Posted by Nicki Cole on September 9, 2008 at 12:39pm
Hello baristas, shop owners, and coffee enthusiasts. Are you interested in or employed in the ethical coffee movement? Do you buy or sell fair trade, direct trade, or otherwise socially responsible coffee? If so, consider helping me with my research on the ethical coffee market (fair trade, organic, direct trade, socially responsible, etc).I'm a graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I'm researching the production, sale, and consumption of ethical coffee. I am interviewing consumers and those in the industry across the nation about why they buy it, how it is perceived as different from conventional coffee, and in what ways such choices affect coffee farmers.If you are affiliated with an ethical coffee serving establishment, consider posting a flyer for me to recruit consumers.If you are a consumer of ethical coffee and are willing to be interviewed, please drop me a line at nickilcole@umail.ucsb.edu, and you can also view my website www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~nickilcole/current%20research.htmlI'll be in the following locations in the fall, and would love to interview people in person when possible, but welcome phone interviews too.Seattle: October 5 through 18Portland, OR: October 20 through November 2San Francisco/Bay: November 3 through 16Please be in touch for more information!Peace,Nicki
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Posted by Bel Townsend on April 14, 2008 at 9:49am
Hey everyone,this is a bit of a cop-out blog post, but I thought I'd publicise today's Happy Thought.I HAVE FINISHED MY UPGRADE PAPER!!Wuju!!I am currently registered as an MPhil student at university, and in order to be upgraded to PhD, I had to write an enormous paper, explaining exactly what I want to do in my research, and why I want to do it, and why it's remotely interesting to anybody else. Mine is all about the coffee industry. 4500 words DONE. YAY!A few people on here have expressed an interest in my research before, so if anyone wants to have a look at it, send me a message. It's a bit academic, obviously, and I don't want to publish it on here cos I'd bore everyone to tears, but if anyone wants to have a look, I'll happily email it to you.Off for Wine now (I love coffee but not for celebrations...)
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Posted by Bel Townsend on February 27, 2008 at 1:37pm
Hi all,I am doing my PhD research about the global coffee industry, and for part of my project, I need to visit a plantation. I am doing some comparison work - comparing a small-scale, organic, very high quality and ethically sound plantation with (I hope) a big commercial plantation that supplies coffee to the UK and likes of Caffe Nero or Starbucks. Ideally, I would like this to be in Central America, for purely practical reasons.Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've not had too much of a problem finding a smaller plantation (and big thanks to those of you on here that have contacted me about this!!) but I need help finding a big one. I've tried contacting Caffe Nero and Starbucks for help, and the sheer scale of this industry has meant that the buyers from these companies actually do not know exactly where the plantations are based. Which leaves me with a problem!Does anyone on here know of the plantations supplying the bigger UK chains? Do any of the farmers on BX supply to them? I'd really really appreciate any help you can give with this - contact details even better!cheers!Bel
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