Latin American and Caribbean Ethnography Seminar

Organised by the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)

Speaker: Ana María Ulloa (Universidad de los Andes)

Training chemists and their noses across fields:  the study of tropical fruit aromas in Colombia

Aroma chemistry is a small academic field with large industrial effects. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, its research and development largely depended on the flavor and fragrance industry and has come primarily from Europe, North America, and Japan. In Colombia, aroma chemistry only began in the 1980s, when a small research group led by women chemists from a public university started investigating the aroma of Colombian tropical fruits. Their group has steadily consolidated since then and had a major industrial breakthrough by contributing to the making of a highly successful local blackberry aroma in the national food market. Based on interviews, life stories, and ethnography of the classroom, this talk will focus on how olfactory training for chemistry students interested in aroma has occurred at different research periods and across the classroom, the laboratory, and the industry. It will highlight students of chemistry and chemists' perceptions about the importance of this type of training for their research and work, and how training opportunities are made locally available amid scarce resources. Moreover, this case study seeks to contribute to elucidating the role of the senses and sensory knowledge in technical and analytical practice in chemistry- a discipline known by its learning-by-making approach.  

This seminar session is co-hosted with the Department of Social Anthropology at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. 

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