Dr Susannah Chapman is a Research Fellow at The University of Queensland. As an environmental and legal anthropologist, her research explores the intersection of law, science, and society, with a particular focus on transformations in human-plant relations, intellectual property, and food and seed regulation since the early twentieth century. Using ethnographic and archival methods, her work asks questions about the coloniality, biopolitics, and translational practices of contemporary efforts to regulate plant reproductive material and crop diversity in the United States, The Gambia and Australia. Dr Chapman was awarded her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Georgia. She has previously worked at the University of Georgia, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and the University of The Gambia.
Dr Chapman's research speaks to issues of agrobiodiversity conservation, the politics of translation in deliberations over intellectual property, and shifts in regulatory structures for plant germplasm. Her current research explores how changes in intellectual property arrangements in Australia are reshaping the social, economic, and technological relations of agricultural supply chains.
Journal Article: The cosmopolitics of food futures: imagining nature, law, and apocalypse
Bosse, Jocelyn, Chacko, Xan and Chapman, Susannah (2020). The cosmopolitics of food futures: imagining nature, law, and apocalypse. Continuum, 34 (6), 1-18. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842124
Book Chapter: Ethnographic explorations of intellectual property
Coombe, Rosemary J. and Chapman, Susannah (2020). Ethnographic explorations of intellectual property. In Oxford research encyclopedia of anthropology (pp. 1-45) Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.115
Journal Article: To make one's name famous: varietal innovation and intellectual property in The Gambia
Chapman, Susannah (2018). To make one's name famous: varietal innovation and intellectual property in The Gambia. American Ethnologist, 45 (4), 482-494. doi: 10.1111/amet.12703
The Social Life of Royalties: Plant intellectual property in Australia
(2021–2024) ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
(2019–2021) UQ Development Fellowships
(2019–2021) UQ Early Career Researcher
The role of coffee culture in social transformation and agricultural development in Ethiopia
Doctor Philosophy
The Rise of Brand Name Fruit: Apples and Signification in Australia
Doctor Philosophy
Last the Plant: Governing Cotton in British Colonial India, 1850¿1942
Doctor Philosophy
The Emergence of Brand Name Fruits in Australian Agriculture
This is a UQ-funded PhD project linked to the Australian Research Council-funded project “The Social Life of Royalties” (School of Social Sciences, The University of Queensland). The PhD project would suit candidates with backgrounds in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, science and technology studies, or a related field.
The larger study, to which the PhD project is attached, explores changes in intellectual property protection for plants in Australia and how these shifts are shaping practices of audit, traceability, and ownership in agricultural supply chains for grains and fruits. Congruent with these legal shifts has been the rise of new branding practices for fruit, including the development of brand-name crop varieties and the marketing of brand fruits through print media, YouTube, and Instagram. The successful PhD applicant will develop a project that explores the rise of brand name fruits within Australia’s food sector and its relationship to emerging relations of food production and/or consumption, including novel forms of commodification, audit, marketing, and signification. For example, potential project topics could include consideration of new branding practices alongside the rise of alternative seed networks, the signification of historic crops and their relation to markers of identity and place, the representational practices of capitalist supply chains, or the relations of audit and trust that accompany new forms of certification and branding.
It is envisaged that this project would use a mixture of ethnographic and archival research, but there is space to incorporate diverse methodologies.
The successful PhD applicant will be based in the School of Social Science at The University of Queensland. More information about how to apply can be found at: https://graduate-school.uq.edu.au/phd-scholarships-humanities
There is considerable flexibility in the focus, scope, and methods of project that the successful applicant can develop. Prospective applicants should feel free to contact Susannah Chapman (susannah.chapman@uq.edu.au) if they have questions.
Successful applicants must be able to commence no later than January 1, 2022.
The cosmopolitics of food futures: imagining nature, law, and apocalypse
Bosse, Jocelyn, Chacko, Xan and Chapman, Susannah (2020). The cosmopolitics of food futures: imagining nature, law, and apocalypse. Continuum, 34 (6), 1-18. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842124
Ethnographic explorations of intellectual property
Coombe, Rosemary J. and Chapman, Susannah (2020). Ethnographic explorations of intellectual property. In Oxford research encyclopedia of anthropology (pp. 1-45) Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.115
To make one's name famous: varietal innovation and intellectual property in The Gambia
Chapman, Susannah (2018). To make one's name famous: varietal innovation and intellectual property in The Gambia. American Ethnologist, 45 (4), 482-494. doi: 10.1111/amet.12703
Intellectual property and agriculture
Brad Sherman and Susannah Chapman eds. (2020). Intellectual property and agriculture. Critical Concepts in Intellectual Property Law series, Cheltenham, United Kingdom : Edward Elgar. doi: 10.4337/9781788973885
The (In)visible labour of varietal innovation
Chapman, Susannah (2022). The (In)visible labour of varietal innovation. Invisible labour in modern science. (pp. 163-172) edited by Jenny Bangham, Judith Kaplan and Xan Chacko. Lanham, MD, United States: Rowman & Littlefield.
Agrobiodiversity loss and the construction of regulatory frameworks for crop germplasm
Chapman, Susannah and Heald, Paul J. (2020). Agrobiodiversity loss and the construction of regulatory frameworks for crop germplasm. Environmental resilience and food law: Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology. (pp. 159-182) edited by Gabriela Steier and Alberto Giulio Cianci. New York, NY, USA: CRC Press. doi: 10.1201/9780429443350-9
Ethnographic explorations of intellectual property
Coombe, Rosemary J. and Chapman, Susannah (2020). Ethnographic explorations of intellectual property. In Oxford research encyclopedia of anthropology (pp. 1-45) Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.115
Rethinking intellectual property law's relationship with agriculture
Sherman, Brad and Chapman, Susannah (2020). Rethinking intellectual property law's relationship with agriculture. Intellectual property and agriculture. (pp. xiii-xviii) edited by Brad Sherman and Susannah Chapman. Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar.
Apples of Their Eyes: Apple Trees and Memory Keepers of the American South
Chapman, Susannah and Brown, Tom (2013). Apples of Their Eyes: Apple Trees and Memory Keepers of the American South. Seeds of Resistance/Seeds of Hope: Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity. (pp. 42-64) edited by Virginia Nazarea, Robert Rhoades and Jenna Andrews-Swann. Arizona USA: University of Arizona Press.
Seed: gendered vernaculars and relational possibilities
Chapman, Susannah and Chacko, Xan Sarah (2022). Seed: gendered vernaculars and relational possibilities. Feminist Anthropology, 3 (2), 353-361. doi: 10.1002/fea2.12070
What should farmers’ rights look like? The possible substance of a right
Adhikari, Kamalesh, Bikundo, Edwin, Chacko, Xan, Chapman, Susannah, Humphries, Fran, Johnson, Hope, Keast, Evan, Lawson, Charles, Malbon, Justin, Robinson, Daniel, Rourke, Michelle, Sanderson, Jay and Tranter, Kieran (2021). What should farmers’ rights look like? The possible substance of a right. Agronomy, 11 (2) 367, 1-19. doi: 10.3390/agronomy11020367
The cosmopolitics of food futures: imagining nature, law, and apocalypse
Bosse, Jocelyn, Chacko, Xan and Chapman, Susannah (2020). The cosmopolitics of food futures: imagining nature, law, and apocalypse. Continuum, 34 (6), 1-18. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842124
To make one's name famous: varietal innovation and intellectual property in The Gambia
Chapman, Susannah (2018). To make one's name famous: varietal innovation and intellectual property in The Gambia. American Ethnologist, 45 (4), 482-494. doi: 10.1111/amet.12703
Finding a place for agriculture in intellectual property law
Chapman, Susannah and Sherman, Brad (2018). Finding a place for agriculture in intellectual property law. IIC International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, 49 (7), 759-762. doi: 10.1007/s40319-018-0753-8
Chapman, Susannah (2017). The politics of distinction: African elites from colonialism to liberation in a Namibian frontier town. American Ethnologist, 44 (2), 363-364. doi: 10.1111/amet.12491
Veggie Tales: Pernicious Myths About Patents, Innovation and Crop Diversity in the Twentieth Century
Chapman, Susannah and Heald, Paul J. (2012). Veggie Tales: Pernicious Myths About Patents, Innovation and Crop Diversity in the Twentieth Century. University of Illinois Law Review, 2012 (4), 1051-1102.
Proprietary plants and datafied supply chains: From bulk commodities to brand name fruits
Chapman, Susannah (2019). Proprietary plants and datafied supply chains: From bulk commodities to brand name fruits. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, 20 - 24 November 2019.
Chapman, Susannah (2018). Regulating the circulation of intangibles: end point royalties, intellectual property, and transformations in food production. Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Conference, Sydney, Australia, 29 August - 1 September 2018.
Chapman, Susannah (2018). Regulating the circulation of lively biological property: traceability, quality, and trade mark in the market for Calypso mangoes. Fabricating Trust Workshop, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, 12 September 2018.
Chapman, Susannah (2016). New varieties, agricultural experts, and "Native" farmers: the politics and power of recognition in British Colonial Gambia. American Anthropological Association Annual Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 16-20 November 2016.
Chapman, Susannah and Heald, Paul J. (2010). Apple Diversity Report Card for the Twentieth Century: Patents and Other Sources of Innovation in the Market for Apples': UGA Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-01. UGA Legal Studies Research Paper
Crop Diversity Report Card for the Twentieth Century: Diversity Bust or Diversity Boom?
Heald, Paul J. and Chapman, Susannah (2009). Crop Diversity Report Card for the Twentieth Century: Diversity Bust or Diversity Boom?.
Patents and Vegetable Crop Diversity: UGA Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-017
Heald, Paul J. and Chapman, Susannah (2009). Patents and Vegetable Crop Diversity: UGA Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-017. University Of Georgia School Of Law Research Paper Series University Of Georgia School Of Law.
The Social Life of Royalties: Plant intellectual property in Australia
(2021–2024) ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
(2019–2021) UQ Development Fellowships
(2019–2021) UQ Early Career Researcher
The role of coffee culture in social transformation and agricultural development in Ethiopia
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
Other advisors:
The Rise of Brand Name Fruit: Apples and Signification in Australia
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
Other advisors:
Last the Plant: Governing Cotton in British Colonial India, 1850¿1942
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
The archaeobotany of food systems in southern-central Africa in the first and second millennium CE and its implications for food security in the region today
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Pacific Seasonal Workers Health and Health Care Access in Australia: An Ethnographic Study of Seasonal Workers in Regional Queensland
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
The Role of the law in the circulation of the Kakadu plum (Terminalia ferdinandiana)
(2023) Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Abstracting Plants: Legal and Scientific Judgement in Australia's Plant Breeder's Rights System
(2022) Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
(2019) Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.
The Emergence of Brand Name Fruits in Australian Agriculture
This is a UQ-funded PhD project linked to the Australian Research Council-funded project “The Social Life of Royalties” (School of Social Sciences, The University of Queensland). The PhD project would suit candidates with backgrounds in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, science and technology studies, or a related field.
The larger study, to which the PhD project is attached, explores changes in intellectual property protection for plants in Australia and how these shifts are shaping practices of audit, traceability, and ownership in agricultural supply chains for grains and fruits. Congruent with these legal shifts has been the rise of new branding practices for fruit, including the development of brand-name crop varieties and the marketing of brand fruits through print media, YouTube, and Instagram. The successful PhD applicant will develop a project that explores the rise of brand name fruits within Australia’s food sector and its relationship to emerging relations of food production and/or consumption, including novel forms of commodification, audit, marketing, and signification. For example, potential project topics could include consideration of new branding practices alongside the rise of alternative seed networks, the signification of historic crops and their relation to markers of identity and place, the representational practices of capitalist supply chains, or the relations of audit and trust that accompany new forms of certification and branding.
It is envisaged that this project would use a mixture of ethnographic and archival research, but there is space to incorporate diverse methodologies.
The successful PhD applicant will be based in the School of Social Science at The University of Queensland. More information about how to apply can be found at: https://graduate-school.uq.edu.au/phd-scholarships-humanities
There is considerable flexibility in the focus, scope, and methods of project that the successful applicant can develop. Prospective applicants should feel free to contact Susannah Chapman (susannah.chapman@uq.edu.au) if they have questions.
Successful applicants must be able to commence no later than January 1, 2022.