Fiona McDonald

Dr Fiona McDonald specialises in public and government law relating to health systems, with scholarly interests across a wide range of topics relating to health systems and services.

She is a multi-disciplinary researcher who undertakes research in the nexus between law, policy, and ethics in the health context. She engages in interdisciplinary research with colleagues from disciplines as diverse as earth, material and environmental sciences, the health professions, bioethicists, and social scientists.

She has undertaken research in or with researchers from Aotearoa / New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Nepal, and Indonesia. She has received research funding from funders such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Medical Research Council (UK).

Fiona graduated from Victoria University of Wellington with LLB and BA (Politics) degrees. She worked as a Legal Advisor to the Health and Disability Commissioner, before completing an LLM and JSD at Dalhousie University, Canada.

Fiona is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Bioethics, Dalhousie University, Canada.

From 2007-2024 she was based at the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Faculty of Business and Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, of whose lands the Turrbal and Jagera are traditional custodians. She was Co-Director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research from 2018-2022. She is the co-editor of Health Law in Australia, the leading health law textbook in Australia (now in its fourth edition).

Fiona acknowledges the mana whenua of the broader Wellington region where she walks, works, and lives and from Tauranga Moana where she grew up.