Niamh Gordon

Academic research

I began my AHRC-funded doctorate in 2020. My practice-based research explores narrative time and how it functions; representations of bereavement by suicide; affective and lyric modes; and motherhood and embodiment. I am also interested in narrative (un)reliability, walking as creative practice, and creative criticism. I work across narratology, critical medical humanities and creative writing, and have presented my work at a variety of different conferences and symposia.

Teaching

At the University of Glasgow, I’ve taught courses on poetry and poetics and writing the body. I also designed and delivered an 8-week creative writing course on experimental writing. I recently gave a creative writing workshop for the New Mothers’ Writing Circle on constraints and creativity.

DeathWrites

From 2022-2024 I worked as a Research Assistant with the DeathWrites Network , co-ordinating the writers and organising workshops and symposia. In June 2024 we held a public-facing symposium which included an author panel and readings from the network, along with the launch of the DeathWrites Newspaper, which can be accessed here. I edit the DeathWrites blog and am continuing my work with DeathWrites to organise several events in 2025. I am also collating and editing our anthology of new writing on dying, death, grief and loss.

Babe Station

Babe Station is an evolving research project exploring the relationship between motherhood and art-making, founded by writer and editor Millie Walton. I’m assisting in the curation of the first Babe Station exhibition of contemporary art and writing, Sorry about the mess, which is supported by Bow Arts and takes place at 125 Shaftesbury Avenue from 6-30th March 2025. Bringing together the work of over 20 artists and writers who are also mothers, the show explores the evolving relationship between motherhood and making art. Within this context, mess becomes not just an aesthetic but a condition; an obstacle; a form of critique; a mode of play; a process of creation; an act of revolution.

Alasdair Gray Archive

In 2025 I will be taking up a creative internship at the Alasdair Gray Archive, funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities, with the aim of generating new creative work through engagement with the archive’s materials, and organising a public creative writing workshop based around ideas of intertextual play.