|
Biography I gained a Geography degree from the University of Dundee in 1995 and a PhD in that same subject from the University of Edinburgh in 1999. After a year at Cardiff University, I headed north to the University of Aberdeen where I worked for 9 years (as Research Fellow, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer)before arriving in Glasgow in March 2009. Research interests I am an economic and political geographer with an abiding interest in the politics and institutions of local and regional economic development, linking to broader debates on uneven development, neoliberalism, the state and labour geographies.
Earlier research examined the governance of economic development in the Highlands and Islands in the 1990s and the governance of inward investment in Wales and North East England (with Nick Phelps). A further strand of research examined the clustering of small and medium-sized firms in the Aberdeen oil complex (with Andy Cumbers and Keith Chapman). More recent work has focused on the effects of devolution on transport governance and policy in the UK (with Jon Shaw and Iain Docherty) and labour relations in the privatised rail industry (with Andy Cumbers and Jon Shaw).
In theoretical terms, I am concerned with the development of ‘new’ political economy approaches that combine a continuing emphasis on the spatially uneven development of capitalist social relations with more agency-oriented accounts derived from institutional economics and economic sociology. I’m also interested in the conceptual status of scale in human geography following the relational ‘turn’ and in the application of Foucauldian notions of governmentality to an increasingly managerialist state.
Current research I am currently pursuing (with various colleagues), or planning to develop, the following lines of research:
• Economic adaptation and evolution in old industrial regions
• Innovation and knowledge networks
• State restructuring and governmentality
• Neoliberalism and urban entrepreneurialism
• Labour control and labour agency in cities
Recent publications | View all publications >> Cumbers, A., and MacKinnon, D. in press ‘Putting ‘the political’ back into the region: power, agency and a reconstituted regional political economy’ in Pike, A., Rodriguez-Pose, A. and Tomaney, J. (eds) Handbook of Local and Regional Development. London: Routledge. MacKinnon, D. in press. Reconstructing scale: towards a new scalar politics. Progress in Human Geography. Shaw, J. and MacKinnon, D. in press 'Moving on with ‘filling in’? Some thoughts on state restructuring after devolution'. Area. Birch, K., MacKinnon, D. and Cumbers, A. 2010 ‘Old industrial regions in Europe: a comparative assessment of economic performance’. Regional Studies 44, 35-54. Cumbers, A., MacKinnon, D. and Shaw, J. 2010 'Labour, organisational rescaling and the politics of production: union renewal in the privatised rail industry'. Work, Employment and Society 24, 127-144. MacKinnon, D. and Shaw, J. 2010 'New state spaces, agency and scale: devolution and the regionalisation of transport governance in Scotland'. Antipode 46, 1226-1252. MacKinnon, D., Shaw, J. and Docherty, I. 2010 ‘Devolution as process: institutional structures, state personnel and transport policy in the United Kingdom’. Space and Polity 14, 271-287. Docherty, I., Shaw, J., Knowles, R. and MacKinnon, D. 2009 'Connecting for competitiveness: the future of transport in UK city regions'. Public Policy and Management 29, 321-328. MacKinnon, D. 2009 'Devolution and Regional Development in the United Kingdom'. REDES, Santa Cruz do Sul 14, 82-105. MacKinnon, D. 2009 ‘Institutionalism / institutional geographies’ in Kitchin, R. and Thrift, N (eds) International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography, pp. 499-506. Oxford: Elsevier. Recent research grants | View all grants >> 'Urban Growth and Poverty in Mining Africa'. D.Bryceson, D.MacKinnon, M. Shand, J.Bosse Jonsson, C.Kinobo, S.Banchirigah, K.Gough. C.U Rodrigues and A.Tavares. ESRC-DFID, £493,323.
Connection, Empowerment and Exclusion in Contemporary Britain: Lived Experiences of Globalisation. With A. Cumbers, K.Strauss and D.Featherstone. Joseph Rowntree Foundation £46,567.92. Awarded March 2010. ‘Varieties of Neoliberalism and Alternative Regional and Urban Strategies’. With K.Birch (University of Strathclyde) and V. Mykhnenko (University of Nottingham). Regional Studies Association, Research Network £3000. Awarded December 2009. Current postgraduate students
|
|
 |
|
|
