Emma Gilby works on French thought and literature of the early modern period (especially the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). Her publications include Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature (MHRA [Legenda], 2006), an edition of Longinus, De la sublimité du discours (L'Act-Mem, 2007), and Space: New Dimensions in French Studies (Peter Lang, 2005), which was co-edited with Katja Haustein.

Recent articles look at Descartes on chance, seventeenth-century dramatic theory, versions of the Oedipus myth, and Tallemant des Réaux. She is a CRASSH Early Career Fellow, and the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize.

Her current period of research leave is enabling her to focus on narrative and metaphor in philosophical writing of the early modern period.