Gayle is a PhD researcher in the Department of English at King’s College London. Her research examines travel writing as both a philosophical method and a contributor to the usable past. Her doctoral project focuses on Simone de Beauvoir’s America Day by Day (1947), demonstrating how travel writing can function as a mode of immanent critique that interrogates American democracy and reflects the transatlantic intellectual networks of the period. The project also seeks to recover suppressed elements of Beauvoir’s travelogue – particularly the people she encountered – and to contextualise her observations, especially those concerning race, censorship, and the fragility of democracy, which were often dismissed at the time.

Her broader research interests include the writer-in-the-text, feminist theory, transatlantic intellectual networks, and the politics of travel and mobility.

Gayle is proud to be working with Dr Natalie Wreyford (King’s College London) and Professor Zinnie Harris (University of St Andrews) on gender bias in theatre criticism. She has taught with The Brilliant Club and works as a Research Impact Development Assistant at King’s.

Gayle is a dual U.S.–U.K. citizen. She holds a BA in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and an MA in Comparative Literature from King’s College London.