About Fiona Bawdon
Fiona is a London-based freelance journalist who writes about civil and criminal justice issues for the national and specialist legal press.
She is currently working as research and communications director of Legal Action Group’s Immigration and Asylum Law Project (funded by New York-based Unbound Philantropy). IALP’s aims include monitoring the impact of impending legal aid cuts, and encouraging a more balanced debate about immigration and asylum in the media. Fiona is combining her work for Legal Action Group with part-time study at the College of Law in London.
From September 2011 to July 2012, she worked as senior researcher for the Guardian/London School of Economics research project, ‘Reading the Riots’, which investigated the August 2011 disturbances.
She is co-author of ‘Ricin! The inside story of the terror plot that never was’ (Pluto Publishing, 2010), which was written with Lawrence Archer, who was the foreman of the jury in the case. In this ground-breaking book, Fiona and Lawrence debunk the myths that still surround the 2005 so-called ‘ricin plot trial’, and expose the way the case was seized on by politicians here and in the US to bolster the ‘war on terror’ in the run up to the Iraq invasion – even though there was never any ricin and no plot…
Fiona is deputy chair of the campaigning group Women in Journalism and has been involved with the group since its launch in 1995. She has led two key pieces of WiJ research into the impact of the press on young people, ‘Hoodies or Altar Boys? What is media demonisation doing to our British boys?’; and ‘Am I Bovvered? What are teenage girls really thinking? How is the media shaping the ambitions and aspirations of the next generation of young women?’ (2007). Most recently, she was involved with WiJ’s research. ‘Seen but not heard - how women make front page news’, published in October 2012.
In 2010, she completed a masters degree (distinction) in Criminology at Kings College London, during which she expanded her earlier research for Women in Journalism into media stereotyping of teenage boys for her dissertation.
Fiona was co-founder and is coordinator of the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards (in conjunction with the Legal Aid Practitioners Group). Now into their eleventh year, the LALYs are a unique, non-profit-making celebration of the work of lawyers at the legal aid coalface. (See video clip of Doreen Lawrence and Imran Khan talking about Michael Mansfield QC, who won the 2010 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year award for Outstanding Achievement). See video clip of 2012 awards ceremony here.
