘Storying’ landscape and material practice: Clones crochet lacemaking as Irish intangible cultural heritage.” New Hibernia Review 26:4 (2022): 36-64, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2022.0045.
(2021) “Chiloé’s St. Michael: reconsidering sources for the Hispano-Chilote School of Sculpture.” The Burlington          Magazine of Art 163:1424 (November 2021): 1021-1027.
(2019) “‘Home Charms’: unpacking an Irish immigrant woman’s home through speculative design.” Text and     Performance Quarterly 39:4 (2019): 388-406,         https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2019.1658891.

Chapters

(accepted 2022, forthcoming 2026) “Irish Lace.” In The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles Vol. 6       Trade and      Industry (Bloomsbury Academic).
(accepted 2022, forthcoming 2026) with Kathleen Vaughan. “Facing pandemics: Textile futures and crafting      histories in the mask-making response to COVID-19.” In The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles     Vol. 7 Textiles and the Everyday (Bloomsbury Academic).
(2025) “The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society’s Home Industries Societies: Community Craft, Co-operative        Ideals and Cultural Nationalism.” In The Politics of Global Craft, edited by D Wood, 62-78 (Bloomsbury        Academic).
(2025) “Mabel Morrison: Patron and Collector of Lace.” In The Collections of Alfred Morrison: Millionaire Shopping,   edited by Caroline Dakers, 465-488 (University College London Press).
(2023) “Irish Crochet: design, placemaking, and the international journey of intangible cultural heritage.” In       Intangible Heritages: a conference on technology, culture and design, June 15-17, 2022 (Amps Proceedings Series,     29.1), Howard Griffin, ed., 420-429.