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Institute of Governance

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Office Hours

Summer: Please email for an appointment.

Qualifications

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

Recent posts

Fiona Mackay was appointed Director of the Graduate School of Social and Political Science in August 2009 and will serve for three years. 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 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.

Research Interests

Fiona Mackay's research interests focus on women and comparative politics, political representation, feminist politics, constitutional change in the UK, gender and public policy, and  feminist institutionalism. She has held research grants and consultancies with bodies including the Economic and Social Research Council, British Academy, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Communities Scotland, and the Scottish Executive.

Current and recent research focuses upon gender and constitutional change in the UK and gender and institutional theory. Fiona directed the Gender and Constitutional Change Project from 2001-2003, funded under the ESRC Devolution and Constitutional Change Programme. She was advisor to the ESRC-funded project Gender and Political Processes in the Context of Devolution (Universities of Warwick and Swansea, 2005-2008) and currently is a Research Associate for the Leverhulme-funded Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament project (Universities of Warwick, Birkbeck, Bristol and Sheffield, 2007-11).

With Mona Lena Krook (Washington University in St Louis), Georgina Waylen (Sheffield University) and Louise Chappell (University of Sydney), 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 on Feminist Institutionalism in the APSA journal Politics & Gender (5(2) 2009), and an edited collection (Palgrave, forthcoming December 2010). 

FIIN events include a successful workshop on feminist institutionalism held as part of the 2008 ECPR Joint Sessions in Rennes (April 11-16) and a British Academy-Academy of Social Sciences in Australia sponsored international workshop in Sydney in 2010 (March 23-25). A pre-conference short course on Gender and Institutions will be held prior to APSA 2010 in Washington DC and panels are planned for the 2nd European Conference on Politics and Gender in Budapest in 2011. Read more at www.femfiin.com. 

Recent Publications

Fiona's latest book, Gender, Politics, and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism is published by Palgrave in December 2010. The collection is co-edited with Mona Lena Krook.

Advance 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 an American Libraries Association CHOICE outstanding 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:

(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.

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 and Research

Fiona teaches in the broad areas of feminist politics, Scottish and British politics, comparative politics and approaches to the study of politics. In 2010-11 she co-convenes the undergraduate honours course Global Politics of Sex and Gender (GPSG), which was nominated for a EUSA teaching award in 2009-10, the first year in which it ran. 

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 CFT.

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 

A recently graduated doctoral student Meryl Kenny has been awarded a UK Political Studies Association prize 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).

 Donald Dewar: Father of the Scottish Parliament? Andrew McFadyen (PIR).

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

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

 Staking a Claim: Women and Security in Post Conflict South Africa. Lara de Klerk (African Studies).

 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).

 What happens to the Radical Potential of Gender Mainstreaming? Implementation and Institutionalisation in Gendered Organisations. Amanda Wittman (PIR).

 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

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

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

Understanding Democratic Engagement at the Micro-Level: Communication, Participation and Representation. Peter Moug (PIR) (awarded 2005).

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

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

Links to publications