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All Outputs (41)

Towards a 'theory of change' for ocean plastics: a socio-oceanography approach to the global challenge of plastic pollution (2025)
Journal Article
Horton, A. A., Henderson, L., Bowyer, C., Courtene-Jones, W., Garrard, S. L., Kulsum, M., Mckay, D., Manikarachchige, I., Sreekumar, S., & Stanton, T. (2025). Towards a 'theory of change' for ocean plastics: a socio-oceanography approach to the global challenge of plastic pollution. Microplastics and Nanoplastics, 5, Article 20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43591-025-00127-8

Socio-oceanography is an emerging field which mobilises insights from natural and social sciences to explore the inter-connectedness of societal relationships with the ocean and to adopt a holistic approach to solving key oceanographic and societal c... Read More about Towards a 'theory of change' for ocean plastics: a socio-oceanography approach to the global challenge of plastic pollution.

Lake surface water temperature in China from 2001 to 2021 based on GEE and HANTS (2024)
Journal Article
Song, S., Yang, J., Liu, L., Bai, G., Zhou, J., & McKay, D. (2024). Lake surface water temperature in China from 2001 to 2021 based on GEE and HANTS. Ecological Informatics, Article 102903. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2024.102903

Warming of lakes' surface water leads to accelerated loss of biodiversity and eco-environmental collapse of aquatic systems. Changes in lack surface water temperature (LSWT) are a crucial indicator of lake warming. LSWT growth potentially leads to a... Read More about Lake surface water temperature in China from 2001 to 2021 based on GEE and HANTS.

Shedding off-the-grid: The role of garment manufacturing and textile care in global microfibre pollution (2023)
Journal Article
Stanton, T., Stanes, E., Gwinnett, C., Lei, X., Cauilan-Cureg, M., Ramos, M., Sallach, J. B., Harrison, E., Osborne, A., Sanders, C. H., Baynes, E., Law, A., Johnson, M., Ryves, D. B., Sheridan, K. J., Blackburn, R. S., & McKay, D. (2023). Shedding off-the-grid: The role of garment manufacturing and textile care in global microfibre pollution. Journal of Cleaner Production, 428, Article 139391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.139391

Textile fibres are abundant anthropogenic pollutants. These fibres enter aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric environments, and biota. Textile fibres pose biological and chemical threats to the environments they pollute. Laundry is a primary source... Read More about Shedding off-the-grid: The role of garment manufacturing and textile care in global microfibre pollution.

Towards framing the global in Global Development: prospects for development geography (2021)
Journal Article
McKay, D. (2021). Towards framing the global in Global Development: prospects for development geography. Area, 54(2), 185-194. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12718

This paper examines data in the public sphere on the global scope of geography’s UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) projects. Building on decolonial critiques of development research, I argue that geography should frame ‘the global’ of globa... Read More about Towards framing the global in Global Development: prospects for development geography.

On global plasticity: framing the global through affective materiality (2020)
Journal Article
McKay. (2020). On global plasticity: framing the global through affective materiality. New Global Studies, https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2020-0039

As a pervasive, material element of the global, plastics raise potent social and environmental questions. More than merely the ‘stuff’ of potential global prosperity, plastics are substances people inscribe with varied cultural meanings. Deploying co... Read More about On global plasticity: framing the global through affective materiality.

Decorated Duterte: Digital Objects and the Crisis of Martial Law History in the Philippines (2020)
Journal Article
McKay. (2020). Decorated Duterte: Digital Objects and the Crisis of Martial Law History in the Philippines. Modern Languages Open, https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.316

Much of the contemporary crisis in coming to terms with the past may have digital origins. We can see this crisis as engineered or assembled through a new series of historical actors: memes and posts on social media and, behind them, the work of trol... Read More about Decorated Duterte: Digital Objects and the Crisis of Martial Law History in the Philippines.

Properties of wood composite plastics made from predominant Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) plastics and their degradability in nature (2020)
Journal Article
Satrio, F., Basyuni, M., Nuryawan, A., Hutauruk, N., Purba, E., Masruchin, N., Batubara, R., Risnasari, I., & McKay, D. (2020). Properties of wood composite plastics made from predominant Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) plastics and their degradability in nature. PloS one, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236406

To address concerns over plastics in the global environment, this project produced three wood plastics composites (WPCs) which could divert plastics from the waste stream into new materials. The three materials made had a ratio of 85%:15%, 90%:10%, a... Read More about Properties of wood composite plastics made from predominant Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) plastics and their degradability in nature.

Ambient surveillance: how care-for-control emerges across diasporic social media (2020)
Journal Article
McKay. (2020). Ambient surveillance: how care-for-control emerges across diasporic social media. Ethnos, 309-326. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1543340

This article demonstrates how social control in the Filipino diaspora now works through social media surveillance, brokering exchanges of care between activists, on the one hand, and migrants, on the other. Taking care as the ‘pursuit of connections’... Read More about Ambient surveillance: how care-for-control emerges across diasporic social media.

Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development (2019)
Book Chapter
McKay. (2019). Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development. In Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development

This chapter explores the migration corridor between the Philippines and Hong Kong. A long-established destination for largely female migrants taking up domestic work, Hong Kong offers Filipino workers proximity to home and public space in which to s... Read More about Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development.

Citizen aid, social media, and brokerage after disaster (2019)
Journal Article
McKay, D., & Perez, P. (2019). Citizen aid, social media, and brokerage after disaster. Third World Quarterly, 1903-1920. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1634470

In a crisis, aid providers deliver humanitarian relief across a hierarchy of organisations where influence and capacity map to their scale of operations (Fouksman, 2016; Mercer & Green, 2015). On the front lines of crises, ‘citizen aid’ is what small... Read More about Citizen aid, social media, and brokerage after disaster.

Plastic masculinity: How everyday objects in plastic suggest men could be otherwise (2018)
Journal Article
McKay, D., & Perez, P. (2018). Plastic masculinity: How everyday objects in plastic suggest men could be otherwise. Journal of Material Culture, 169-186. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183517742424

Material things always make statements about people’s identities. For indigenous Filipino men, making baskets asserts identities rich in culture and in non-market values. This article examines basketry backpacks that were part of the pre-colonial mat... Read More about Plastic masculinity: How everyday objects in plastic suggest men could be otherwise.

Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia (2017)
Journal Article
McKay. (2017). Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia. Global Networks, 133-150. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12174

Migrants and their transnational families document their children and child-rearing practices on social networking sites (SNS) to enhance their social mobility. In this article, I identify a new group of migrant children, namely those sent home to th... Read More about Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia.

Subversive Plasticity (2015)
Book Chapter
McKay, D. (2015). Subversive Plasticity. In The Social Life of Materials Studies in Materials and Society. Bloomsbury Publishing

Bringing together ethnographic studies of cultures from around the world, this collection explores the significance of materials by moving beyond questions of what may be created from them.

Diverse economies, ecologies and ethics: Rethinking rural transformation in the Philippines (2015)
Book Chapter
McKay, D. (2015). Diverse economies, ecologies and ethics: Rethinking rural transformation in the Philippines. In Making Other Worlds: Possible Performing Diverse Economies (194-224). The University of Minnesota Press

This collection offers perspectives from a wide variety of prominent scholars that put diverse economies into conversation with other contemporary projects that reconfigure the economy as performative.