research overview
- Dr. Fischer's research focuses on the interactions between people, place, and plants - specifically coffee plants. It examines the ways in which ideas about what makes coffee good, and what makes good coffee, change across space and time. Her work takes a multi-sited approach that combines participant-observation within the specialty coffee industry and with coffee growers, primarily in Central America. Earlier work examined national identity and the changing socioeconomics of coffee production in Costa Rica. Her more current work investigates coffee processing methods and the ways in which these combine, or do not, with perceptions and measurements of risk, reward, and quality, for growers in Honduras and El Salvador. She is particularly interested in the ways in which climate change and the low price of coffee have combined with increasingly challenging standards to push once-stable growers towards migration and abandonment of their fields.
