Emma Gillespie

Emma is a clinical academic fellow at the School of Health Science, and is a member of the Mother, Infant and Child Health Research Group (MIRU). She commenced this post in March 2024.

Emma is also a practicing Registered Midwife, who works in the Dundee Midwifery Unit at Ninewells hospital. Prior to this role she worked as a community midwife in Dundee providing a case-loading model of care. She has been employed as a midwife by NHS Tayside since successfully completing her MSc Midwifery with Registration degree at University of the West of Scotland in 2021. Emma won the Court Medal for her class, recognising her achievement of obtaining the highest grade-average across her three years of study.

Prior to training as a midwife, Emma completed a Geography MA degree at the University of Glasgow. It was her studies of embodiment on this course that first sparked her interest in pregnancy and birth. For her undergraduate dissertation, Emma employed qualitative research methods to explore the lived experiences of Muslim students living in the Greater Glasgow area. Upon graduation, Emma secured a fees-paid studentship to complete the Human Geography MRes degree at the University of Glasgow. For her Master’s dissertation, she explored the embodied, emotional and social geographies of neurodiverse individuals through an examination of testimony.

Emma’s research interest in neurodiversity, particularly within the birthing population, is on-going — and she is currently applying for the Wellbeing of Women/Royal College of Midwives Entry-Level Research Scholarship for Midwives to advance her research aims.