An ethnography of knowledge practices, perceptions of plastics and plastic entanglements in a sea of islands.

My PhD project centers around plastics and microplastics pollution in ocean ecosystems in the South Pacific, particularly in Fij. It is an environmental ethnographic study of marine plastics and their entanglements that pays specific attention to knowledge practices around plastics pollution and seeks to understand how marine plastics pollution is studied and perceived by environmental youth groups, plastic scholars and iTaukei Fijians. In my research, I am specifically interested in the socio-ecological causes and consequences of marine plastics pollution, and in understanding more about the forms of life and lifeforms that plastics and microplastics are entangled with in the South Pacific. I combine ethnographic and natural science fieldwork methods, grappling with the methodological challenges of conducting fieldwork in a fluid environment that shapes the practices of studying and knowing marine plastics pollution. Inspired by and embedded in Science and Technology Studies, multispecies ethnography, discard studies and Pacific Island Studies my research turns its attention to what it means to live and study in a sea of plastics where both the plastics itself and the practices of knowing and managing it are bound up in practical, political, and economic relations.