Gilane is a writer and curator and a passionate advocate for the value of the arts to society with thirty years’ experience in the visual arts.

She established the first education programmes at the Hayward Gallery in the 1990s and in 2008, studied for a Master’s in Human Rights at Birkbeck, exploring questions of rights and representation in the work of contemporary artists.

She is a founding Trustee and Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation, an organisation committed to public education, addressing urgent questions of race and inequality in culture and society through its public education programme and by providing opportunities for activism and intellectual inquiry amongst artists, scholars, and activists from under-represented groups.

She was the first art historian to be appointed to the Blanche, Edith and Irving Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, USA and in 2021 published the anthology The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Global Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Difference.