I currently serve as the lead curator of the archive. The Design Group includes researchers Shan-Ya Su, Paul Jobin, Wen-Ling Tu, Nancy Bui, and Kim Fortun. A partial list of contributors can be found in the archive FAQ. As the project develops, the Design Group statement will need to include more details about stewardship of the archive, duration of positions, access, and membership.
Initially, the project was called the Formosa Plastics Archive, which we later changed to Formosa Plastics Global Archive. It's important to note that "Formosa" is a name that Portuguese sailors gave the Island of Taiwan in 1542 (Ilha Formosa, the beautiful island, see also Republic of Formosa).
I only recently began using PECE fieldnotes that I publish with restricted access for members of the Formosa Plastics Global Archive research group. In general, I tend to use the fieldnotes as a way to recap events and online meetings, often in brief jottings and bullet points.
Before I learned about PECE's fieldnote function, I used memos to capture both quick jottings and writing reflections. Recently, I wrote a memo in which I revisit email exchanges with activists that shaped the beginnings of the archive project.
The Formosa Archive includes PDFs, photographs, videos, and text artifacts. See a list of public artifacts Disaster-STS and a comprehensive catalogue in Zotero.
Currenlty, there are timelines focused on legal cases, activists campaigns, and news reporting.
The archive is largely organized around place essays (Calhoun County, Texas, for exampe), thematic collections (The Waterkeepers Win, for example), and more recently industrial facility essays (Sixth Naphtha Cracker Complex, for example.
One reason for the ongoing expansion of Formosa's global operations is the boom in oil and shale gas since 2014, enabled by new unconventional extractive technologies. In turn, we decided to add the Fracking Boom as substantive logic for the development of the Formosa Archive.A related thread (or threat) to watch is Formosa Plastics' ongoing import of Russian oil and discussion about an embargo in Taiwan.
I have used artifact bundles to link interviews and transcripts, see example here.
