Hi, I’m Fiona. I grew up in the North East of England. I spent my childhood roaming around the hills of Northumberland, playing far too many musical instruments (clarinet, piano, tin whistle, guitar, accordion and - much to my parents chagrin, who had to take the thing places - the double bass) and asking far too many questions that started with ‘why’. My family moved to New Zealand when I was 15.
I studied at the University of Auckland to get a BSc(Hons) in physics and mathematics. As an undergrad I had the opportunity to pursue reading courses and research in dynamical systems, topology and orbital dynamics.
I received my PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the Australian National University in 2019, and spent my first year as a postdoctoral researcher at UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy. I moved to the University of Western Australia and began working in the Department of Physics in 2020.
With Prof. Ken Freeman at the ANU Open Day 2018
I am currently a Forrest Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. I study how we detect gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of spacetime - and use them to learn more about black holes and neutron stars. The main goal of my research program at UWA is “to figure out when neutron stars stop being neutron stars and start being black holes”.
Inadvertantly, I end up spending a lot of my time trying to understand the political and human machinations that underpin modern science.
I am fascinated by how we use information to draw conclusions about our Universe. I could be accused of being a militant Bayesian: I want to understand how we quantify uncertainty because its critically important to my research, and how the models we use and rely on relate to the idea of a universal or fundamental ‘truth’. I’m particularly interested in the long-running conflict between modern and postmodern epistemology (how we know what we know) and how this influences us as scientists in today’s world.
