Scholar Series: Dr. Carla D. Martin, Harvard Professor and Founder of the FCCI

Description: Carla D. Martin, PhD, is the Founder and Executive Director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute (FCCI), a Lecturer in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She leads the course: ‘Chocolate, Culture, and the Politics of Food’, known to many in the chocolate industry as ‘Chocolate Class’. Her work at the FCCI focuses on identifying, developing, and promoting fine cacao and chocolate, primarily by addressing ethics and quality issues in the supply chain. A social anthropologist with interdisciplinary interests that include history, agronomy, ethnomusicology, and linguistics, her current research focuses on the politics of fine cacao and chocolate in a global perspective, for which she has conducted fieldwork in West Africa, Latin America, North America, and Europe. 

From 2011-2015, she maintained a scholarly blog on chocolate, culture, and the politics of food at Bittersweet Notes. Her previous academic research examined the longstanding problem of language inequality in Cape Verde and its large diaspora and how scholars and creative artists have both perpetuated and challenged this inequality. Through historical and ethnographic study she charted the elements of language, race, gender, and social class expressed through music and the arts into the sociopolitical world of which they are a part and explored the ongoing, fruitful interventions and subversions made by Cape Verdean performers in debates surrounding the meaning of womanhood, "Africanness," and "Creoleness." Her writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in Transition Magazine, Social Dynamics, The Root, US History Scene, Sodade Magazine, Socio.hu, The Savannah Review, and edited volumes. She lectures widely and has taught extensively in African and African American Studies, critical food studies, social anthropology, and ethnomusicology, and has received numerous awards in recognition of excellence in teaching. She received her PhD in African and African American Studies in 2012, her MA in Social Anthropology in 2007, and her BA in Social Anthropology in 2003, all from Harvard University. Find her online at carladmartin.com and @carladmartin.

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Dr. Carla D. Martin Photo credit: FCCI

Topics discussed in this chocolate podcast episode:
- Dr. Martin's Cape Verdean fellowship, launching her chocolate career and area of scholarship
- Her PhD in African and African American Studies and Anthropology provided a foundation for lessons and a future focused on the study and awareness of inequality
- Creating a syllabus for ‘Chocolate Class’ — 200 students the first year alone; now teaching thousands, both in-person and online through Harvard Extension School
- How the FCCI started, and how academia was woven into activities focused around industry education and research; support of the specialty market
- Colin Gasko's cacao quality class; originally a beta class with Dr. Kristy Leissle / Jamin Haddox (SCA professor) became the Cacao Grader Intensive through FCCI to adapt and scale it to be accessible to more people globally. With goals to: provide a curr