Dr Fiona Morrison

Programme Director for Childhood Practice / Lecturer in Childhood Studies

Biography

Background

I (re)joined the University of Edinburgh in 2022, having worked at the University of Stirling as a Senior Lecturer and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Child Wellbeing in Protection (2017-22). I held a variety of Research Fellow posts in Social Work at the University of Edinburgh and at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (2014-2017). Before working in academia, I worked in the third sector in children's policy. 

Qualifications

PhD Social Policy, University of Edinburgh

MSc Childhood Studies, University of Edinburgh

BA Community Learning and Development, University of Dundee

Responsibilities & affiliations

Programme Director BA Childhood Practice (2023- )

Undergraduate teaching

I am the Programme Director for the BA in Childhood Practice and teach across the programme.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I welcome PhD applications in the areas of children's rights and violence against children.

Current PhD students supervised

Gina Thacker - Implementing 'The Promise', University of Stirling

Joyce  Serwaa Oppong - tbc

Felicia Szloboda - Developing children's human rights indicators for Scotland

Yi Yan - tbc

Research summary

I am a researcher who tries to use research to advance children's human rights and to address violence against children. I mainly use qualitative methods to carry out research and am especially interested in using participative methods that support children (and adults) to take part in research in ways that they choose. An example of this is A Source of Strength, a photovoice project on children's relationships with mothers in the context of domestic abuse.  

Visit A Source of Strength's website

I carry out socio-legal research, driven by my interests on how people experience the implementation of law - for example, I have carried out research on children's experiences of family law and more recently research on victims and witnesses’ experiences of criminal law.  With colleagues, I am working to develop a research network on children’s human rights in Scotland.

Knowledge exchange

I am passionate about developing research that makes a difference. I enjoy working with policy and practice colleagues to help do this. A recent example is my research with families who have experience of domestic abuse and the Independent Strategic Review of Funding and Commissioning of Violence Against Women and Girls Services.  Another example involved the Children (Scotland) Act 2020. I worked with colleagues to use my research to help improve the legislation and its compliance with children's participation rights in parental disputes about child contact and residence. 

Affiliated research centres

Current project grants

Royal Society Edinburgh. ‘Research Network on Children’s Human Rights: Mobilising expertise from research, policy and practice’ (2023-2025).

ESRC Innovation in Social Care Grant. ‘Developing the Evidence Base for Social Care Responses to Children and Families affected by Domestic Abuse’ (2019-2024).

Nuffield Foundation. ‘Children living with domestic violence – understanding the effects on children’s wellbeing using longitudinal data’ (2019-2023).

Past project grants

Scottish Government, ‘Domestic abuse court experiences - perspectives of victims and witnesses: research findings (2022-2023).

Carnegie Research Incentive Grant. ‘Constructions of children and parents during the reform of family law in Scotland’ (2019-2020).

Scottish Government Grant. ‘Children's Participation In Family Actions-Probing Compliance With Children's Rights Research’ (2018-2019).

ESRC Impact Accelerator Grant ‘Changing Child Protection’ (2016-2017)

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