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Office Hours

Semester 2: Thursdays 1400-1600; or email for an appointment

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) Politics and Modern History (University of Manchester)
• PhD Politics (University of Edinburgh)
  

Recent posts

Fiona Mackay is outgoing Director of the Graduate School of Social and Political Science, having served in post from 2009-12. She is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations and is an Associate Director of the Institute of Governance, also at the University of Edinburgh. She is the University of Edinburgh's representative on the Board of the new Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (incorporating the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre in Scotland). She served as Deputy Director of the Graduate School (2003-07) and Politics Postgraduate Adviser (2007-8). She was a member of the ESRC Virtual Research College (2003-2008), the ESRC Case Studentship Panel (2005-07), and the ESRC DTC Peer Review College (2010). In 2002, she was a Visiting Fellow at Auckland University and an Academic Visitor at the Australian National University. She will be on research leave from August 2012 to July 2013. In 2013 she will be Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales.

Research Interests

Fiona Mackay's research explores the relationship between political institutions and political actors, especially with regards to the institutional opportunities and obstacles to advancing women’s access to political office and promoting ‘women friendly’ public policy.She has held research grants and consultancies with bodies including the Economic and Social Research Council, European Research Council, British Academy, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Communities Scotland, and the Scottish Government.

Since 2000, she has focussed on the impact of reform efforts during periods of state restructuring and institutional change, addressing the extent to which institutions of politics and governance may be designed/reformed to address gender inequality and promote gender justice. Fiona directed Gender and Constitutional Change in the UK (2001-3), a project funded under the ESRC Devolution and Constitutional Change Programme. She is about to embark on a new study Early Days:Building UN Women which examines the UN's new entity for gender equality.

With Georgina Waylen (Sheffield University), Louise Chappell (University of New South Wales) and Mona Lena Krook (Washington University in St Louis), Fiona directs the Feminism and Institutionalism International Network (FIIN) [www.femfiin.com]. This is an international collaborative theory-building project exploring the potential synthesis of feminist gender analysis and new institutional theory.  FIIN outputs to date include a Critical Perspectives symposium in the APSA journal Politics & Gender (5(2) 2009), and an edited collection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).  Read more at www.femfiin.com. 

Recent Publications

Fiona's latest book, Gender, Politics, and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism is co-edited with Mona Lena Krook and was launched at the 2nd European Conference on Politics and Gender in Budapest in January 2011.

Praise for Gender, Politics, and Institutions 

This superb book is one of those rare collections that moves a field forward. Scholars of institutionalism, for all their vital contributions to the social sciences, have given short shrift to inequality. Feminist social scientists have made inequality their core concern without an explicit analytical strategy to guide the study of norms and institutional practices. Krook, Mackay and their contributing authors, in building bridges between domains of scholarship that have remained separate for too long, open up a pathbreaking terrain for the study of feminist institutionalism.--Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Cornell University.

A really innovative and important collection which shows, both theoretically and in rich empirical detail, the considerable challenge that feminism poses to contemporary institutionalism and the value to feminism of developing its own institutionalism. I only hope that the institutionalist turn in feminist political analysis which it heralds is matched by a feminist turn in institutionalist analysis. -- Colin Hay, University of Sheffield.  

Fiona is co-author of Women, Politics and Constitutional Change: the first years of the National Assembly for Wales,  (University of Wales Press, 2007, with Paul Chaney and Laura McAllister). Her first book. Love and Politics: Women Politicians and the Ethics of Care (Continuum, 2001), was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2002. She has also co-edited The Changing Politics of Gender Equality in Britain (Palgrave, 2002) and Women and Contemporary Scottish Politics (Polygon, 2001).

Recent articles and book chapters include:

with M. Kenny (2011) 'In the balance: Women and the 2011 Scottish Parliament Elections', Scottish Affairs 76 (summer),74-90. 

with M. Kenny (2011) 'Gender and Devolution in Spain and the UK', Politics & Gender 7 (2),280-286. 

with M. Kenny and L. Chappell (2010) 'New Institutionalism Through a Gender Lens: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism', International Political Science Review 31 (November), 573-558. 

(2010) 'Gendering constitutional change and policy outcomes: substantive representation and domestic violence policy in Scotland', Policy & Politics 38 (3), 39-58. 

(2010) 'Devolution and the Multilevel Politics of Gender in the UK: The Case of Scotland', in. M. Haussman, M. Sawer and J. Vickers (eds) Federalism, Feminism and Multilevel Governance, Ashgate, 155-168.

with E. Breitenbach (2010) 'Feminist politics in Scotland from the 1970s to 2000s: engaging with the changing state', in E. Breitenbach and P. Thane (eds) Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century: What Difference Did the Vote Make?, Continuum, 153-169.

with M. Kenny (2010) 'Women and political representation in post-devolution Scotland: high time or high tide?', in E. Breitenbach and P. Thane (eds) Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century: What Difference Did the Vote Make?, Continuum, 171-188.

(2009) 'Gender', in M.Flinders, A. Gamble, C. Hay and M. Kenny eds, The Oxford Handbook of British Politics, Oxford University Press, 646-662.

(2009) 'Travelling the Distance? Equal Opportunities and the Scottish Parliament', in C. Jeffrey and J. Mitchell (eds) The Scottish Parliament 1999-2009:The First Decade, Luath Press/Hansard Society, 49-55. 

with M. Kenny (2009) 'Already doin' it for ourselves? Skeptical notes on feminism and institutionalism', Politics & Gender, 5 (2), 271-280.

with G. Waylen (eds) (2009) Critical Perspectives on Feminism and Institutionalism, Politics & Gender 5 (2).

(2008) '"Thick" conceptions of substantive representation: women, gender and political institutions', Representation 44 (2) July, 125-139.

(2008) 'The state of womens movement/s in Britain: ambiguity, complexity and challenges from the periphery', in S. J. Grey and M. Sawer eds, Women's movements worldwide: Flourishing or in abeyance? Routledge, 17-32.

with M. Kenny (2007) 'Women's Representation in the 2007 Scottish Parliament: Temporary Setback or Return to the Norm?', Scottish Affairs , 60 (Summer), 25-38. 

(2006) 'Descriptive and Substantive Representation in new parliamentary spaces: the case of Scotland', in M. Sawer, M. Tremblay and L. Trimble (eds) Representing Women in Parliament: A Comparative Study, Routledge, 171-187. 

(2004) 'Gender and Political Representation in the UK: the state of the 'discipline'' in British Journal of Politics and International Relations , 6 (1), 101-122.

Current Teaching

Fiona teaches in the broad areas of feminist politics, Scottish and British politics, comparative politics and approaches to the study of politics. In 2011-12 she convenes the undergraduate honours course Global Politics of Sex and Gender (GPSG), which was nominated for a EUSA teaching award in 2009-10 and 2010-11. GPSG student Ally Hurcikova won the UK PSA Women and Politics undergraduate essay competition in 2010.

Until recently, Fiona convened the School-wide undergraduate honours course Contemporary Feminist Thought (CFT), whose students won the UK PSA Women and Politics undergraduate essay competition in  2006, 2007 and 2008. She continues to contribute to the course (renamed Contemporary Feminist Debates).

Fiona convenes the University of Edinburgh Gender Politics Research Group, which organised the PSA Women and Politics Annual Conference 2006 - the specialist group's first international conference. She is also a member of the Territorial Politics and Public Policy research clusters, which form part of the Institute of Governance.

PhD Supervision

Fiona is an enthusiastic and experienced supervisor. She is able to offer PhD supervision in most areas relating to gender and politics (international, national and local), gender and public policy, and British and Scottish politics. Fiona particularly welcomes prospective students with interests in feminist and institutionalist approaches to the study of gender and politics, gender and multi-level governance, and in aspects of post-devolution gender politics in UK 

One of Fiona's recently graduated doctoral students, Meryl Kenny, was awarded a UK Political Studies Association prize in 2009 for her thesis entitled Gendering Institutions: The Political Recruitment of Women in Post-Devolution Scotland. The Arthur McDougall Fund Prize is awarded annually for the best PhD dissertation on elections, electoral systems or representation.  

Current PhD projects and supervisees

Conflicting Identity: Military Training and Mentoring of local forces as Counterinsurgency. Hilary Cornish (PIR, ESRC studentship).

Feminist Identity Politics in Dialogue with Virtue Ethics. Elena Pollot (PIR, ESRC studentship).

Gender Mainstreaming as translation and knowledge. Rosalind Cavaghan (PIR, ESRC studentship).

The Politics of Gender Quotas: What Accounts for the relative success of gender quotas in the first Southern Sudanese Elections? Angelina Mattijo-Bazugba (Social Policy, SPSS scholarship).

Exploring Gender Responsive Budgets as a core component of public policy and resource allocation processes: the cases of Scotland, Andalucia and Paix Vasco. Angela O’Hagen (Glasgow Caledonian).

Recent doctoral supervisees

Agents and Institutions: Donald Dewar and the Politics of Devolution. Andrew McFadyen (PIR) (awarded 2011).

Gendered Institutional Change in South Africa: The Case of the State Security Sector. Lara de Klerk (African Studies, Commonwealth studentship) (awarded 2011).

What happens to the Radical Potential of Gender Mainstreaming? Implementation and Institutionalisation in Gendered Organisations. Amanda Wittman (PIR, SORSAS/HSSS scholarship) (awarded 2010).

Gendering Institutions: The Political Recruitment of Women in Post-Devolution Scotland. Meryl Kenny (PIR, SORSAS/CHSS studentship) (awarded 2009).

Forces for Good? British Military Masculinities on Peace Support Operations. Claire Duncanson (PIR, ESRC studentship) (awarded 2008).

Understanding Democratic Engagement at the Micro-Level: Communication, Participation and Representation. Peter Moug (PIR, ESRC studentship) (awarded 2008).

Mainstreaming equality at the Scottish Executive: the discursive construction of policy. Katherine Bilton (PIR, ESRC studentship) (awarded 2005).

Organising Against a Violent Society: Women’s Anti Violence Organisations in Sweden and the UK. Lesley McMillan (Sociology, ESRC studentship) (awarded 2002).

Links to publications