Gillian studied social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies before completing her Master's and PhD degree in the Social Anthropology of Children and Child Development in the Centre for Child-Focused Anthropological Research (CFAR) at Brunel University. In 2006, Gillian published an ethnographic monograph based on her PhD research about the post-industrial docklands of Southeast London, entitled Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain.
Gillian held a Temporary Lectureship at the University of Manchester in 2006 and now holds a Research Council Fellowship from 2007-2012 in the Centre for the Study of Social and Economic Change (CRESC). She is undertaking a long-term ethnographic study of the planning and delivery of the Olympic Legacy in the post-industrial East End of London.