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Impact! Exhibition opens with “Does It Smell Like Fair Trade?” exhibit

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

The Impact! Exhibition poster

The Impact! Exhibition – featuring  the Fair Tracing project-inspired “Does It Smell like Fair Trade?” exhibit - has now opened at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London.  The exhibition is free and open to the public in the RCA’s Darwin building from 1100-1730 from Tuesday to Sunday, 16-21 March 2010. Follow this link to a map.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) collaborate with the RCA Design Interactions department to create an exhibition that sees 16 designers teamed up with groups of EPSRC funded researchers from Universities across the UK [selected from a shortlist of projects from the entire EPSRC remit of thousands of grants]. The mixed media exhibition will explore the relationship between science and society and will show how research is making a huge impact on our everyday lives, such as healthcare, crime prevention and climate change. Participating designers include Onkar Kular, Noam Toran, James Auger and Revital Cohen.

L-R: Dr Dorothea Kleine, Dr Ann Light, Nicolas Myers, Dr Apurba

On Monday, Fair Tracing’s pricipal investigator Dr Apurba Kundu fielded interviews from a number of media outlets (details will be blogged as they are published) in the morning, and attended the Gala Opening in the evening along with co-investigator Dr Ann Light, research fellow Dr Dorothea Kleine and designer Nicolas Myers (see his other work here), and hundreds of guests from academia, industry and the media. (Unfortunately, co-investigator Dr Ian Brown could not attend.)

“Does it smell like Fair Trade?”

Additional photos of the “Does It Smell Like Faire Trade?” exhibit will be blogged as they become available, but a sneak preview of the work appears to the left.

Do be sure to visit the exhibition!

Posted in Design, Events, Fair Tracing presentations, Fair Tracing project activities, Media | No Comments »

Theorising in Lima

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Panel at HDCA

Greetings from Lima!

I, [Fair Tracing project manager Dr Dorothea Kleine], am at Congresso HDCA 2009, the annual conference of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, in Lima, Peru. This is an interdisciplinary conference interested in human development as freedom (Amartya Sen).

I presented a paper called “Applying the capability approach to the ‘medium of choice par excellence’: Using the Choice Framework for a holistic analysis of internet usage”. In it, I used Fair Tracing as an example to show how action research can help consumers and producers in their choices. I argued that one can use Sen’s capability approach, translated with the Choice Framework, to theorise what we did.

The conference is also a great opportunity to draw the attention of Latin American academics to our work, including our participatory work with producers in Chile.

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Fair Tracing at the Royal Geographical Society Conference 2009

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

University of Manchester

At this year’s Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Conference in Manchester (26-28 Aug 2009), Fair Tracing’s Dr Dorothea Kleine teamed up with Dr Ian Cook (Exeter University) and Dr Mark Graham (Oxford Internet Institute) to host three sessions on “Follow the thing: New Cultural and Economic Geographies“. The idea of the session was to bring together value chain research conducted from cultural geography and economic geography perspectives (see also the full programme).

Our sessions had 13 papers (one of which was on the Fair Tracing project) running from 09:00 to 16:50. Thanks to the great interest in the topic, sponsorship from two research groups, the quality of the papers (and the lucky coincidence that our session info was printed in the front section of the programme at a busy, multi-strand conference with several sessions in parallel) we had audiences of over 30 people throughout the day, consisting of mainly cultural, but also some economic geographers. 

The quality of questions were outstanding. One question on the Fair Tracing project was whether we had spoken to workers directly, or whether we had, just like much of the Fair Trade research, merged the categories or producers and workers. I was glad to be able to explain that our focus groups in Chile had been conducted with vineyard owners, bodega employees and workers separately. I also remarked how at the time one of us (ie Dr Ann Light) succeeded in involving the foreman in conversation and distracting him sufficiently while Macarena Vivent and I had unsupervised focus group time with workers… 

Ah, we were a great team!      

Posted in Chile, Events, Fair Tracing presentations, General, Supply Chains, Wine, conferences | No Comments »

Fair Tracing presentations and publications now up-to-date

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

With the Fair Tracing Project entering its final “dissemination” phase, we have double-checked that our presentations and publications are up-to-date. In many cases, we now provide links from the items directly to the full presentation or publication.

Yet more presentations and publications are planned, and will be blogged as they become available.

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Fair Tracing’s demo at ICTD2009 in Doha, Qatar

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Fair Tracing’s Research Fellow and Project Manager Dr Dorothea Kleine represented the project at ICTD2009, the international IEEE/ACM conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development held in Doha, Qatar from 17-19 April 2009, with over 300 delegates in attendance.

Our demonstration, “Understanding the Provenance of Ethically Produced Goods”, showed the early Fair Tracing computer screen version with the Google Earth map, and used the Upcode application to demonstrate the tool on a mobile screen. We were able to let people use the Nokia N70 or N95 to scan a barcode on a bottle (in Qatar alcohol is banned so we had to go for a water instead of a wine bottle) or a coffee package. The mobile could then go online and link directly to key information from our Fair Tracing data set. Information on offer included the pie chart of “Where does the money go?”, the producer’s website, and the YouTube videos which we have produced in partnership with the Chilean producers.

There was great interest the Fair Tracing demo stand which was up for two days. Over 70 people came to talk to us and try out the demo, including development practitioners from Ecuador, Pakistan, Australia and Egypt.

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Fair Tracing presentation at BASAS Conference

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

BASAS logo
Ashima Chopra, a research student on the Fair Tracing project, will be presenting a paper on aspects of the project’s India case study at the forthcoming British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) conference to be held in Edinburgh from 30 March-1 April 2009. She will also be hosting the panel in which the paper will appear. The full details are as follows:

Monday, 30 March 2009, 4.45 pm – 6.15 pm
“Technology and Development” panel
Convenor: Ashima Chopra (University of Bradford)

  1. Vincent Bagiire (University of Bradford) Improving livelihoods in the south through technology: M.S.Swaminathan’s contribution
  2. Bidit Lal Dey (Queen’s University, Belfast) An overview of the use and appropriation of mobile telephony in rural Bangladesh from the perspectives of farmers
  3. Ashima Chopra, (University of Bradford) Is technological innovation necessary for socio-economic development? Designing a digital traceability solution for coffee growers in Southern India

For further information, see the BASAS website or the conference homepage, or contact Ashima directly at  a.chopra@bradford.ac.uk

Posted in Coffee, Coffee Traceability, Events, Fair Tracing presentations, Fair Tracing project activities, General, India, Technology, Tracing & Tracking, conferences | No Comments »

Abstract of “The Challenge of Representing a Sociotechnical System”

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Now available is the abstract of “The Challenge of Representing a Sociotechnical System: Fair Tracing and the Value Chain”, a paper presented by Dr Ann Light at the Sociotechnical Aspects of Interaction Design conference held in London in May 2008.

Abstract: The Fair Tracing project has as its heart the representation of a sociotechnical system, with its emphasis on the social, economic and environmental aspects of food production as a means of profitably connecting Fair Trade producers in developing countries with ethical consumers in the North. The political elements of the production system will be displayed as part of telling the story of the value chain. The case study is interesting in that not only have we set out to explore and understand the value chain and the information flows accompanying it, but the findings will inform two aspects of the project: first, the design of the system and what use would be reasonable to expect of busy people; second, the representation at the interface that users see when they choose to learn more about the circumstances of production. A significant challenge will be representing the politics of production relationships in the design of the Fair Tracing system in such a way that the tool remains agnostic, but the power relations can be understood – and even challenged.

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Third BGDD Conference

Friday, December 19th, 2008

The network of researchers involved in the four EPSRC-funded projects will meet at Emmanuel College, Cambridge on 5-6 January 2009 for a third “Bridging the Global Digital Divide” conference. The aim of the two-day meeting is to bring the project teams together to share news and information about our ongoing work, as well as plan for the final months ahead. 

Confirmed as attending on behalf of Fair Tracing are Dr Ian Brown, Dr Dorothea Kleine, Dr Apurba Kundu. In additional, selected research students who are contributing to the Fair Tracing Project may also attend. 

Posted in BGDD Network, Events, Fair Tracing presentations, Fair Tracing project activities, conferences | No Comments »

Fair Tracing hosts Ethics 2.0 Summit

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Workshop with 35 participants On Thursday, 23 October 2008, the EPSRC Fair Tracing Project, Centre for Developing Areas Research (CEDAR) and UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London, hosted a workshop on “Ethical Consumption, Traceability and ICT” – or, short and snappy – the Ethics 2.0 Summit.  The workshop brought together 35 participants from business, NGOs, and academia. Speakers included Tim Wilson (Historicfutures), Wesa Aapro (Consumergadget), Annesley Newholm (Easyethical), Rob Harrison (Ethiscore), Juha Kaario (Nokia Green Team) and Ann Light, Macarena Vivent, Helen LeVoi and Dorothea Kleine (Fair Tracing).

Juha Kaario, Tim Wilson and Rob HarrisonThe speakers, from the UK, Finland and Chile, presented six different projects and answered questions about the thinking behind their systems. Getting this set of individuals together was in itself a success: as one speaker remarked, “I have not been to an event where you had this many key players in the field all together”.

 

 

Participant writing feedback on post-itDuring the lunch and coffee breaks, participants were able to try out and comment on post-its on the different interfaces of the various projects. Holloway students Andrew Brooks, Lucy Fenner, Simon Hepher and Rebecca Sankar exhibited posters of their research projects on ethical consumption. From the ICT4D Collective, Win Min Tun, Andrea Burris, Marije Geldof, David Hollow, Niels-Peter Nielsen and Ugo Vallauri assisted in running the workshop on the day.

 

In the discussions it became evident that there were fascinating parallels and promising synergies between the projects. We were fired up by seeing how many pieces of the puzzle allowing for a system of ethical tracking and tracing, and communicating it to consumers were there in front of our eyes, waiting to be assembled. At the end of the day, there were networking groups discussing themes like

  • “How can we give producers a voice in developing these systems?”
  • “How can we express ethical issues in figures or symbols to get information to the consumer quickly?”
  • “What kind of business model could be used to make information services for ethical consumption financially sustainable?”

In our concluding remarks, we expressed our hope that several of the projects would now begin to collaborate or, at the very least, that we would keep each other informed of our work so that, as our projects progressed, we could avoid reinventing the wheel and, instead, exploit synergies. Thanks to all the speakers and participants for coming and contributing to an exciting day!  

 

Posted in Chile, Events, Fair Tracing presentations, Fair Tracing project activities, General, Technology, Tracing & Tracking, conferences | No Comments »

Project member workshop presentation and publication

Monday, June 16th, 2008

On 13 June, Fair Tracing project research student Ashima Chopra presented “The Fair Tracing project and thecase study of establishing traceability for coffe in India: Is technological innovation necessary for social development?” as part of the Ninth Informatics Workshop for Research Students.

The event is hosted annually by the University of Bradford School of Informatics, and all presentations are collected in workshop proceedings edited by Dr Dimitrios Rigas.

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Posted in Coffee, Coffee Traceability, Fair Tracing presentations, Fair Tracing publications, India, Technology, conferences | No Comments »

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