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Fiona McGillivray has died

- September 3, 2008

“Simon Jackman”:http://jackman.stanford.edu/blog/?p=839, who knew her.

NYU political scientist and Rochester PhD Fiona McGillivray passed away this morning after a long struggle with pulmonary hypertension.

Despite her illness, Fiona had a great couple of years on the professional front. Indeed, there was a roundtable at APSA in Boston on Saturday on her most recent book.

Fiona was in the year of students immediately following me in the Rochester PhD program (a 1995 PhD, and if memory serves she entered the program in the Fall of 1989), where she met her husband-to-be, Alastair Smith. Fiona was a very bright light in the tight-knit Rochester PoliSci community back then: her pluck, charm and “a wee-bent” Scottish sense of humor was priceless there in Harkness Hall. Alastair and the kids are very much in our thoughts today.

I thought Neal Beck and Jonathan Katz (and others at NYU, I imagine) did a nice job this morning ensuring friends and colleagues in the profession got the news personally, rather than via something like this blog post.

PH sounds like a bugger of a disease. Alastair suggested donations to the PHA in lieu of flowers etc.