Geography, Geology and the Environment

I joined Keele in January 2008. Previously I held appointments as Postdoctoral Fellow and then Research Fellow in the School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. My first degree, BA (1st Hons) Biology, was granted by Dalhousie University (Canada) in 1989. I obtained a Master's in Environmental Studies (1993), also from Dalhousie, and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of British Columbia (1999). My graduate studies involved work with Canada's international development agencies - CIDA and the International Development Research Centre - as both field researcher and intern. My position in Australia involved a research collaboration with the Australian Agency for International Development.

My research draws on both social/cultural geography and social anthropology to explore people's place-based experiences of globalisation and development. I do fieldwork in the global South and also with migrant communities from developing areas who have moved into the world's global cities. Much of my work has been conducted with people who originate in indigenous villages in the northern Philippines and have migrated to Hong Kong. Empirically, I am interested in the long-distance relations that connect outmigrants to their sending communities, changes in local livelihoods and the possibilities for locally sustainable, alternative economic development, and environmental degradation linked to migration. To explore these empirical themes, I engage theories of personhood, subjectivity, and cultural economic approaches to understanding economic development.

I am cross-appointed to Politics and a member of the Research Institute of Law, Politics and Justice, active in the *Centre for Research on Environmental Action and Thought (CREATe) and *Centre for Social Cultural and Postcolonial Research (SOCPOR).

In 2008/2009, I am Senior Research Associate on the AHRC-funded Footsteps project, examining religious sociality in the Filipino diaspora. I will be conducting fieldwork in the UK, Canada, and Hong Kong.

In press Global Filipinos; Migrants' Lives in the Virtual Village  Pre-order here

Edited Collections

• JOHNSON, M. and MCKAY, D. eds. (2011) Mediated Identities, Diasporic Lives:  Situating Filipinos & Philippine Studies within a Translocal Space. Special Issue of Southeast Asian Research, 19(2).  (in press)
• CONRADSON, D. and MCKAY, D. eds. (2007) Translocal Subjectivities: Mobility, Connection and Emotion, Special Issue of Mobilities, 2(2).
• MCKAY, D. ed, (2006) Place in Motion: New Ethnographies of Locality in the Asia-Pacific, Special Issue of The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 7(3).

Articles in Peer-reviewed Journals

• MCKAY, D. (2011) On the Face of Facebook: Historical Images and Personhood in Filipino Social Networking. History and Anthropology (in press.)
• MCKAY, D. (2010) A Transnational Pig: Reconstituting Kinship Among Filipinos in Hong Kong. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11, 3-4, 329 – 343.
• GIBSON, K., CAHILL, A., and MCKAY, D. (2010) Rethinking the Dynamics of Rural Transformation: Performing Different Development Pathways in a Philippine Municipality. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35(20, 237 – 255.
• MCKAY, D. (2009) Performing Economy Differently:  Exploring Economic Personhood and Local Economic Diversity. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 20, 330 – 346.
• MCKAY, D. (2008) Ghosts of Futures Present: Photographs in the Filipino Migrant Archive. Visual Anthropology 21(4), 381 – 392.
• CONRADSON, D. and MCKAY, D. (2007) Translocal Subjectivities: Mobility, Connection and Emotion. Mobilities 2(2), 167 – 174. (50%)
• MCKAY. D. (2007) Sending Dollars Shows Feeling: Emotions and Economies in Filipino Migration. Mobilities 2(2), 175 – 194.
• MCKAY, D. (2006) Place in Motion: New Ethnographies of Locality in the Asia-Pacific. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 7(3), 197-202.
• MCKAY, D. (2006) Translocal Circulation: Place and Subjectivity in an Extended Filipino Community. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 7(3), 265-278.
• MCKAY, D. (2005) Reading Remittance Landscapes: Female Migration and Agricultural Transition in the Philippines. Danish Journal of Geography 105(1) 89-99
• MCKAY, D. and BRADY, C. (2005) Practices of Place-making:  Globalisation and Locality in the Philippines. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 46(2), 89-103.
• MCKAY, D. (2003) Cultivating New Local Futures:  Remittance Economies and Land-use Patterns in Ifugao, Philippines. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34(2), 285-306.
• GIBSON, K., LAW, L. and MCKAY, D. (2001) Beyond Heroes and Victims: Filipina Contract Migrants, Economic Activism, and Class transformations. International Feminist Journal of Politics 3(3), 365 – 386. (33.3%)

Chapters in Edited Books

• JOHNSON, M., LIEBELT, C., MCKAY, D., PINGOL, A. and WERBNER, P. (2010) Sacred Journeys, Diasporic Lives: Sociality and the Religious Imagination Among Filipinos in the Middle East. In KNOTT, K. and MCLOUGHLIN, S. (ed.) Diasporas: Concepts, Identities, Intersections. (London: Zed Books) pp. 217 – 222.
• GIBSON, K. and (MCKAY as part of) the Community Economies Collective (2009) Building Community-based Social Enterprises in the Philippines: Diverse Development Pathways’ in AMIN, A. (ed) The Social Economy: International Perspectives on Economic Solidarity, (London: Zed Books), pp.116-138.
• MCKAY, D. and PEREZ, P. (2008) ‘Just Act Natural’: The Making of Apocalypse Now, in: ZAFRA, J. (ed.) The Flip Reader (Manila, Philippines: Anvil) pp. 46 – 62. (50%)
• MCKAY, D. (2007) Identities in a Culture of Circulation: Performing Selves in Filipina Migration, in: ROBINSON, K. (Ed) Self and Subject in Motion: Southeast Asian and Pacific Cosmopolitans (London: Palgrave) pp. 190 – 208.

Year 1

• GEG-10099 People and the Enviroment

Year 2

• ESC-20004 Nature and Society
• Fieldtrip to Singapore and Malaysia

Year 3

• GEG-30016 Economic Development and Environmental Transformation (module leader)
• POL 300xx Migration (module leader)

Postgraduate

• M.A. in Human Rights, Globalisation and Justice
• Ph.D. Summer School on Environmental Politics and Policy