Welcome to Food Studies: Matter, Meaning, Movement!
Take a moment to tell us about yourself, why you’re interested in this project, and get to know your fellow team members. We look forward to working with you on this exciting project.
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I’ve been teaching about food systems for 25 years, and I direct an academic program in Food Studies. I’m always interested in new teaching materials, and have lamented the lack of strong text books in the field.
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Hi all, I’m an academic researcher from The Netherlands, aiming to share knowledge on the (fairtrade) food system. I’m happy to contribute since I think the way we set up food systems definitely needs more attention among students, especially when it comes to the moments where ethics. culture (meanings) and economics meet.
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Thanks for your interest, Eefje and @mollya! I’m excited to see the team growing. 
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Glad to see you here, @e.degelder. Thanks for being part of this project!
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Hi everyone,
Thank you for inviting me into the project. I work at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University - but I live in Portland Oregon and am originally from Canada (and that’s where I met David and Irena and my link into the project). Most of my work can be seen here: www.agroecologynow.com and agroecology will be the topic I’m writing a chapter on.
I’m interested in the project because:
a) I have a hard time saying no to anything, especially when asked by amazing colleagues like David and Irena (and I don’t believe I’ve met Amanda yet, but I’m sure she is amazing too!).
b) I’m very interested in exploring alternative publishing models, especially open access ones and collective projects that enable new connections. So, happy to also have this platform also to meet some of you :->
Looking forward to learning more about the other contributors and contributions in the book.
Best,
Colin
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Hi folks!
My name is Eden Kinkaid and I am a PhD student in Geography at the University of Arizona in the United States. I’ve researched issues relating to food and agriculture for my MS and PhD. Before COVID-19 happened, I was doing fieldwork in north India about organic farming (you can read about that here). In an effort to complete my dissertation in a reasonable time frame, I then shifted to some projects here in Arizona. One is on the impacts of COVID-19 on our local/regional food system. The other one is about place and heritage-based food labels, which is the topic of my contribution to the textbook. In addition to work in geographies of food and agriculture, I also publish on a variety of other topics of personal interest, including space, gender, and sexuality; creative methods; and geographic theory. You can read more about my research projects & publications on my website.. I am also on twitter @queergeog.
I like the challenging of distilling research and concepts into digestible forms, so I am enjoying working on the textbook contribution. I am also curious about the publishing model. Looking forward to seeing your contributions!
Peace,
Eden
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Stan Blackley, Programme Leader on MSc Gastronomy at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, Scotland. Working background in environmental politics and campaigning. taking a multidisciplinary approach and using food to link culture and communication, science and systems, production and politics, environment and economics etc. and examine how they interconnect, influence and impact on each other. Particular interests include (but not limited to) food sovereignty, biocultural diversity, traditional knowledge, food sustainability, food and climate, and food in film.
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Hi everyone,
I’m very grateful to be a part of this exciting project - thank you for welcoming me aboard!
My name is Stephanie Couey and I am a fifth year Ph.D. student in English at the University of Colorado Boulder. My background is in Creative Writing, primarily as a poet. I am equally as passionate about literary studies and academic writing as I am about writing creatively, and I adore teaching in both areas.
My research right now is the most invested in food as it relates to race and femininity in the United States. My dissertation examines literary texts that have been written by multiethnic American women since the late twentieth century that foreground the fraught relationships between food culture and women’s bodies. In it, I argue that white supremacy operates implicitly and explicitly to influence American patterns of consumption, and assists in forging standards of acceptable feminine appetites and bodies as part of ongoing processes of assimilation and erasure.
My poetry tends to focus on sound, the body, and hunger/appetite.
I very much look forward to engaging with everyone’s contributions!
Stephanie
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Hello!
I’m very excited to be on board this project and to learn more about your backgrounds.
My name is Sasha Gora and I am a writer and cultural historian. Currently I am a research fellow at the Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice, where I am researching culinary reactions to climate change. Before joining Ca’ Foscari, I completed my PhD at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment & Society and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Based on my doctoral research, I am working on my first book, titled ‘Culinary Claims: A History of Indigenous Restaurants in Canada.’ (Here is a link to my website.)
For ‘Food Studies: Matter, Meaning & Movement’ I am penning a case note about analysing restaurant menus as cultural artefacts and environmental records. It is informed by three food studies courses I taught at LMU Munich’s Amerika-Institut: California Cooking: How the Golden State Changed the Way America Eats; Cooking for the Soul: African American Foodways; and, A Global History of American Food. I believe menus are rich cultural texts and am impressed by the creative and critical responses they sparked in class.
I look forward to learning more about your contributions!
Cheers from Venice
Sasha
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Hi everyone,
I have an unusual background for food studies–a masters in Ethnomusicology (Univ. of Maryland) and PhD in Folklore/Sociolinguistics/cultural anthropology (Univ. of Pennsylvania). I worked as an archivist at the Library of congress and as folklorist at theSmithsonian Institution before going into academia, but continued to work in museums and public sector venues. I taught full time at Bowilng Green State University for 15 years before dropping back to adjunct in order to establish a nonprofit center for food and culture (www.foodandculture.org). I’ve been incorporating food as a subject in my teaching since the mid-1990s in a variety of disciplines–popular culture, folklore, ethnic studies, American studies, International studies, nutrition, tourism, recreation and event planning.
I’ve published numerous articles and books on food (Culinary tourism, 2004; Regional American food culture 2009; Honey: a global history, 2017; Ethnic American food, 2015 and 2016). I also coedited a book on comfort food in 2017 and developed a virtual oral history on finding comfort/discomfort through foodways during the pandemic.
I’m pariculary interested in folkloristic approaches to food and put together a textbook reader in 2015 (The Food and folklore reader).
Looking forward to this project!
Lucy
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Hi Everyone, I am excited to be a part of this project and to working with all of you. I am currently finishing my PhD in Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada and have been researching water management in Agriculture in NSW, Australia. My areas of expertise are in agro-ecology, water management, and environmental politics generally. I look forward to working with all of you and am excited to see what the book will look like. Thanks David, Irena and Amanda for putting this project together. Best, Amanda Shankland
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Tālofa lava and hello everyone! It’s been great to read your bios – what a group!
My name is Garrett Hillyer and I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa working on food history in Oceania. My dissertation takes an ethnographic historical approach to food history in the Sāmoan archipelago. I am mostly concerned with the role of food in sustaining the Faʻa Sāmoa, or Sāmoan way of being and knowing, and how the Faʻa Sāmoa changes over time with the adoption and adaptation of imported pālagi, or non-Sāmoan, foods. I am currently a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow in Sāmoan language and area studies at UHM, as well as a Visiting Researcher with the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University in Tokyo, where I live.
Ia, faʻafetai tele lava le avanoa e gālulue ma le mamalu o lenei ʻau – Thank you very much for the opportunity to work with such a great team!
All the best,
Garrett
Happy midwinter from Toronto! I am a recent graduate of the doctoral program at OISE at the University of Toronto where my research was focused on food justice education from an ecojustice framework. My fingers and toes keep me busy (and food on the table) in the realms of science and environmental education at a few local institutions. Happy to be contributing to this project and to connect to other folks in the global food studies community.
Thank you all for inviting me. My name is Erica Hall, M.S CED, MBA, ARM. I live in St. Petersburg, Florida. I am the chair of the Florida Food Policy Council and the Vice-Chair of the Suncoast Sierra Club with an extensive background as a community organizer, advocate, non-profit executive and Board member, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) consultant, and Senior Legal Professional. I have worked in urban agriculture, community development, urban planning, environmental justice, public health, neighborhood preservation, food policy, and advocacy and on all aspects of non-profit management, corporate, and commercial real estate transactions. I have worked with the US Green Building Council (USGBC), the American Planning Association, the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) and other environmental, neighborhood revitalization groups throughout the DC area focusing on youth development, urban agriculture, food insecurity, workforce training, affordable housing, historic and neighborhood preservation. I have collaborated and partnered on developing Food Policy Councils in NY, DC, VA, and MD while remaining active in the green building and environmental justice community, using my platform to combine leadership, advocacy and activism. My work in rooted in the intersectionality of food studies and sustainability
Hello everyone!
My name is Alanna Higgins and I’m a PhD Candidate in Geography at West Virginia University. I study food justice, food sovereignty, and am also interested in equitable pedagogy so I am very excited for this textbook! I am writing a case study about produce prescription programs in West Virginia.
Excited to meet everyone else and can’t wait to see what we bring together!
-Alanna
Hello Everyone,
Thank you so much for the opportunity to join such a wonderful team!
My name is Johanna Wilkes. I am a Ph.D. Candidate at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The focus of my research is the intersection between public policy, sustainable food systems, and governance-across-scales. My contribution for this project is exploring the role of municipal food policy in the adoption of - or barriers to – local food systems initiatives (e.g. livestock and land use) in Ontario.
I am looking forward to working with everyone,
Johanna
Hello Everyone,
Greetings from snowy Montreal!
I am a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University, researching food-based waste through critical design and public pedagogy. I am excited to be a part of this process, contribute and learn from all of you. Particularly, open access publishing feels right these days, and I am interested to understand this better.
