Gianna French

Doctoral Researcher

Between Surface and Spirit: Drawing, Absence, and Spectrality in Victorian Britain (Working Title)

My doctoral research investigates nineteenth-century British drawing as a medium uniquely positioned to negotiate tensions between visibility and invisibility, belief and doubt, and matter and spirit, with particular attention to spectral and supernatural imagery. Focusing on drawings shaped by Gothic and imaginative literature, Spiritualism, occult inquiry, and broader supernatural culture, my work explores how Victorian draughtsmen employed the physical affordances of drawing — its materials, techniques, and processes — to mediate experiences of loss, disenchantment and haunting. Approaching the supernatural through the lens of medium specificity, the project examines drawing not simply as a vehicle for representation, but as an intimate material practice through which the unseen could be imagined, recovered, or made momentarily present.

This project is supervised by Dr Caroline Levitt, advised by Dr Tom Young and supported by the . Alongside my academic research, I’m a Curatorial Assistant at the Royal Academy of Arts, and have held roles at the Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford), National Gallery and Sotheby’s, delivering complex projects across valuations, research, and digital engagement.

Gianna French
Email

Publications

  • French, Gianna. “Correction to the Cataloguing of a Watercolour by Thomas Stothard RA (1755–1834) at Magdalen College, Oxford.” Notes & Queries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, April 2026.
  • French, Gianna. “Substrate, Spectre, Subtraction: The Material and the Macabre in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Early Drawings.” The Journal of the British Association of Paper Historians, no. 137 (January 2026): 1–5. London: The British Association of Paper Historians.
  • French, Gianna. “Kindred Spirits: Reframing Elizabeth Siddal’s A Woman and a Spectre.” The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, n.s. 34 (Fall 2025): 4–19. Toronto: York University.
  • French, Gianna. “In the Shadow of Certainty.” In The Visual Commentary on Scripture, edited by Ben Quash. London: The Visual Commentary on Scripture Foundation, September 2025.

Research Interests

  • Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century British drawings
  • Nineteenth-century artists’ materials, with a particular emphasis on paper
  • Hauntology & Spectrality
  • British folklore, magic and the occult
  • Victorian Gothic
  • History of Belief
  • Material Culture

Conference Papers

  • “When Text Becomes Trace: Drawing as Threshold in Rossetti’s Works after Poe and Goethe.” Beyond the Threshold: Liminal Spaces and the Gothic Imagination. The Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 2026.
  • “Material Hauntings: The Sensory Afterlife of Rossetti’s The Raven.” Beyond the Visual: Full Body in British Art History – Past, Present and Future. Association for Art History Autumn Symposium, London, October 2025.
  • “A Visual Séance: Materializing the Spectral Imagination in Pre-Raphaelite Drawings.” Folklore and the Senses. The Folklore Society Annual Conference, in collaboration with the Department of Folklore and Ethnology, University College Cork, Ireland, June 2025.

Grants & Awards

  • Tavolozza Foundation PhD Scholar, 2023–2029
  • Eve Borsook Legacy Fund, 2025
  • Friends of the ĢƵ Institute Fund, 2025
  • UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), 2024, 2025
  • Association for Art History, 2024, 2025

Memberships & Affiliations

  • Association for Art History
  • British Art Network
  • British Association for Victorian Studies
  • ĢƵ Institute Graphic Arts Group
  • Emerging Researchers in British Art
  • Hauntology & Spectrality Research Group (York St John University)

Education

  • MA Christianity & the Arts, King’s College London in association with the National Gallery (2017–2018)

Citations