Fiona is a Lecturer in Law (Teaching & Research) at the University of Manchester. She is Chair of the Law Board. Primarily an expert in tort and media law, her research focuses on personality rights in the internet age, including the ‘right to be forgotten’ in the GDPR, misuse of private information and defamation. Her work has been published in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and South America. She has recently published a monograph entitled Defamation in the Digital Age and the 'Right to be Forgotten' (BUP 2025).

She graduated with an LLB(Hons) from Newcastle University in 2014, before attaining a LLM (distinction) at Durham Law School, Durham University in 2015. She was the recipient of a Durham Law School Teaching Scholarship to fund her PhD studies. She obtained her PhD in Law from Durham in 2020. 

Fiona advocates for the right to control one's information on the internet, although her academic interests now cut across media law, tort law and human rights more generally. She has published in specialist journals such as the Journal of Internet Law and the Torts Law Journal, as well as legal generalists the Law Quarterly Review and Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly. 

Recent research interests include defamation law in the age of the internet and in 2025 she wrote a monograph on this topic for Bristol University Press 'Shorts' . The book examines how defamation law is failing to protect reputation in the face of advanced technological threats, and considers whether data protection law provides more robust solutions. 

She is currently working on an edited collection with Helen Fenwick on media law. This is under contract with Oxford University Press, and includes esteemed contributors from Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, UCL and UEA.

Fiona is also currently writing a comparative piece on the concept of the public interest and how it works as a 'defence' across several media law actions, namely misuse of private information, defamation and data protection law, a line of enquiry that builds on her earlier published work. She is also working on an article on vicarious liability in tort law, the 'close connection' test and recent Supreme Court caselaw on the topic.

Fiona's work engages with relevant stakeholders in the industry, and in the past she has written a white paper commissioned by Synalogik with Professor Nic Ryder (Cardiff University) and Dr Sam Bourton (UWE) that concerned the exchange of information between third parties and law enforcement agencies. She also provided written evidence on this topic to the Bill Committee for the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill (now Act).

Fiona is an Associate Scholar of the Law and the Inner Self Project based out of University College Cork and funded by the Irish Research Council. She is an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Economic Criminology. 

Fiona is interested in working on interdisciplinary research projects which relate to privacy, defamation and personal data. She is currently part of a project formerly entitled ‘Supportive Surveillance’ which received £23,400 of internal funding from the University of the West of England in 2020. The project is ongoing, and investigates whether in-home technology can be developed to support those with obsessive compulsive disorder in their cognitive behavioural therapy. Since late 2019, Fiona has been part of nine internal and external funding applications. She has worked alongside experts from psychology at Cardiff University, Coventry University and UWE, as well as researchers in Health Technology, IT, Logistics, and Geography.  She was a grateful recipient of the Hallsworth Conference Fund at the University of Manchester (2022).

She teaches tort at the University of Manchester as well as her own unit on online privacy, defamation and data protection law on the LLM. Prior to moving to Manchester, she was a Wallscourt Fellow in Law - a Senior Lecturer by research - at Bristol Law School, University of the West of England (2019-2022) and before that was a tutor in both tort and media law at Durham University Law School (2015-2018). 

Fiona is a PhD supervisor and is open to applications in the areas of privacy, misuse of private information, defamation law, data protection (GDPR) and freedom of expression online.

privacy, misuse of private information, GDPR, 'right to be forgotten'/erasure, data protection, Articles 8 and 10 ECHR, freedom of expression, defamation, internet regulation, personal data on the web.

email: [email protected]

LLB(Hons) Newcastle University, 2011-2014

LLM (distinction) Durham University, 2014-2015

PhD (law) Durham University, 2015-2020

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2024