Dr Fiona MacDonald

Dr Fiona MacDonald is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC), Victoria University. Fiona's research sits within the sociology discipline, focused on the sociology of education, childhood and youth studies. Her research interests include connectedness and belonging, identity, social justice, social inclusion, inequality and disadvantage, social geography, inclusive education, and gender.

Her research focuses on social and cultural structures of influence and investigating their impact on children and young people’s everyday negotiations of identity, connectedness and belonging. Fiona has a particular interest in understanding how children and young people make sense of our global world within local spaces and places—place-based in face-to-face environments and online.

Fiona works across disciplines, with colleagues and stakeholders who are collectively committed to research that has both a practical impact and makes a valuable contribution to knowledge. She has undertaken research investigating a range of contemporary issues for children and young people including; bushfire relief and recovery (with the Youth Affairs Council Victoria), building resilience and inclusive partnerships with emergency services, community engagement, education following custody in youth justice, disadvantage and hunger through school breakfast clubs, student wellbeing, safety and the effective communication, and uptake, of public health messaging.