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Mackenzie, Fiona

Professor Emeritus

Biography

My research has focused until recently on issues to do with land and the environment in SubSaharan Africa. I have worked with both archival sources and personal narratives to reconstruct histories of land and labour in rural Kenya, recognising differences of race, class and gender in these histories. More recently, I have engaged in research in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, looking at questions to do with community and identity in the context of processes of globalisation, as the latter are connected to environmental issues. I am particularly interested in looking at how ‘the commons’ – whether to do with property or with land use – is invoked in environmental struggle. As an extension of this research in Scotland, I am involved with two communities, one of which has recently brought land under collective ownership (the Isle of Harris) and another (in North Sutherland) which is attempting to do so, under the new land reform legislation in Scotland. A more recent research interest centres on visual art, identity and place, recognising that through the art itself and the practices associated with it identities and senses of belonging are reworked.

Research Interests

Publications

Mackenzie, A. Fiona, D., ‘Re-stor(y)ing north west Sutherland’, submitted to the Scottish Geographical Journal, January2010.

Mackenzie, A.Fiona, D.,   2010 ‘Gender, land tenure and globalization. Exploring the conceptual ground’, in D. Tsikata and P. Golah, eds, Gender, land tenure and globalisation’, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa.

Mackenzie, A.Fiona, D.,  2010‘A common claim: community land ownership in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland’,  International Journal of the Commons, vol. 4 (1): 319-344.

Mackenzie, A.Fiona, D., 2009 ‘Working the wind: land-owning community trusts and the decolonization of nature’, Scottish Affairs, 2009, no.66: 19-39.

Mackenzie, A.Fiona, D., 2008 ‘Undoing nature: the John Muir Trust’s “Journey for the Wild”, the UK, Summer 2006’, Antipode, vol 40 (4): 584-611.

Mackenzie, A.Fiona, D., 2007 ‘The story(ing) of Jessie of Balranald. Research encounters of a surprising kind’ Cultural Geographies 14, 445-452.

Mackenzie, A. Fiona D., 2006 ‘ “Against the tide”: placing visual art in the Highlands and Islands, Scotland’, Social and Cultural Geography , Special Issue on Geographies of Art and the Environment 7 (6), 965-985.

Mackenzie, A. Fiona D., with Sue Jane Taylor, 2006 ‘Claims to place: The public art of Sue Jane Taylor, Gender, Place and Culture , 13 (6), 605-627.

Mackenzie, A. Fiona D., 2006 ‘ ” ‘S Leinn Fhein am Fearann” (The Land is Ours): re-claiming land, re-creating community, North Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space , 24 (4), 577-598.

Mackenzie, A. Fiona D., 2006 ‘A working land: crofting communities, place and the politics of the possible in post-Land Reform Scotland’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 31, 383-398.

Recent Graduate Supervisions

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