Alex Hughes

Biographic Data

ID3653667
NAMEAlex Hughes
GIVEN NAMESAlex
FAMILY NAMEHughes
SIGNATUREHUGHES A
AFFILIATIONSNewcastle University
ORCID0000-0001-5163-5610
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS52
TOTAL CITATIONS511
AUTHOR COUNT50
EDITOR COUNT2
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1993
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX11

  • The impact of ionising radiation from geophysical loggers and water content on the luminescence signals in sediment cores

    Open AccessSam Woor, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLEQuaternary Research2025

    Luminescence dating and profiling are important analytical methods for providing chronological constraints and reconstructing depositional histories from sediment cores. However, sediment cores have often been exposed to ionising radiation sources during geophysical analyses, which potentially contaminates natural luminescence signals and may compromise the accuracy and reliability of luminescence analyses. Variable water content down-core is ano…

  • Introduction: Keith Reader, 1945–2022

    Open AccessAlex Hughes, Alex J Hughes et al.ARTICLENottingham French Studies2025

  • Food, memory, and changing framings of sustainable consumption in Johannesburg

    Open AccessCheryl Mcewan, Shari Daya et al.ARTICLECritical African Studies2025References: 23

    This paper addresses how food, tradition, and memories intersect with how sustainable food consumption is conceived, practiced, and mobilised. Using ethnographic research, the paper examines articulations and practices of ‘good food’ among food system actors and middle-class consumers in Johannesburg, South Africa. It argues that a nuanced and contextualised understanding of foodways and food consumption is required to capture the relationships b…

  • Access, health, re-conhecimento: Co-crafted Brazilian discourses on sustainable food

    Open AccessRita Afonso, Luiza Sarayed‐din et al.ARTICLEGeographical Journal2024References: 33

    Academic discourse on food justice and sustainable food consumption needs to be informed by empirical contributions and heterogenous conceptualisations from diverse parts of the world. This paper broadens the dialogue with a variety of voices and knowledges, rooting itself not only in the specific political and social context, but also the discursive and epistemic traditions of Brazil, which stand in dialogue with international discourses. Firstl…

  • The challenges of implementing antibiotic stewardship in diverse poultry value chains in Kenya

    Open AccessAlex Hughes, Emma J Roe et al.ARTICLEAgriculture and Human Values2023Cited by: 1References: 7

    This paper investigates the challenges of implementing antibiotic stewardship – reducing and optimizing the use of antibiotics – in agricultural settings of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) as a strategic part of addressing the global problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). It does so through analysis of the rapidly transforming yet diverse Kenyan poultry sector, characterized by growing commercial operations alongside traditional smal…

  • Global value chains for medical gloves during the Covid-19 pandemic: Confronting forced labour through public procurement and crisis

    Open AccessAlex Hughes, James A Brown et al.ARTICLEGlobal Networks2023Cited by: 6References: 37

    This paper evaluates ways in which labour issues in global value chains for medical gloves have been affected by, and addressed through, the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on production in Malaysia and supply to the United Kingdom's National Health Service and draws on a large-scale survey with workers and interviews with UK government officials, suppliers and buyers. Adopting a Global Value Chain (GVC) framework, the paper shows how forced labour…

  • Fragmentary embeddedness: Challenges for alternative food networks in Guangzhou, China

    Open AccessShuru Zhong, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLEJournal of Rural Studies2022Cited by: 8References: 19

    Alternative food networks (AFNs) have been viewed as being more deeply embedded in the fabric of places and the social relations of their food systems than conventional food networks, and have been regarded as ‘spaces of hope’ for addressing sustainability challenges associated with global food systems. This paper argues that embeddedness, however, is contingent and shifting rather than an intrinsic quality, and is shaped by the cultures of produ…

  • A change of editors and a thank you

    Open AccessN Castree, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLEProgress in Human Geography2022

  • Food supply chains and the antimicrobial resistance challenge: On the framing, accomplishments and limitations of corporate responsibility

    Open AccessAlex Hughes, Emma Roe et al.ARTICLEEnvironment and Planning A…2021Cited by: 4References: 22

    This paper presents a critique of supply chain responses to a particular global wicked problem - antimicrobial resistance (AMR). It evaluates the understanding of AMR (and drug-resistant infections) as a food system challenge and critically explores how responsibility for addressing it is framed and implemented. We place the spotlight on the AMR strategies applied in UK retailers' domestic poultry and pork supply chains. This provides a timely an…

  • Boundless contamination and progress in Geography

    Open AccessN Castree, Louise Amoore et al.ARTICLEProgress in Human Geography2020Cited by: 10References: 1

  • Envisioning African futures: Perspectives from economic geography

    Open AccessOuma, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLEGeoforum2019Cited by: 5

  • Public sector procurement and ethical trade: Governance and social responsibility in some hidden global supply chains

    Open AccessAlex Hughes, Eilidh Morrison et al.ARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2018Cited by: 10References: 27

    This paper places a critical spotlight on the ways in which governance and social responsibility concerning labour standards work in the context of public sector procurement. Supply chains provisioning the public sector, incorporating a vast array of materials used in public services such as education, health, social housing and transportation, have been under‐researched and under‐theorised in the geographical and wider social science literature …

  • Fairtrade, place and moral economy: Between abstract ethical discourse and the moral experience of Northern Cape farmers

    Open AccessCheryl Mcewan, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLEEnvironment and Planning A…2017Cited by: 2References: 41

    This paper explores the significance of the relationships and disjunctures between the global moral discourses of Fairtrade that are articulated through ethics of fairness in supply chains and the everyday moral experiences, discourses and practices of producers that shape moral economies in specific localities. Due to increased governance through universal codes, standards and certification, Fairtrade risks becoming an abstract ethical and regul…

  • A High Road to Sustainability? Wildflower Harvesting, Ethical Trade and Social Upgrading in South Africa's Western Cape

    Open AccessDavid Bek, Tony Binns et al.ARTICLEJournal of Agrarian Change2017Cited by: 2References: 24

    This paper evaluates the outcomes from an ambitious wildflower harvesting programme in South Africa's Western Cape, which has sought to achieve positive outcomes in terms of socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation. Indigenous wildflowers, harvested according to conservation principles, are processed into 'Cape Flora' bouquets and sold into international and domestic markets. The principal supply chain provides an example of ethic…

  • Empowered spaces? Management articulations of gendered spaces in apparel factories in Karachi, Pakistan

    Open AccessKanchana N Ruwanpura, Alex HughesARTICLEGender Place & Culture2016Cited by: 13References: 9

    Feminist scholarship has often focused on gendered workspaces within the apparel sector, where it is taken for granted that it is work conventionally attracting neophyte women. Within it, the task of managers is to discipline these young women to become docile and malleable workers. While this may have held to be the case temporally and regionally, South Asia’s experience has exhibited country-specific facets. This article focuses on these gender…

  • Mobilizing the ethical consumer in South Africa

    Open AccessAlex Hughes, Cheryl Mcewan et al.ARTICLEGeoforum2015Cited by: 8References: 10

  • Globalizing ethical consumption

    Open AccessMike Crang, Alex HughesARTICLEGeoforum2015Cited by: 5References: 19

  • Theorising middle class consumption from the global South: A study of everyday ethics in South Africa’s Western Cape

    Open AccessCheryl Mcewan, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLEGeoforum2015Cited by: 26References: 12

  • Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Production Networks: Insights from Flower Valley in South Africa

    Open AccessAlex Hughes, Cheryl Mcewan et al.ARTICLEEnvironment and Planning A…2015Cited by: 6References: 41

    This paper proposes dialogue between postcolonial theory and the analytical frameworks of global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs). It does so in order to open up more culturally sensitive accounts of global supply networks and exporting localities than those provided by prevailing political-economic approaches. Particular focus is placed on Zein-Elabdin's postcolonial notion of economic hybridity to advance understanding …

  • Travels in Xinjiang in the 1980s: In search of intercultural encounter

    Alex HughesARTICLEStudies in Travel Writing2014

    A perusal of writings on China's Far West, contained in Frederick's Starr's Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland (2004), enables us to identify key, recurrent conceptions of Xinjiang offered by the scholars Starr brings together. These conceptions frame the region as an intercultural arena that is itself culturally complex, hybrid, or “in-between” and appears ripe for the emergence of cross-cultural dialogue and intersubjective exchange, in spite …

  • Globalizing responsibility

    Open AccessAlex HughesARTICLEArea2013

  • Retailers, supply networks and changing articulations of ethicality: Lessons from Flower Valley in South Africa

    Alex Hughes, Cheryl Mcewan et al.ARTICLEJournal of Economic Geography2012Cited by: 9References: 22

    This article advances debate on retailers’ supply networks and ethical trade using the case of sustainably harvested wildflower bouquets supplied from South Africa to domestic and UK retailers. These trends concern strategizing, embedding and practising ethicality, respectively, with the term ethicality capturing not only the ethical standards themselves but also the changing practices shaping what counts as ethical

  • Futures, ethics and the politics of expectation in biodiversity conservation: A case study of South African sustainable wildflower harvesting

    Open AccessCheryl Mcewan, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLEGeoforum2012Cited by: 4References: 13

  • Rethinking governance and value in commodity chains through global recycling networks

    Open AccessMike Crang, Alex Hughes et al.ARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2012Cited by: 76References: 17

    The dominant political-economic approaches to global trade flows known as global value chains and global production networks offer powerful insights into the coordination and location of globally stretched supply chains, in particular from global South to North. By way of both conceptual and empirical challenge, this paper highlights flows of end-of-life goods from the global North towards the global South. This involves the disassembly and destr…

  • Postcolonial Economies

    Jane Pollard, Cheryl Mcewan et al.BOOKPostcolonial Economies2011

    About the editors Jane Pollard is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University. Her research interests embrace geographies of money and finance and their intersection with regional economic development. She is a co-editor of Knowledge, Space, Economy (2000) and has published extensively in, among other journals, Antipode, Journal of Economic Geography, Environment and Planning A, Geoforum and …