Chiara Pellegrini

Chiara Pellegrini serves as an Associate Lecturer in the School of English, recently completing her PhD with a thesis analyzing gender-variant subjectivity in first-person literary narratives across memoir, fiction, and historical genres from the past five decades.

Her educational background centers on advanced literary and gender studies through doctoral research, with no additional degrees specified in the source material.

Dr. Pellegrini's research critically examines intersections of gender identity, spatial theory, and political discourse through two major projects. Her doctoral work established the 'gender-variant narrator' as a literary device challenging binary gender constructs via narrative techniques around embodiment and temporal identity formation. Her current post-doctoral research Crossings, Shelters, Outsiders: Trans Genders in Britain through Metaphorical and Material Spaces investigates how spatial metaphors (borders, peripheries, entrances) in British media and literature connect trans-exclusionary rhetoric to nationalist and imperialist ideologies, particularly regarding housing, immigration, Brexit, and gender-segregated spaces.

Her methodology combines textual analysis of trans-authored works by Alison Rumfitt, Juliet Jacques, Juno Dawson, and Travis Alabanza with critical discourse analysis of anti-trans political movements like 'Get the L Out', revealing how literary strategies reimagine bodily, national, and self-spaces to counter harmful spatial metaphors.