Want to know how Fair Trade your coffee is? Look at the digital tag!
A team of researchers led by the University of Bradford is looking at the possibility of tracing products from developing countries to give consumers more information about their origins.
The ‘Fair Tracing’ project, led by Dr Apurba Kundu, Associate Dean of the University of Bradford’s School of Informatics, aims to help bridge the digital divide between consumers from developed countries and producers in the developing world by using tracing technology to enhance the Fair Trade model of trade.
This research project launch comes at a time when the University of Bradford is celebrating achieving institution-wide Fair Trade status (Monday 11 December 2006).
The project, funded with just over £411,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), features a six-strong research team including academics from the University of Cambridge, University College London and Queen Mary College (University of London).
The research team will spend the next three years looking at how to use digital tracing technology to link producers in the developing world with their consumers in the developed world by ‘tagging‘ individual products with information readily accessible by both producer and consumer.
Dr Kundu, a Senior University Teacher in Cybernetics at the University of Bradford, said: “The idea for this project was born out of the EPSRC’s Ideas Factory series earlier this year, which brings academics from a multitude of disciplines together for a five-day session of brainstorming and proposal-writing regarding a particular issue – in this case, ‘Bridging the Global Digital Divide’.
“The information that may be attached to tagged products is virtually limitless, beginning with details of the product’s date and cost of creation, as well as its individual creator and his/her working environment and pay, through the various steps of its transport to the eventual point-of-sale to the consumer.
“At each stage of the product’s journey, information, including multimedia, may be added and/or edited.”
“We believe that attaching tracing technology to products will enhance their value for consumers seeking to make ethical purchasing choices, increase the sales of producers in the developing world, and enable the mapping of global value chains.”
In the first instance, the project will work with vintners in Chile and coffee growers in India, as both these products have connoisseur ranges which readily lend themselves to information-rich provision, and are already sold in the UK. In the long-term, the specific digital tracing technology developed during this project should also have applications in the wider commercial world.
The full project team consists of:
* Dr Apurba Kundu, University of Bradford, Principle Investigator
* Dr Ian Brown, University College London, Co-Investigator
* Dr Ann Light, Queen Mary (University of London), Co-Investigator
* Ms Dorothea Kleine, University of Cambridge, Research Fellow
* Ms Ashima Chopra, research student, University of Bradford
* Mr Christian Wallenta, research student, University College London
Dr Apurba Kundu can be contacted on 01274 235046 or via email at: A.Kundu@bradford.ac.uk
MEDIA NOTE
For further information, contact the University of Bradford’s Press Office: Emma Banks: 01274 233089 / Oliver Tipper: 01274 233084 / Email: press@bradford.ac.uk / Fax: 01274 236280. For enquiries out of office hours, call 07879 437986. The University of Bradford is able to provide broadcast-quality interviews via an ISDN line. This press release will also be available online at www.bradford.ac.uk/corpcomms/pressreleases
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