From http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4364392/deserializing-generics-with-gson

GSON - deserialization

List<String> listOfStrings = new ArrayList<String>();

listOfStrings.add("one");
listOfStrings.add("two");

Gson gson = new Gson();
String json = gson.toJson(listOfStrings);

System.out.println(json);

Type type = new TypeToken<Collection<String>>(){}.getType();

List<String> fromJson = gson.fromJson(json, type);

System.out.println(fromJson);