On 26 March, Ashima Chopra, one of two funded research students on the Fair Tracing Project, presented ”The Fair Tracing project: Indian coffee and the digital divide” at the annual conference of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) held in Leicester from 26-28 March 2008. Note that BASAS is “is the largest UK academic association for the study of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives and the South Asian Diaspora”.
Archive for the ‘Fair Tracing presentations’ Category
“The Fair Tracing project: Indian coffee and the digital divide”
Monday, April 21st, 2008“Fair Tracing and the digital divide: tracking Indian coffee across the Internet”
Monday, April 21st, 2008
On 28 February 2008, Ashima Chopra, one of the two funded research students on the fair Tracing project, gave a presentation entitled “Fair Tracing and the digital divide: tracking Indian coffee across the Internet” at the Critical Internet Studies semiar series held at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).
Series organiser Dr. Adi Kuntsman called the presentation “fascinating”, and encouraged Chopra to appear as a guest lecturer on the globalisation course offered at LJMU. Kuntsman also invited her to attend the Internet Studies Festival to be held at LJMU in July.
Advisory Board Meeting and Presentation at Holloway
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
On March 6, Fair Tracing held its annual Advisory Board meeting at Royal Holloway, University of London, followed by a presentation titled “Global Social Responsibility, Technology and Consumer Choice: the EPSRC Fair Tracing Project” at the New Political Communication Unit of the Department Politics and International Relations. It was really interesting to receive feedback first from industry (particular thanks to Roger Tucker from Outside Echo) and then from an interdisciplinary audience of political science postgraduates, geographers and computer scientists. We take away a set of feedback points and suggestions which we will engage with as the project progresses. Many thanks to all who contributed!
Kids take over Fair Tracing stand at Holloway Science Open Day
Monday, March 3rd, 2008
Over 1500 kids and their parents visited Royal Holloway’s Science Open Day this weekend. As part of Fairtrade Fortnight, Dorothea Kleine and Maria-Jose Montero organised the Fair Tracing section ot the event: Kids could vote which of the photos taken of or by our producer partners in India and Chile they found most interesting.
Two internet terminals allowed visitors to test out the Fair Tracing demo, typing in the barcodes from a bottle of Los Robles wine and a bag of Indian coffee. Our partners from Nokia had supplied us with a Nokia N95 which proved a great hit with kids trying out the barcode scanning feature on the Fairtrade chocolate bars we provided…and on the Ribena and Coca Cola bottles they had brought with them.
Maria-Jose had put together four short video-clips from our visit to producers in Chile which we showed in our very own Fair Tracing cinema. In the midst of all the buzz, we managed to have interesting conversations with people about their attitudes to Fair Trade, their own buying behaviour and what they thought of the project. Many expressed a desire to buy ethically but were skeptical about ethical labels and claims, including the FLO Fairtrade label. The issue of where information was coming from was key and there was great interest in the possibilities for alternative information dissemination Fair Tracing offered. Meanwhile, kids were learning about Fair Trade in school and asked for it at home. We gave away lots of free Fairtrade chocolate - in return for over 150 filled-out voting sheets telling us more about what potential consumers would like to see in terms of photo and video material on the Fair Tracing system.
Poster Presentation at the University of Bradford Annual Research Showcase
Monday, February 11th, 2008The University of Bradford held its Annual Research Showcase on Tuesday, 5 February 2008, attended by staff, students and community representatives. The Showcase consisted of an exhibition of the best research currently being conducted in the University, as well as a programme of seminars delivered by external speakers from Research Councils and Yorkshire universities.
The Fair Tracing Project entered the above poster (PDF) as part of the display of the School of Informatics. Research student Ashima Chopra was on hand to answer queries about the project. In the end, the Fair Tracing poster helped contribute to the School of Informatics winning first prize as the best School display!
Fair Tracing Team reports at second BGDD Conference
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008The network of researchers involved in the four EPSRC-funded projects met in at Emmanuel College, Cambridge on 7-8 January 2008 for a second “Bridging the Global Digital Divide” conference. The aim of the two-day meeting was to bring the project teams together to share news and information about our ongoing work, as well as plan for the months ahead. Attending on behalf of Fair Tracing were Dr Apurba Kundu, Dr Ann Light and Christian Wallenta (both days), as well as Dr Dorothea Kleine and Ashima Chopra (day one), and Maria Jose Montero (day two).
Our own presentation — close to the halfway point of the Fair Tracing project – gave details of our recent field visits to Chile and India (including news that Professor N. Shantha Mohan has joined the project as a consultant), as well as initial results of our UK Consumer Study, and aspects of the prospective data collation, storage and retrieval technologies that the project will use. The report also highlighted presentations made by team members on aspects of Fair Tracing, including
- D. Kleine, ‘Anything but neutral: The role of technology in development’, Open University, Milton Keynes, 28 Mar 2007;
- D. Kleine & A. Light, ‘Found in Translation: Experiences from the Fair Tracing Project’. Human Computer Interaction annual conference, Lancaster University, 4 Sept 2007;
- D. Kleine, ‘Linking local realities: Using technology to connect Fair Trade consumers and producers’, Royal Geographical Society annual conference, 31 Sept 2007;
- I Brown, ‘Current research’, Oxford Internet Institute, 10 Oct 2007;
- A. Light , ‘A Year in Pictures: Some Issues in Developing a Representation of Ethical Producers for Consumers’, Sheffield Hallam University, Nov 2007; and
- D. Kleine, ’The Fair Tracing project: Using the internet to track Chilean Fairtrade wine’, Centre for Latin American Studies, Cambridge University, 18 Jan 2008,
as well as recent and forthcoming publications concerning the project, including
- D. Kleine (2007) ‘Striking a Balance’, Engineering and Technology, 2:2, 30-33;
- A. Chopra & A. Kundu (2008, forthcoming) ‘The Fair Tracing project: digital tracing technology and Indian coffee, Contemporary South Asia, 16:2 June;
- D. Kleine (2008, forthcoming) ‘Negotiating partnerships, understanding power: Doing Action Research on Chilean Fairtrade Wine’, Geojournal;
- D. Kleine (2008, forthcoming) ‘How fair is fair enough? Negotiating alterity and compromise within the German Fair Trade movement’, in D. Fuller, A.E. Jonas & R. Lee, Alternative Economic and Political Spaces (Ashgate);
- D. Kleine (in preparation) ‘From solidarity coffee to fine wine: The changing images of Fair Trade’, Antipode; and
- D. Kleine & A. Light (in preparation) ‘Designing with Partners in the Global South: Empowering producers, informing consumers’ .
While the conference itself proved a very useful means of communication between groups, fair tracing also benefitted from the time alloted for the separate teams to meet to plot our next steps. These include the following presentations:
- A. Chopra, ‘Fair Tracing and the digital divide: tracking Indian coffee across the internet’, Critical Internet Studies seminar series, Liverpool John Moores University, 21 Feb 2008;
- I. Brown, A. Chopra, .D. Kleine, A. Kundu, A. Light, M. Montero & C. Wallenta, ‘The Fair Tracing Project’, Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London, 6 Mar 2008; and
- A. Chopra (under consideration) , ‘The Fair Tracing project: Indian coffee and the digital divide’, British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) annual conference , Leicester, 26-28 Mar 2008.
All in all, it was a very productive two days!
