Researcher biography
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.
Book Chapters
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Journal Articles
Chapman, Susannah and Chacko, Xan Sarah (2022). Seed: gendered vernaculars and relational possibilities. Feminist Anthropology, 3 (2), 353-361. doi: 10.1002/fea2.12070
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
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
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
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
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.
Conference Papers
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 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 (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 (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.
Research Reports
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.