| Fiona Stewart | |
| Birth Place: | Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Occupation: | Author and euthanasia campaigner |
| Education: | Monash University (B.A.) La Trobe University (M.A., Ph.D.) CDU (LL.B) |
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| Notablework: | --> |
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Fiona Stewart is an Australian lawyer, sociologist, author, and former executive director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International (2004-7). She is author of Killing Me Softly: Voluntary Euthanasia and the road to the Peaceful Pill and co-author of The Peaceful Pill Handbook, and is married to euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke.
Fiona Stewart was born in Melbourne, Victoria, and attended at Lauriston Girls' School.[1]
She received her BA from Monash University in 1987 followed by a Graduate Diploma in Public Policy (Melbourne University) in 1992, Master of Policy and Law (La Trobe University) in 1994 and her Ph.D. in health sciences from La Trobe in 1998.
She graduated from Charles Darwin University Law School in 2015. She earned a distinction for her honours research thesis on rational suicide and testamentary capacity, which is "a person's legal and mental capacity to make a valid will".
From 1997 to 1999 Stewart held a postdoctoral fellowship at Deakin University for the study of "Womens Lives: Choice, Change and Identity".[2] When her contract was not renewed, she turned to writing opinion columns for the media on Generation X and feminism.[3]
Stewart worked as an opinion writer for The Age, The Australian, and other Australian papers and media outlets,[4] [5] and as an online learning consultant with Dale Spender.[6] [7]
In 2001, Stewart founded the consumer complaints website Notgoodenough.org,[8] [9] where she was active in promoting the consumer standpoint and criticising big businesses such as Telstra, the national carrier.[10]
She has participated widely in Australian public debate on varied current affairs issues.[11]
Steward met euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke at the Brisbane Festival of Ideas in 2001 during the Late Night Live debate "There's no such thing as a new idea".[12]
She worked with Nitschke on The Peaceful Pill eHandbook and in Exit International.[13] She was executive director of the Exit International from 2004 to 2007.
In the 2014 Victorian election she stood for the Upper House for the Voluntary Euthanasia Party.[14]
Stewart married Philip Nitschke around 2009.[13]
Stewart is the author of three books: