Agata Stronciwilk
Assistant Professor
Jan Długosz University of Czestochowa, Poland
Agata Stronciwilk, PhD, assistant professor at Faculty of Fine Arts at Jan Długosz Academy in Częstochowa. She graduated from Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities (Cultural Studies and Philosophy) at University of Silesia and Art History at University of Wrocław. Her research focuses on food in contemporary art. She is particularly interested in the topics of food and power, migration, and senses.
Contact at a.stronciwilk[at]ujd.edu.pl
Alessandro Gerosa
Postdoctoral Researcher
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Alessandro Gerosa is Postdoctoral researcher in Economic Sociology at the Catholic University of Milan. Currently is working at the project “Milano Collabora” (Milan collaborates), devoted to the analysis of sharing economy platforms in Milan, in partnership with the municipality of Milan and the Polytechnic of Milan. Before, he earned his PhD in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research in 2020 at the University of Milan with a thesis titled “The Hipster Economy: An ethnography of creative food and beverage micro-entrepreneurs in the Italian context” and has been visiting scholar at the Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies (CAMEo) of the University of Leicester. His main research interests are the role of authenticity in contemporary society, neo-artisanal industries, food and beverage consumption, the creative and sharing economy in contemporary capitalism, digital cultures and methods. His work has been published on Consumption, Markets & Culture and presented at several international conferences.
Contact at alessandro.gerosa[at]unicatt.it
Alfonso Gómez-Rossi
Professor
Instituto Universitario Boulanger, Mexico
Alfonso Gómez-Rossi obtained his B.A. in History at the University of Arizona, where he was a member of the Gamma Beta Phi Honor Society (2000). Finished his Master´s in North American Studies (2010) and a Doctorate in Culture and Theory (2016) at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, graduating Cum Laude. Has been a teacher at the Instituto Universitario Boulanger since 2006. Has had publications in different academic journals in the United States and Colombia. Alfonso Gómez-Rossi will be presenting with Onassis Morales.
Contact at alfonsogomezrossi[at]gmail.com
Alissa Overend
Associate Professor
MacEwan University, Canada
Alissa Overend is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Coordinator for the Gender Studies Minor at MacEwan University in Edmonton/Amiskwacîwâskahikan, in Treaty 6 Territory. Her teaching and research interests include the sociology of health and illness; food and nutrition; gender and intersectional inequality; feminist and contemporary social theory. Her recent book, Shifting Food Facts: Dietary Discourse in a Post-Truth Culture(Overend, 2021), examines the politics of shifting food truths.
Contact at overenda[at]macewan.ca
Alexandra Widmer
Assistant Professor
York University, Canada
Sandra Widmer is conducting research on the public life of the microbiome and precision medicine with her SSHRC IDG grant “Eating for Trillions: The Social Life of Direct to Consumer Microbiome Tests”. She is interested in digital health, reproduction, labour and the human-microbial assemblages of food cultures. In other work she focuses on British and Australian colonial histories’ impacts on women’s health, food and reproduction in the southwestern Pacific. Sandra Widmer is an assistant professor in the anthropology department at York University. She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
Contact at swidmer[at]yorku.ca
Antti-Ville Kärjä
Professor
University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland
Antti-Ville Kärjä is professor of cultural music research at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. In 2016–19 he was Chair of the Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology and in 2017–19 served in the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). In 2008–13 he was Chair of the IASPM Nordic branch. He is a member in the editorial boards of Perfect Beat and the Journal of World Popular Music. His research interests include epistemologies and modalities of music, particularly in the context of audiovisual media and cultural heritagisation. His work is informed by theories and methodologies drawn from ethnomusicology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies and historiography of music. His latest publications include four ethnomusicological documentary films, both ethnographic and historical in orientation.
Contact at antti-ville.karja[at]uniarts.fi
Anu Hopia
Professor
University of Turku, Finland
Anu Hopia works as research professor of food development in the University of Turku and holds also adjunct proferssorship (title of docent) in food science at the University of Helsinki. She is a team leader of a 9-member research group Taste and Health (located in South Ostrobothnia as part of South Ostrobothnian University network). She is PI of several on-going projects funded by Academy of Finland, Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, EU etc. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at University of California Davis (USA). AH has published more than seventy academic papers on food science, and several books and articles on popular science.
Arlette Martinez
Independent Researcher
Canada
Arlette Martinez is a cultural anthropologist and independent researcher who is particularly interested in exploring the intersections of food culture, digital technologies, identity and consumption. She has a Masters of Anthropology and Ethnography from the University of Barcelona and in 2015 was awarded a Bosch-Gimpera Foundation Research Scholarship. Her most recent project looks at the commodification of cultural foods and culinary destinations through social media. Arlette is a former chef and a member of the Canadian Association for Food Studies.
Contact at arlette.y.martinez[at]gmail.com
Brigit Ramsingh
Indepedent Researcher & Food Writer
Canada
Brigit Ramsingh is an Ottawa-based independent researcher and food writer, and former Senior Lecturer in Food Safety Management at the University of Central Lancashire (2013-2020). In the UK, Brigit was a founding member of Sustainable Food North West and helped set up a student-led social enterprise (Students Creating Resources Around Nutrition – ‘SCRAN’) which delivered on-campus cooking sessions and food education workshops to local schools in Lancashire. Brigit completed her PhD at the University of Toronto on the history of international food safety standards, focusing on the United Nations’ Codex Alimentarius (‘Food Code’), and has previously worked in policy for Health Canada’s Food Directorate. She recently received the Canada-UK Foundation Award for her research on maple syrup history in Canada, which will be the subject of her forthcoming book.
Contact at brigit.ramsingh[at]gmail.com
Cameron Butler
PhD Student
York University, Canada
Cameron Butler is a PhD student and Vanier Canadian Graduate Scholar in the department of Social Anthropology at York University. His doctoral research traces the movements of phosphorus through the BC Fraser Valley in order to explore how those movements are shaped by white supremacy, settler-colonialism, and capitalism. Through this research, he contends with how Canadian white settlers’ bodies are sustained on a molecular level through global systems of mineral extraction, industrial production, agriculture, and food distribution. His previous research explored how Canadian settlers incorporated wetlands into colonial regimes of land ownership and commodification. That project outlined the historical processes through which settlers established and defined Burns Bog in Delta, BC via drainage, cultivation, and conservation efforts. He has published works in the Journal of Environmental Management, the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, and the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment.
Contact at cambutl[at]yorku.ca
Candan Turkkan
Assistant Professor
Ozyegin University, Turkey
Candan Turkkan received her BA degree on Social and Political Sciences in 2008 from Sabanci University. She holds two MA degrees: The first from The New York University (where she was also a Fulbright Scholar), awarded in 2010, and the second from The New School for Social Research, awarded in 2012. After 4 hectic years in New York, Candan declined the prestigious Dean’s Fellowship from NSSR and continued on to PhD in the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Political Science. These days, she is teaching food, politics and sustainability at Ozyegin University’s Gastronomy and Culinary Arts department to the future chefs of Turkey and beyond. She is also writing widely for academic and general audiences. Her work continues to be theoretical and ethnographic, taking up questions of (bio)politics, neoliberalism, food, power and political economy.
Contact at candan.turkkan[at]ozyegin.edu.tr
Danielle Wilde
Assistant Professor
The University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Danielle Wilde is Associate Professor of Embodied Design at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). She is 2020-2021 Visiting Professor at Estonia Academy of Art Doctoral School, Tallinn, and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. At SDU, she directs the [body|bio] Soft Lab, and leads research into food and regenerative futures. She specialises in participatory, speculative and critical research-through-design, bringing focus to the social and ecological sustainability of body-technology and (more-than-) human-food interactions. Her methods enable diverse stakeholders to engage with problems that cut cross disciplines and cultures, and develop new practices, policies, technologies and relationships through a bottom-up approach. Wilde has a long-standing commitment to workshops, salons and research labs in the wild to support collective consideration of challenging issues. She sees such approaches as convivial conduits for critical debate. She publishes and exhibits widely. Her most recent article for She Ji Journal if Design, Economics and Innovation unfolds her thinking on Design Research Education for Global Concerns. In her ongoing commitment to embodied design research, and regenerative futures, Wilde co-founded www.foodfutures.group and the Nordic-Baltic BioMedia network, is an MC member of enec-cost.eu, a member of the State of the Art network, and co-chair of the alt.chi track at CHI2021, the workshops track at Nordes2021, and is on the committee for the pictorials track at Creativity and Cognition 2021.
More info: www.daniellewilde.com
David Szanto
Teacher, Researcher & Writer
Canada
David Szanto is a teacher, researcher, and writer who takes an experimental approach to gastronomy through design, ecology, and performance. Past projects include performative meals focusing on urban foodscapes, collaborations with sensory and music artists, and performance-installations about memory, death, and the microbiome. He has taught about food, performance, and communications at several universities in Canada and Europe, and has published widely in both scholarly and consumer outlets: davidszanto.com. David Szanto will be presenting with Simon Laroche.
Contact at david.szanto[at]gmail.com
Defne Karaosmanoglu
Associate Professor
Kadir Has University, Istanbul
Defne Karaosmanoğlu is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Communication at Kadir Has University, Istanbul. She obtained her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from McGill University. She teaches courses on nation branding, public diplomacy, food and culture, media analysis and methodology. Her research interests include cultural studies of food, popular culture, public diplomacy, discourse and everyday life studies. She has published articles in journals such as International Journal of Cultural Studies, Food, Culture and Society, Space and Culture, Journal of Intercultural Studies, International Journal of Communication and Journal of Ethnic Foods.
Contact at defne.karaosmanoglu[at]khas.edu.tr
Edda Starck
Postgraduate Student
Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany
Edda Starck is a postgraduate student at Georg-August-University Göttingen, where she studies Anthropology and Cultural Musicology. She holds and MA in Anthropology and Music from the University of Aberdeen. Since 2019 she has been working as a researcher in the project FOOD2GATHER “Exploring foodscapes as public spaces for integration”, funded by HERA and the European Commission (H2020). Besides foodscapes and migration studies, her research interests include multispecies conviviality and environmental temporalities. Edda Stark will be presenting with Raúl Matta.
Contact at edda.starck[at]stud.uni-goettingen.de
Emily Reisman
Assistant Professor
University of Buffalo, U.S.A.
Emily Reisman is an Assistant Professor of Environment & Sustainability at the University at Buffalo. Her work engages agrarian political economy, more-than-human-geography and feminist science studies to understand rapid agri-food system transformations. Current projects examine the global almond boom, the digitization of agriculture, and the intensification of migratory crop pollination. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright Program and Wenner-Gren Foundation and has received awards from the Society for Agriculture, Food & Human Values and the Anthropology and Environment Society.
Contact at ereisman[at]buffalo.edu
Erik Fooladi
Associate Professor
Volda University College, Norway
Erik Fooladi holds a doctorate in chemistry from University of Oslo. He is presently associate professor at Volda University College, Norway, within science teacher education and home economics teacher education. He has an extensive production of teaching resources and popular scientific material in the interface between science and food, most recently as co-author of the popular-science book “A Pinch of Culinary Science: Boiling an Egg Inside Out and Other Kitchen Tales” (Finnish/Norwegian: 2017, English: 2019). His main research interest is research in education and communication in domain intersections, such as between science, cooking and food culture, and between scientific and procedural/craftsmanship/practical knowledge. Particular foci are inquiry, argumentation, context-based education and epistemic aspects inherent in transdisciplinary contexts, particularly but not limited to food and cooking. More recently, research interests have moved towards sense/ory experiences in the intersection between sciences and arts, both from an epistemic perspective per se (philosophy of science vs. philosophy of art vs. food/gastronomy), as well as within teaching and learning. He is a musician (percussionist), and collaborates with both researchers, artists and other practitioners to produce, perform, and do research in the context of multimodal and multisensory performances.
Contact at ef[at]hivolda.no
Fabiana Li
Associate Professor
University of Manitoba, Canada
Fabiana Li is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba whose work focuses on the politics of knowledge relating to the environment, agriculture, food, and social movements in Latin America. Her current research on the global expansion of quinoa production interrogates the promise of quinoa for food security and sustainable agriculture, and examines the controversies surrounding the ownership, control, and dissemination of quinoa varieties. She is the author of “Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru” (Duke University Press 2015), based on her previous work on resource extraction and environmental conflicts in Peru.
Contact at fabiana.li[at]umanitoba.ca
Geetha Sukumaran
PhD Student
York University, Canada
Geetha Sukumaran is a poet, translator, and a doctoral student in Humanities at York University, Toronto. Her current research focuses on Tamil women’s writings from Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu that connect culinary practices with war trauma, memory, familial and caste oppression. She has published two books in Tamil: Tharkolaikku parakkum panithuli (Tamil translation of Sylvia Plath’s poems, 2013), and her poems, Otrai pakadaiyil enchum nampikkai (The Hope Set in a Single Die, 2014). Her English translations of Tamil poems have appeared in several journals and magazines including Modern Poetry in Translation and 91st Meridian. Her English translation of Ahilan’s poetry, Then There Were No Witnesses, was published by Mawenzi House, Toronto (2018). She is the recipient of the SPARROW R Thyagarajan award for her poetry.
Contact at gsukumaran6[at]gmail.com
Hannah Johnson
Master’s Student
University of Winnipeg, Canada
Hannah is from the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, living in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. She is currently studying for a Masters of Indigenous Development Practice at the University of Winnipeg. She is interested in Indigenous food sovereignty. One of her dreams is to return to her home community and assist the tribal Chairwoman in implementation of a community garden project. She hopes to be able to use food systems analysis in an international context, comparing and contrasting food security and sovereignty between Indigenous communities that share little outside of a common history of colonization. She hopes to utilize this comparative international lens to lend to food systems research.
Ian Turner
Graduate Student
University of Toronto, Canada
Ian Turner is a graduate student at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. His dissertation project examines the processes of building, dwelling, and reproducing domestic spaces and social formations, as they chiefly pertain to Buddhist Newar traditions in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. As part of this project, Ian is studying the overlap of domestic labour, ritual, and foodways as a key locus for the formation of religious sensibilities in this Vajrayāna Buddhist householder tradition. Ian also works alongside the Canadian Newar Guthi in their efforts to establish an identity around food within the culturally diverse landscape of southern Ontario.
Contact at ian.turner[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Isabella Altoe
PhD Candidate
Queen’s University, Canada
Isabella Altoe is a PhD student at the Cultural Studies Program of Queen’s University. She holds a Master’s Degree in Social Sciences at Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil. As a food researcher, her interests are cultural heritage and memory, agri-food systems, food futures and the Anthropocene and multispecies relations.
Contact at isabella.altoe[at]queensu.ca
Irena Knezevic
Associate Professor
Carleton University, Canada
Irena Knezevic is an associate professor in communication, culture, and health. Her focus is on food systems, food labelling, health communication and health equity, and the discourse around food and health. She has worked in the realm of “alternative” food for more than a decade through collaborative, community-embedded research that documents the contributions of on more-than-market business models, as well as informal and social economy of food.
Contact at irena.knezevic[at]carleton.ca
Jackson Guo
PhD student
University of Toronto, Canada
I am a fifth-year PhD candidate of history at University of Toronto. I am currently completing my dissertation project about late imperial Chinese drinking culture and practices. The project examines the intersection between changing drinking habits and tastes, state-society relations, and the rise of Chinese nationalism between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. It contributes new insights and critiques to the existing scholarship about the formation of literati aesthetics, popular practices, and economic transformation of the late imperial era through a unique lens of alcohol consumption. The project investigates a wide range of primary documents, including legal cases, government directives, memorials, palace records of food and beverage consumption, and literati writings, many of which are hitherto unexplored by historians.
Jacqueline Botterill
Associate Professor
Brock University, Canada
Jacqueline Botterill, Associate Professor, Brock University, teaches and researches in the areas of food studies, consumer cultures, promotional communication, media and audiences.
Janis Goldie
Professor & Chair of the Communication Studies Department
Huntington at Laurentian University, Canada
Janis Goldie (Ph.D., University of Calgary) is Professor and Chair of the Communication Studies Department at Huntington University in Sudbury, ON. Her research focuses on Canadian communication contexts, including investigating discourses of food allergies via popular culture artifacts, news media, governmental sites and stakeholders themselves. She also publishes on issues of digital media and privacy, pedagogy, as well as on representations of war and popular culture artifacts. Most recently, she co-edited two books, “The Handmaid’s Tale:” Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance Across Disciplines and Borders (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019, with Karen. A. Ritzenhoff,) and New Perspectives on the War Film (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019, with Clementine Tholas and Karen A. Ritzenhoff).
Contact at jgoldie[at]laurentian.ca
Joanne Taylor
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of British Columbia, Canada
Dr. Joanne Taylor has an undergraduate degree in environmental anthropology from the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus located on the unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Dr. Taylor conducted her master’s research in water security during the renegotiation of the bi-lateral Columbia River Treaty in the Creston Valley of B.C. Dr. Taylor received her SSHRC funded PhD while investigating food security and food sovereignty in the Creston Valley of British Columbia in the context of catastrophic climate change. While examining the relationship of industrial agriculture, market gardening, and Indigenous food production, Dr. Taylor developed a novel assessment matrix in order to determine the relative contributions of the various food production systems in the Creston Valley to food security locally and globally. Dr. Taylor is currently a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science at The University of British Columbia – Okanagan Campus and is conducting research in agricultural adaptation in relation to climate change in the Cariboo and Okanagan Regions of B.C. Dr. Taylor’s current research explores the obstacles and challenges of how the agriculture industry and its producers can access a sustainable water supply for food production as an adaptation strategy during impactful climate change scenarios, specifically in respect to BC’s Water Sustainability Act.
Contact at joanne.taylor[at]ubc.ca
Jonathan Roberts
Associate Professor & Chair of Department of History
Review Editor – Canadian Journal of African Studies
Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada
Jonathan Roberts is a specialist in the history of medicine and religion in West Africa. His recent book, Sharing the Burden: A History of Healing in Accra, is the culmination of years of archival and interview research in the capital of Ghana. Roberts asserts that a commitment to pluralism, rather than a singular medical tradition, allowed several forms of a healing to flourish in Accra. Jonathan is also interested in the intersections of race and food, in particular the association of whiteness with farmers markets.
Katie Konstantopoulos
Independent Researcher
University of Toronto, Canada
Katie Konstantopoulos is an independent researcher who can often be found exploring the geographical intersections of food, memory, and the body. With a focus on settler-diasporic communities, she examines domestic labour as movement work, effective solidarities in digital art spaces, and the politics of municipal planning. Currently freelancing as a digital media consultant and working on a certificate in Sustainable Planning at Seneca College, she writes, designs, and collaborates on city-building, pedagogy, and food systems projects from the suburbs of Schomberg & Scarborough & everywhere in-between. Katie Konstantopoulos will be presenting with Koby Song-Nichols.
Contact at katie.konstantopoulos[at]gmail.com
Kelsey Speakman
PhD Candidate
York University, Canada
Kelsey Speakman is a PhD candidate in Communication and Culture at York University. Her research interests include: political economies/ecologies of food provisioning and marketing, the ethics and social practices of shopping and food consumption, and human-nonhuman interactions in consumer culture. Kelsey’s recent work includes publications and presentations on meat marketing, alternative proteins, and new trends in grocery shopping. Currently, her research explores communication practices surrounding beef in contemporary Canadian supermarkets.
Contact at speakman[at]yorku.ca
Kendra Lee Sanders
PhD Candidate
University of Chicago, U.S.A.
Kendra Lee Sanders is a PhD student in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. She is a filmmaker, who specializes in cinematography and color. She received her MSt in Film Aesthetics with Distinction from the University of Oxford and a BA in English and a BA in Film, Television, and Digital Media from the University of Kentucky, where she was a John R. and Joan B. John Gaines Fellow in the Humanities. Her research explores mobile screens and wearable technologies, digital aesthetics, and ecology.
Contact at klsanders[at]uchicago.edu
Koby Song-Nichols
PhD Student
University of Toronto, Canada
Koby Song-Nichols is a PhD student in history and food studies at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on Chinese American and Chinese Canadian diasporic food history. His dissertation work more specifically examines the interethnic and intercultural negotiations, solidarities, and communities formed over Chinese food in the multicultural cities of Toronto, Montréal, and Phoenix. Koby Song-Nichols will be presenting with Katie Konstantopoulos.
Contact at koby.songnichols[at]mail.utoronto.ca
Linea Cutter
PhD Candidate
Virginia Polytecnic Institute & State University, U.S.A.
Linea Cutter is a PhD student in the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT), and an instructor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech. Her research interests broadly encompass international political economy, global food regimes, critical food and eating studies, and feminist geopolitics. She is currently working on her dissertation, which examines neoliberal subject-food relationships through the analytical grid of neoliberal governmentality and biomedicalization. Through this grid and attendant concepts of (eating) regime and (food-specific) dispositif, the project analyzes how power is inscribed on, read through, and co-produced by the bodies of eating, tasting neoliberal achievement subjects.
Contact at linea[at]vt.edu
Lisa Young
Master’s Candidate
University of Winnipeg, Canada
Lisa is Anishinaabe from Miskoo-ziibiing – Bloodvein River First Nation. She is currently in the process of completing her thesis, titled; ANTAWAYNCHIKAYWIN MINO PIMATISIWIN OONJI – HUNTING AND FISHING FOR A GOOD LIFE. Her goal is to complete her Master’s degree and to return home to work for her community in the area of preservation and revitalization in Hunting, fishing, trapping and harvesting. As well as to ensure that Anishinaabemowin is incorporated in revitalizing these teaching to future generations. Lisa Young will be presenting with Shailesh Shukla.
Lynne Milgram
Anthropology Professor
Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University, Canada
B. Lynne Milgram is professor of anthropology at OCAD University, Toronto. Her research on gender and development in the northern Philippines has analyzed the cultural politics of social change with regard to microfinance and to women’s work in crafts and in the Philippine-Hong Kong secondhand clothing trade. Milgram’s current Philippine research investigates transformations of urban public space and issues of informality and extralegality with regard to street vending, public marketplaces, and food security and provisioning systems. Milgram’s most recent co-edited volume is: (2013) (with K.T. Hansen and W. E. Little) Street Economies in the Urban Global South (SAR). Recent food studies publications include: (2021) Social Entrepreneurship and Arabica Coffee Production in the Northern Philippines. Human Organization 80(1):72-82; (2021) The Resilience of a Wholesale Vegetable Market in Benguet Northern Philippines. In Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics. C. Panella & W. E. Little, eds., 137-159. Lexington Books; (2020) (Re)Situating Street Foods and Vending in the Northern Upland Philippines. Economic Anthropology 7:51-64; (2019) Gift-Commodity Entanglements: (In)Formalizing Regulation in a Transnational Philippine Market Trade. Anthropologica 61:51-63.
Contact at lmilgram[at]faculty.ocadu.ca
Majing Oloko
PhD Candidate
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Majing is originally from the Shiwer district of Plateau State, Middle-Belt Nigeria. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan. Her research interest lies around human dimensions of Indigenous and local food systems. She is passionate about working with communities who are seeking sustainable and culturally appropriate ways to strengthen their traditional food system. Her PhD research examines youth participation in Indigenous and Local food systems in the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada.
Contact at majing.oloko[at]usask.ca
Maya Hey
PhD Candidate
Concordia University, Canada
Maya Hey works across disciplines as a researcher, foodmaker, and educator with backgrounds in the culinary arts, nutrition sciences, and community organization. She is a Vanier scholar (SSHRC) and doctoral candidate (ABD) in the Communications Department at Concordia University, where she is also an alumna of the Public Scholars Program and a former Faculty of Arts & Science Fellow. She is currently the writer-in-residence at Pressbooks and is passionate about open education practices. Her work experience spans chemistry labs, commercial kitchens, R&D firms, organic farms, and Trader Joe’s, where she has cumulatively garnered over 15 years of experience facilitating discussions around contemporary food issues. She has developed an array of collaborative projects with audiences ranging from pre-schoolers to health professionals and aims to engage the everyday eater with practical knowledge. She tweets at @heymayahey and shares visuals on her Instagram feed, @heymayahey
Contact at maya.hey[at]mail.concordia.ca
Myriam Durocher
Postdoctoral Researcher
Carleton University, Canada & the University of Sydney, Australia
Myriam Durocher is a postdoctoral researcher at Carleton University (Canada) and at the University of Sydney (Australia). Her research interests revolve around critically addressing the power relationships and issues that take form at the intersection of (“healthy”) food, bodies, health and environment(s). Her PhD research thesis, anchored in a cultural studies perspective, questioned the social construction of “healthy” food in Quebec’s (Canada) contemporary food culture and how it contributes to the (re)production of uneven relationships between human and more-than-human bodies. In her current postdoctoral research, Myriam explores the temporalities and materialities involved in practices applied to bodies and food materials (such as blood testing, or pesticides analysis) that aim to prevent health-related risks associated with food ingestion.
Contact at myriamdurocher[at]cunet.carleton.ca
Natalie Doonan
Assistant Professor
Université de Montréal, Canada
Natalie Doonan is a new media and performance artist, writer and educator. She works at the intersection of media arts and performance, sensory studies and cultural geography. Her research focuses on food and on techniques for sensing place. Her current research centers on the Montreal shores of the St. Lawrence River, where she studies various forms of inter-species communication, including for consumption – for example, through fishing, foraging, and hunting. Natalie’s work has been shown in exhibitions internationally, including: the Cultural Olympiad for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the LIVE Performance Art Biennale, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Montréal’s Elektra Festival and BIAN, Nuit Blanche and Art Souterrain and in the Tunisian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2017. Her work toured Canada and Europe in 2015-2016 as part of Performigrations: People Are the Territory, a collaborative international mobile art installation funded by the European Commission. Her writing has appeared in professional and peer reviewed publications, including: Gastronomica, Gender, Place & Culture, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, Public Art Dialogue, and the Senses and Society. She serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at l’Université de Montréal.
Contact at natalie.doonan[at]umontreal.ca
Nicholas Bascuñan Wiley
PhD Candidate
Northwestern University, U.S.A.
Nicholas Bascuñan-Wiley is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Northwestern University. His ethnographic research explores the intersections of migration and sensation through transnational food culture. His most recent project focuses on culinary and gastronomic practices at a distance, examining how communities maintain connectivity and establish belonging through food amidst physical separation.
Contact at nickbw[at]u.northwestern.edu
Nora Faltmann
PhD Candidate
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK
Nora Katharina Faltmann is a PhD candidate in Development Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria and her research lies at the intersection of food and critical development studies. As part of the research project ‘A Body-Political Approach to the Study of Food: Vietnam and the Global Transformations’, her research focuses on food safety in Ho Chi Minh City with particular attention to questions of access and exclusion among the country’s growing socio-economic divide. She is co-editor of the edited volume ‘Food Anxiety in Globalising Vietnam’ (Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan). She was a visiting researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London in 2018/19 and subsequently taught at SOAS’ Anthropology Department in 2019/20.
Onassis Morales
Master’s Student
Universidad Popular Autónoma de Puebla (UPAEP), Mexico
Onassis Morales received his Licentiate in Culinary Arts from the Instituto Universitario Boulanger and is in his last semester of the Master’s in Human Development at the Universidad Popular Autónoma de Puebla (UPAEP). Onassis Morales will be presenting with Alfonso Gómez-Rossi.
Pamela Tudge
PhD Candidate
Concordia University, Canada
Pamela Tudge thinks of herself as part food nerd, part academic, and part environmentalist who really loves design and art that makes her think deeper about the world. At Concordia University, she is a PhD candidate in the Individualized Program with an interdisciplinary focus across the fields of Design, Communications and History to research domestic practices in food and waste. Her writing and teaching for over 15 years has spanned food studies, environmental science, critical art and design and social movements. Pamela has worked in the fields of cartography, climate science, education and the arts. She holds a Master’s in Geography from University of British Columbia and a Bachelors with Honors in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria.
Contact at pamela.tudge[at]concordia.ca
Priya Chandrasekaran
Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Hamilton College, U.S.A.
Priya Chandrasekaran is an anthropologist who teaches in the Environmental Studies Program of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Her concerns and interests include environmental/climate justice, biodiversity and land practices, rurality, philosophies of nature, environmental fiction and modes of storytelling. Her work focuses on issues of power, race, gender, and coloniality. In 2018-19, Chandrasekaran was awarded an American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work on a book about women farmers and small-scale agriculture in the hills of Uttarakhand, India. The book is based on ethnographic research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation. She is also drafting articles on climate and environmental justice in the US and global contexts, and continues to write fiction that explores political solidarity. Previously a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program, Chandrasekaran received her Master of Fine Arts in fiction from The New School and her PhD in cultural anthropology from the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Contact at pchandra[at]hamilton.edu
Ran Xiang
PhD Candidate
University of British Columbia, Canada
Ran Xiang is a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at UBC, with a focus on Art Education. Before pursuing her current degree, she has finished her first MA in Comparative Literature at University of Alberta and her second MA in Education Studies at UBC. Her dissertation project investigates the aesthetic qualities and the educative nature and potential of tea ceremony. Her research interests include tea ceremony, place and space, objects and materiality, affect and affective pedagogy and (post) qualitative methodology.
Contact at xiangran[at]gmail.com
Raúl Matta
Researcher
Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany
Raúl Matta, PhD, is research fellow at Georg-August-University Göttingen and Principal Investigator in the project FOOD2GATHER “Exploring foodscapes as public spaces for integration”, funded by HERA and the European Commission (H2020). He has conducted research stays at the Free University of Berlin and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD, France). Between 2014 and 2018, he has led the projects “Food as Cultural Heritage”, based at the University of Göttingen and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and FoodHerit, based at the IRD and funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). He has been researching in the field of food and critical heritage studies for over ten years, with an emphasis on the cultural and political uses of food and cooking by different actors and stakeholders. His work has been published in journals such as Social Anthropology, the International Journal of Cultural Property, Food and Foodways, and in several edited volumes. He is member of the editorial board of the journal Anthropology of Food. Raúl Matta will be presenting with Edda Stark.
Robert Nelson
Head of the Department of History
University of Windsor, Canada
Robert L. Nelson is Head of the Department of History at the University of Windsor, Canada. His revised Cambridge dissertation appeared in 2011 as German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War. Earlier he published the edited volume Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present (2009). He was the historian and host of the feature length documentary “130 Year Roadtrip”, and has performed a Live Interactive Documentary version of the same project in San Francisco, Milwaukee and Windsor. A Live Interactive Documentary detailing the history of Arab Foodways in Windsor/Detroit is now in production, and his first ‘food history’ publication has now appeared: ‘Pitas and Passports: Arab Foodways in the Windsor-Detroit Borderlands’ Mashriq & Mahjar 6:2 (2019). Nelson has won fellowships from the Killam Trust, the Humboldt Foundation, and was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He has also been awarded the University of Windsor’s highest honours in both teaching and research, the Alumni Award for Distinguished Contributions to University Teaching and the UWindsor Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity.
Contact at rnelson[at]uwindsor.ca
Sanchia deSouza
PhD Candidate
University of Toronto, Canada
Sanchia deSouza is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on urban development, human-animal relationships and food supply in South Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her broader research interests are in empire, mobility and culture. She has previously worked on oral history and archiving projects in India and has an MA in Literature.
Shailesh Shukla
Associate Professor
University of Winnipeg, Canada
Dr. Shailesh Shukla’s teaching and research interests range widely from Indigenous food systems and Indigenous food sovereignty, Indigenous knowledge systems, Ethnoecology, community-based conservation, intergenerational transmission and learning within indigenous knowledge systems. His scholarly works appeared as Edited Book chapters and in journals such as Human Ecology, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine and Ethnobotany research and Application. He has co-edited (with Drs. R. N. Pati and Laurence Chanza) a book on “Indigenous knowledge and Biodiversity” (Sarup Book Publishers, 2014) and served as an invited editor for a special issue on community food security for International Journal of Biodiversity watch. In an effort to strengthen Indigenous Science stream, Dr. Shukla has developed and taught new courses at University of Winnipeg including Ethnoecology, Indigenous Food Security, and Field courses on Ethnobotany and Indigenous food systems. He is currently serving as a Principle Investigator for SSHRC funded research projects on revitalization of Indigenous food knowledges and perspectives in partnership with Fisher River Cree Nations and Bloodvein Ojibway First Nations from Manitoba. He has guided and supervised graduate student’s thesis research and community-based practicum in Indigenous and Metis communities from Manitoba, Saskatchewan (in Canada) and from India and Nepal. He is co-editor for ‘Indigenous food Systems: Concepts, Cases and Conversations’ by Canadian Scholars Press (https://www.canadianscholars.ca/books/indigenous-food-systems) and spearheaded an award winning cookbook project (Research Story – Bringing food, communities and culture together (sshrc-crsh.gc.ca) ibn partnership with Fisher River Cree Nations, MB. Shailesh Shukla will be presenting with Lisa Young.
Contact at s.shukla[at]uwinnipeg.ca
Simon Laroche
Media Artist & Teacher
Canada
Simon Laroche is a media artist and teacher who creates installations, audio and video performances, robotic and body artworks. Co-founder of the art collective, Projet EVA, he takes a critical perspective on socio-technical hybridization, focusing on problematics related to relationships between individuals, computer systems, and their physical extensions. Laroche teaches Electronic Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. His work has been presented in Asia, Europe, South and North America, and the Middle East: projet-eva.org. Simon Laroche will be presenting with David Szanto.
Contact at simon[at]projet-eva.org
Simona Bondavalli
Associate Professor and Chair of Italian Language
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, U.S.A.
I am Associate Professor and Chair of Italian at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where I teach Italian language and culture, contemporary literature and film, and food studies. My current research deals with the role of early Italian television in redefining national identity for a democratic country. My most recent articles (forthcoming in The Italianist and Simultanea: Journal of Italian Media and Popular Culture) explore the way in which television documentaries of the 1950s and ’60s frame environmental issues and food culture. I have also written about Italian political cinema, mafia movies, and youth culture. My scholarship on Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini focuses in particular on his fascination with youth as an aesthetic, sociological and ideological category. On Pasolini I have published several articles and a book, Fictions of Youth: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Adolescence, Fascisms (University of Toronto Press 2015).
Contact at sibondavalli[at]vassar.edu
Sohni Chakrabarti
PhD Candidate
University of St. Andrews, Scotland
Sohni Chakrabarti is a final-year PhD candidate in the School of English, University of St Andrews. Her thesis closely examines the construction of narrative spaces in contemporary American diasporic women’s writing. Her research analyses space and time through the intersections of gender, race, social class, and nationhood. She has an MA in Modern and Contemporary English Literature from the University of Bristol, with an additional emphasis on gender, feminism and modernism. She also has a BA in Psychology with First Class Honours from the University of Pune, India. Sohni is also the co-founder of an interdisciplinary food studies group at the University of St Andrews.
Contact at sc324[at]st-andrews.ac.uk
Sophie Chao
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Sydney, Australia
Sophie Chao is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney’s School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and the Charles Perkins Center. Her anthropological and interdisciplinary research explores the intersections of Indigeneity, capitalism, ecology, health, and justice in the Pacific. Sophie holds a BA in Oriental Studies and a MSc in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD at Macquarie University in 2019, for which she was awarded the Australian Anthropological Society PhD Thesis Prize and the Asian Studies Association of Australia John Legge PhD Thesis Prize. Sophie’s first manuscript, In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua (forthcoming, Duke University Press, Spring 2022) explores how deforestation and monocrop oil palm expansion reconfigure the multispecies lifeworld of Indigenous Marind in West Papua. She is currently embarking on a new research project that examines the relationship between food, hunger, and culture in West Papua. Sophie previously worked for the UK-based non-governmental organization Forest Peoples Programme, investigating human rights violations in the palm oil sector across the tropical belt. For more information, please visit her website www.morethanhumanworlds.com.
Contact at sophie.chao[at]sydney.edu.au
Taylor Wilson
Master’s in Development Practice
University of Winnipeg, Canada
Taylor Wilson is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation. She just recently completed the Master’s in Development Practice – Indigenous Development program at the University of Winnipeg. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology and a Bachelor of Arts in Conflict Resolution for the University of Winnipeg. Taylor’s interest lies in Indigenous education, health, food and nutrition, and social policy. She has worked on research projects with the School of Community Services and Health Sciences at Red River College, Ongomiizwin at the University of Manitoba, South Australia’s Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide, Australia, and multiple projects at the University of Winnipeg. She is currently working on food security in Fisher River Cree Nation as well as with the Winnipeg Boldness Project, with the hopes of pursuing her Ph.D. in the future.