The Biocultural Diaspora of Tea in the 21st Century

该博士研究项目是与英国皇家植物园邱园合作开发的，旨在研究21世纪茶叶生产的新地理位置。茶叶种植正在欧洲和北美经历复兴，越来越多的茶农和制造商主要通过网络营销向全球消费者提供利基特色茶。该项目考察了这一现象对茶叶生产文化、我们对茶叶地理和茶叶生物多样性的理解的影响。根据经验，该研究将与英国和美国的工艺茶种植者和制造商合作，了解他们的茶树库存的采购和发展，他们的生产实践，他们的营销话语，以及他们的主要消费市场。这个项目是由候选人对邱园经济植物学收藏的历史茶叶标本的研究发展而来的。这项工作强调了这些标本在记录茶叶种植的连续引进方面的重要性，首先是在阿萨姆邦，然后是斯里兰卡、牙买加、肯尼亚和其他殖民地。博士研究以此为基础，调查英国和美国当代茶的引进情况。作为一个合作项目，它借鉴了互补的智力优势：邱园致力于利用殖民地标本及其历史来解决当代问题，皇家霍洛威在食品地理学和植物人文方面的优势。邱园还在种子银行和知识产权等相关植物主题方面提供专业知识。反过来，邱园将受益于学生对生活和研究藏品的解读；项目的公众参与活动计划；在邱园开始了21世纪的茶叶收藏，其水平与19世纪的茶叶收藏不相上下。

Developed in partnership with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this PhD research project addresses new geographies of tea production in the 21st Century. Tea cultivation is experiencing a renaissance in Europe and North America, with an expanding number of tea growers and makers supplying niche specialty teas to consumers globally, chiefly facilitated via internet marketing. The project examines the implications of this phenomenon for cultures of tea production, our understanding of tea's geographies, and tea's biodiversity. Empirically, the research will engage with craft tea growers and makers in the UK and USA on their sourcing and development of tea plant stocks, their production practices, their marketing discourses, and their key consumer markets.This project has grown out of research by the candidate into the historic tea specimens in the Economic Botany collection at Kew. This work highlighted the significance of these specimens in documenting successive introductions of tea cultivation, first in Assam, then in Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Kenya and other colonies. The doctoral research builds on this to investigate contemporary introductions of tea in the United Kingdom and the United States. As a collaborative project it draws on complementary intellectual strengths:Kew's commitment to using colonial specimens and their history to address contemporary issues, and Royal Holloway's strength in food geographies and plant humanities. Kew also brings specialist expertise in relevant botanical topics such as seed banking and intellectual property. In turn, Kew will benefit from the student's input into interpretation of living and research collections; the project's programme of public engagement activity; and the initiation of a 21st Century tea collection at Kew of a similar calibre to that developed in the19th Century.