Gillies began her research career in 1978 as a research officer with the Department of Education in
Sheffield evaluating health promotion initiatives. She moved back to
Nottingham in 1984 to take up a lectureship in Public Health Medicine. She first became a Senior Lecturer, Professor of Public Health and Head of the School of Community Health Sciences before being promoted to a Pro Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Nottingham in 2001. During her career, Pamela Gillies has worked in
San Francisco on an Abbott Fellowship for
AIDS Research (1988), in
Geneva at the
World Health Organization's Global Programme on AIDS (1989), at
Harvard as a
Harkness Fellow and Visiting Professor in Health and Human Rights (1992–93), and in London on a seconded post as the first Executive Director of Research at the
Health Education Authority for
England (1996–99). Amongst other roles, Gillies has served on
ESRC Committees on Evidence Based Policy and on People at the Centre of Information and Communication Technologies. She has acted as Chair of the
Peckam Pulse Healthy Living Centre, the Government's Task Force on Unintended Conceptions in Young People, and the
European Commission's Working Group on
HIV/AIDS,
Human Rights and Discrimination. Gillies has researched and written widely on cross-cultural perspectives on HIV/AIDS, sexuality and health, partnership responses to health improvement and community development responses to inequalities in health, focusing on the potential of social action for health. She was involved in a
Gates Foundation funded research project in
Kolkata,
India, to prevent HIV transmission in sex workers and their families. Gillies was installed as Principal and
Vice-Chancellor of
Glasgow Caledonian University in March 2006 after a career in higher education. She was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to education and public health. After seventeen years as Vice-Chancellor, she stepped down from the position in 2022. ==References==