The Future of Food Studies

Food, Culture & Society
An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
ISSN: 1552-8014 (Print) 1751-7443 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rffc20
The Future of Food Studies
Shingo Hamada, Richard Wilk, Amanda Logan, Sara Minard & Amy Trubek
To cite this article: Shingo Hamada, Richard Wilk, Amanda Logan, Sara Minard & Amy
Trubek (2015) The Future of Food Studies, Food, Culture & Society, 18:1, 167-186, DOI:
10.2752/175174415X14101814953846
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Published online: 29 Apr 2015.
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The Future of Food Studies

Shingo Hamada
Research Institute for Humanity and Nature
Richard Wilk
Indiana University
Amanda Logan
Northwestern University
Sara Minard
Indiana University
Amy Trubek
University of Vermont
Abstract
The use of food as a core mode of exploring and explaining the world has expanded
remarkably quickly in the past ten years, with food studies programming in particular
gaining ground in institutional learning arrangements during the last three. Establishing
a new field and creating relevant educational programming carries its associated
struggles, practicalities and initial successes. To this end, this report highlights five of the
most pressing themes to emerge from the 2013 “Future of Food Studies” interdisciplinary
workshop, namely: (1) locating food studies in the institutional culture; (2) training
undergraduate and graduate students within and beyond disciplinarity; (3) establishing
food studies labs and pedagogy; (4) engaging the public beyond the campus; and (5)
funding strategies for research and training. Participants agreed on the relevancy of food
DOI: studies to future learning, teaching and research agendas and argued that food studies
10.2752/175174415X14101814953846 could not prosper without a commitment to transgressing conventional institutional and
Reprints available directly from the
publishers. Photocopying permitted by philosophical boundaries. At a time when the value of higher education is under intense
licence only © Association for the
Study of Food and Society 2015 scrutiny, we acknowledge the need to make food studies a paradigm capable of providing
167
S. Hamada, R. Wilk, A. Logan, S. Minard & A. Trubek ◊ The Future of Food Studies
students with the necessary skills for post-graduate employment.

Keywords: food studies, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinarity, food pedagogy, curriculum
development, higher education
Introduction
Readers of Food, Culture and Society will undoubtedly agree that food is no longer
an emerging field of academic inquiries. Food studies have quickly developed and
expanded in the last three decades, and several universities now have certificate
and/or degree programs in the topic. Behind this development have been rising
ethical and moral concerns in both academic and public circles about environmental
degradation, soil and water contamination, and food safety issues regarding food
production and consumption. Concurrently, unequal access to food and the socio-
cultural, temporal and geographical distance between farm and fork have expanded
in the global market economy (e.g. Gottwald et al. 2010). However, with the
exception of a few cases such as New York University Steinhardt and Syracuse
University, the notion of a “department of food studies” is seldom voiced, compared
with other “studies” programs like cultural studies, gender studies and area studies.
Does the fact that there is no department of food studies mean that food studies
has not yet established a strong presence in academia? Can the establishment of
institutional home, such as a department, center or program in food studies, help
to further develop food studies, providing scholars with a more supportive
intellectual environment for research, funding and teaching? If so, this prompts
additional questions. What should a food studies program look like from a
pedagogical point of view, and how can it relate to nutrition, sustainable agriculture
and food science programs that are already well established at many universities?
What training should food studies offer to students, and what careers will be
available for graduates?
Alternatively, is a separate institutional identity really needed at all? Perhaps
the field of food studies should remain an informal network, an add-on topical
specialty for existing degree programs, and an intellectual crossroads for scholars
from many different disciplines with diverse skills and interests. One could argue
that the proliferation of “x studies” centers in universities has balkanized and
fragmented academia, producing dead-end programs with no clear career path for
graduates.
These issues and themes were discussed during a three-day workshop held in
Bloomington, Indiana, in May 2013. Titled “The Future of Food Studies: an
Interdisciplinary Workshop” (FoFS), the meeting brought together food studies
scholars and program directors from sixteen universities in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Belgium and Italy. The workshop was funded by The Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation, as part of a grant to Indiana University to conduct a year-long
Sawyer Seminar entitled “Food Choice, Freedom and Politics.”1 Envisioned by
anthropologist Richard Wilk and cognitive psychologist Peter Todd, this project
initiated a two-semester graduate and faculty seminar as well as another
workshop entitled “Food Choice from Research to Policy.” Included in the calendar
of events, the seminar hosted twelve guest lecturers and four short-term scholars-
168
in-residence, which provided multiple opportunities for Indiana University food

studies graduate students and faculty with to engage with scholars from elsewhere
in developing their own research projects. These events were organized by
postdoctoral fellow Amanda Logan and Indiana University food studies doctoral
fellows Shingo Hamada, Sara Minard and Lillian Brown. Indiana University
graduate students participating in the seminar prepared synopses of topics
covered during the year, which are available at the Indiana Food Review
(http://www.indianafoodreview.com/the-sawyer-seminar) and were also active
players in creating the FoFS program.
The workshop focused on locating food studies in the current higher education
and broader academic environment, comparing the content and pedagogical
strategies of existing programs, and thinking about how they might change and
develop in the future. Participants brought diverse perspectives to the workshop as
their training and institutional positions varied greatly. Three days of critical
discussions did not unanimously resolve any of the questions originally posed;
however, the conference helped identify key issues for the future and participants
agreed on the potential and significance of the intellectual and educational
prospects of food studies.
The present report is intended to share the outcome of these discussions with
a wider audience. It will highlight five main themes that emerged during the
workshop: (1) locating food studies in the Euro-American institutional culture of
higher education; (2) training undergraduate and graduate students within and
beyond disciplinarity; (3) establishing the food studies labs and pedagogy; (4)
engaging the public beyond the campus; and (5) funding strategies for research and
training. Participants agreed that food studies would not prosper without continuing
to share ideas beyond conventional institutional and philosophical boundaries,
making food studies more visible by engaging with the public and the media, and
training students to have the skills necessary for thriving academic and non-
academic careers.
Locating Food Studies in Euro-American Institutional

Culture
The workshop started with an overview of the diverse food studies programs
represented by the participants. These descriptions revealed a great deal of
heterogeneity in administrative structures, pedagogy and institutional context. This
diversity was closely connected to geographic location and the institutional setting
in which each institute is situated; it seems, knowing the location in the broader
institutional setting is the first requisite for starting a food studies program, like
knowing soil composition before planting a seed. Each university seems to provide
a specific opening for food studies to grow. The FoFS Workshop, and hence the
Food,
Culture
Society
& present review article, focused on food studies in higher education because the
participants came from universities and research institutes in the United States
volume 18 and Europe.
issue 1 The politics, organization and economy of education in the American and European
march 2015 education systems often make it difficult for scholars to establish an institutional
169
home for food studies. In the United States, the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 and the
Hatch Act 1887, institutionalized the partition of agricultural and mechanical sciences
from liberal arts and pure science by establishing land-grant universities. This historic
division is incompatible with a topic like food studies, which covers both “mind” and
“body,” food production and consumption. Important current topics like the morality
and ethics of weight (e.g. Nichter 2002) and the ideology of organic farming (e.g.
Guthman 2004) do not fall neatly into one kind of university or one institutional
tradition. Although food connects the social and biological (material) worlds in which
we live, many food studies programs have been unable to capture both under a single
institutional umbrella. Like other interdisciplinary topics, a holistic approach to food
is impeded by institutional and individual specialization: food culture tends to belong
to arts and humanities; food production and nutritional sciences have historically
developed in land-grant universities; and culinary arts programs have taken shape in
culinary and hospitality management schools, and vocational training in community
colleges and cooking schools.2 Finding ways through and around these dichotomies,
along with questions of legitimacy and scholarly weight, delayed the emergence and
development of food as a research field in both the United States and Europe, and it
may explain why food has not emerged as a legitimate academic subject in Asia, the
Middle East and Africa (see Belasco 2008).
Food studies can end up with very narrow ambitions in the social sciences and
the humanities, as it is in many programs in culinary arts and gastronomy, or in
environmental sciences and sustainability studies. Our workshop focused on
fostering dialogue among representatives of the social sciences, the humanities,
nutrition and culinary/hospitality programs. We invited diverse participants, who
like many pioneers in new academic areas, came into food studies through a change
in direction after their initial training and work in a traditional discipline.
Amy Trubek reported that the development and success of the University of
Vermont’s (UVM) program in transdisciplinary food systems is rooted in applied
research in conjunction with state’s vibrant agricultural economy and food culture.
This allows UVM to develop a skill-based program, in which students learn food
systems from both qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches, and
are enabled to surmount the disciplinary boundary between natural and social
sciences. Their interdisciplinary faculty members find that what makes food studies
so exciting is the connection to the public through traditional and non-traditional
extension services, which land-grant universities, such as UVM, can offer. In
contrast, food studies programming at New York University Steinhardt is housed in
the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health. The primary mission
of the department is to provide innovative training for applied and academic food
and nutrition experts, and their food studies program emphasizes nutrition and
public health within food systems and cultures. Krishnendu Ray stated that locating
their food studies programs is versatile because students can earn bachelors
degrees in both nutrition and food sciences that help them secure food-related jobs
after graduation, while more specialized interdisciplinary food studies programs
are offered in the masters and doctoral programs. This placement also helps to
attract a broader range of students from diverse backgrounds to the program.
170
Urban liberal arts colleges work from an entirely different position, and face
unique challenges in connecting with the surrounding communities. Both Boston
University and The New School for Public Engagement (NSPE) have food studies
programs with developing curricula that respond to the diversity of students coming
from urban environments, including many immigrants. As Rachel Black described,
the food studies graduate certificate and the MLA program in gastronomy at Boston
University cover diverse topics that cross disciplinary and administrative
boundaries; including history and culture, communications, food policy, business
and entrepreneurship. Boston University’s programmatic focus rightly reflects the
historical development of gastronomy as a study of the provisioning, selection and
enjoyment of human nourishment and drink (Stantich 2004). The program offers
courses on food and wine which span anthropology, history and policy, applied and
small business skills—but also offers courses that allow students to acquire basic
knowledge of anatomy, neuroscience and biochemistry. The program’s
phenomenological approach is very different from conventional liberal arts and
social sciences; it has a “learning-by-doing” sensory analysis lab for teaching and
research, giving students the opportunity to acquire hands-on knowledge and skills
while applying theoretical knowledge to their kitchen practice.
Fabio Parasecoli detailed how food studies at NSPE began in 2008 as a cluster
of courses available to “result-oriented” returning students. Currently, the
program’s flexible formatting, such as evening and one and two-credit short
courses, appeal to nontraditional students. Dynamic and informal “pop-up” lectures
in public spaces like the Green City Market in New York City help to broaden the
school’s community engagement and public outreach. With NSPE’s historical
strengths in political economy, programming is focused on food policy and politics,
allowing students from many disciplines to bring theory into closer engagement
with the issues and problems faced every day by New York residents. To keep up
with student demand for food studies courses, NSPE now offers either a BA or BS
in food studies for adults and transfer students. The training that Boston University
and NSPE offer to student echoes with what the University of Gastronomic Sciences
(UNISG) in Italy calls the gastronome. The gastronome is:
a new professional figure … skilled in production, distribution, promotion, and

communication of high-quality foods. Gastronomes are the next generation of
educators and innovators, editors and multimedia broadcasters, marketers of
fine products, and managers of consortia, businesses, and tourism companies.
(UNISG 2012)
The food studies programs at Boston University and NSPE focus on the experience
Food, and expertise students gain from food studies classes and programs, by offering
Culture
Society
& students training and preparation for careers in food-related fields, not limited to
academics or the chef’s toque.
volume 18 One salient theme in the workshop was whether the future of food studies
issue 1 requires a central institutional home at all. From the different answers to the
march 2015 question, it is clear that much depends on institutional context and history, and
171
what kinds of resources exist in a particular setting. According to participant

Jonathan Deutsch, City University—New York (CUNY) is the largest urban university
in the United States, and has many food scholars spread over multiple departments
and programs who can work together at the CUNY Graduate Center. Rather than
establishing a centralized, content-based food studies program, CUNY’s graduate
interdisciplinary concentration in food studies offers a collection of courses, taught
by faculty from throughout the system on topics of their own choice. The four-
course concentration requires an introductory course, “Food, Culture and Society,”
a writing capstone, and two courses from food-focused departments within CUNY.
In this kind of setting, the role of food studies is to provide a meeting place for
faculty and graduate students, and to encourage collaboration across disciplines,
colleges, programs and campuses.

Food studies at Vrije Universitit Brussel (VUB), Belgium, under the direction of
Peter Scholliers, emerged—like many of the programs detailed—through a gradual
accumulation of food-related courses, rather than starting off as a food studies
center or institute. It stands out from the others at the workshop because of its
origins within a department of history, and it continues to have a strong topical
focus on the past. Course offerings at VUB include “Food Traditions and
Innovations,” which concerns tensions between old and new foodways, and “Food
and Society in Classical Antiquity,” in which students learn about agricultural
organization, diet and social inequality. VUB’s model is being followed by the Indiana
University program, under the direction of Richard Wilk, which began in the
anthropology department, and continues to draw on that department as an
administrative home, though faculty from many other departments participate and
offer their own food-related courses. Graduate students in anthropology can choose
food studies as a concentration, and students in other graduate programs can take
a graduate minor in food studies that includes courses from across campus. In
contrast, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London,
the MA anthropology of food program is not embedded within a single department.
The program was convened by Harry West, and students take courses in
anthropology and from other departments and schools including development
studies, gender studies, religions and law.
Establishing a food studies institute or center may be unnecessary or impossible
at some institutions. Because so many scholars are now interested in food-related
issues, they may already be offering enough food-related courses to give students
well-rounded training with the kind of depth expected in traditional disciplines.
Strong coordination and collaboration among faculty in different departments may
foster an effective interdisciplinary food degree program with no institutional
home—what university administrators sometimes call a “virtual major.”
Stephen Wooten reported that the University of Oregon’s new graduate
specialization in food studies was purposefully designed as “a value-added
complement to degrees (MA, MS and PhD) in focal departments or programs”
rather than a standalone degree. As a means of supporting this interdisciplinary
orientation, the University of Oregon’s food studies program uses the environmental
studies program as its academic base. A formal food studies center or program
172
may not be needed to recognize or administer the kind of diversified training needed
by food studies students. However, a center or institute has other advantages,
particularly for graduate education, as a way to promote collaborative research,
find funding for students and postdoctoral researchers, and seek a larger role for
food studies in campus life, particularly at colleges and universities that want to
promote healthier, more sustainable or more localized food options on campus.
Training Undergraduate and Graduate Students within

and beyond (Inter)Disciplinarity
Many university administrators and some scholars still draw sharp boundaries
between academic and applied research, but food studies tends to challenge this
distinction. The division between academic (questioning why) and professional

(questioning how) makes it very difficult to provide students with the training they
need to address food as both an intellectual and practical topic, as required of most
of this generation’s food scholars. An education in food studies today requires the
critical and literary skills provided by arts and humanities, the theoretical and
qualitative research skills that are essential in social science, and methods and
scientific tools necessary to understanding nutrition and diet. This kind of
multidisciplinary is a critical tool, enabling students to synthesize varied
perspectives and complex information in order to understand contemporary food
issues, and communicate effectively to diverse audiences.
After discussing the variety of existing food studies programs, the group
addressed the question of whether or not there is an emerging canon of literature
on food studies that might form the nucleus of a common core curriculum. Prior to
the workshop, each participant was asked for a list of the five books they thought
every food studies students should read. The most often-mentioned books included
Cultivating Food Justice (Alkon and Agyeman 2011); Appetite for Change (Belasco
1993); Food and Culture (Counihan and Esterik 2012); Culinary Tourism (Long
2004); Sweetness and Power (Mintz 1986); Food Politics (Nestle 2002); The Taste of
Place (Trubek 2008); and Taking Food Public (Williams-Forson and Counihan 2011).
However, there was no single book on everyone’s list, and the degree of overlap was
very low. To illustrate this, the workshop organizers fed the bibliographies into
Wordle to create a text-based image where word size is directly proportional to the
frequency with which it is used (Figure 1). This reflection of the participants’
theoretical and pedagogical approaches indicates a relative lack of consensus,
suggesting that there is no coherent set of books that encapsulates food studies
(contra Nestle and McIntosh 2010).
Looking at the total corpus of suggested books, we found that food culture and
the cultural history of food are well covered, as we would expect from the training
and interests of the participants. However, the list and the Wordle image also have
Food,
Culture
Society
& gaps that reveal underrepresented themes and topics in current Euro-American
food studies. For example, food sovereignty and sustainability are rapidly growing
volume 18 issues in food studies, but were not central issues in most of the reading lists.
issue 1 Geographically, Asia, Africa and Latin America are underrepresented as well, in
march 2015 part because most FoFS participants came from the United States and Europe. This
173
Fig 1: Wordle Image Based on the Bibliographies Submitted by Participants (with

the Pervasive Word Food Eliminated from the Picture).
may also result from the language bias of the conferees, because there were no
publications in non-English languages. Europe is underrepresented in the Wordle
image because it does not appear in book titles as often as “America(n),” although
case studies in European food history abound. Nevertheless, the bias in data
collection and the language barrier were not the only reasons for the under-
representation of non-Euro-American regions in the list. The Wordle image mirrors
the perception that food studies is still predominantly on, for and by the middle
class white intelligentsia in the United States and Europe, although this is changing
with fast-growing interest in areas such as Japan and China (e.g. Belasco 2008).
Recognizing the nature and difficulty of this problem, the group concluded by
discussing collaborative strategies like inter-regional comparative research,
partnerships with universities in other countries and field schools that could enrich
food studies with more diverse perspectives.
The discussion of a canon prompted debate regarding the acceptance of food
studies in academia, with participants recounting bureaucratic, institutional and
epistemological barriers to food studies. The real challenges may still come from
inside the academic community, as conservative disciplines may still consider food
to be a trivial topic, despite a strong demand for courses on the topic by students
at all levels. Administrators may also expect faculty to develop new courses and
programs with no institutional resources or support. Furthermore, the economic
“siloing” that happens in many universities precludes the creation of programs that
facilitate—much less encourage—students to take classes across the disciplines.
Should food studies programs be developed with a specific disciplinary framework
in a department? If one cannot change the administrative and geopolitical
environment in order to establish a food studies center or institute, what will help
food studies successfully adapt to those environments? Furthermore, which
disciplines or adaptive forms might best attract prospective students and train
employable graduates—especially at a time when students trained in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics seem to be the most readily employed?
174
Can we deal with an interdisciplinary food studies in a way that makes sense to a
world steeped in disciplinary logics?
Currently designing a new food studies MA program at University of the Pacific,
Analiese Richard stated that participating faculty in the university’s Arts and
Science Division conceptualize disciplines as epistemologies or paradigms.
Incorporating faculty from social sciences and humanities, the University of the
Pacific’s interdisciplinary approach is reflected in its goal of training students to
apply diverse disciplinary perspectives in order to examine shared content areas.
Harry West, chair of the Food Studies Center at SOAS, stated that interdisciplinarity
should be like language, insomuch as learning a second language does not require
you to unlearn the first one. The problem, however, is the pervading tendency to
approach disciplines as if they were religions, where choosing a new one requires
“conversion” from the previous one. Instead, West argued, we can be multilingual,
or make new creole-like languages, with food a convenient locus of communication
for the development of new idioms. Furthering the discussion, Dan Knudsen,
geographer at Indiana University, argued that food studies should go towards post-
disciplinarity (what some call transdisciplinarity) rather than inter-disciplinarity
because the traditional disciplines remain so strong, and are deeply embedded in
language in a way that undercuts a truly interdisciplinary approach. Combining,
exchanging, blending and challenging the perspectives of many disciplines can
enrich food scholarship and the intellectual experiences of both faculty and
students.
However, in discussing whether food studies should have a conventional
disciplinary base or move towards multidisciplinary centers or institutes, Susan
Levine (University of Illinois Chicago) addressed the danger of interdisciplinary in
the current neoliberal economy of higher education. The proliferation of
interdisciplinary centers and institutes means that traditional disciplinary programs
may become targets for budget cuts and closure. Will a push towards
interdisciplinarity reduce students’ appeal in a difficult job market? Do employers
appreciate broad training, or does it cause confusion about the kind of abilities the
graduates bring to their job? Discipline-based programs still have much to offer to
students and scholars because they help students build a strong theoretical and
methodological foundation for their research on food. Peter Scholliers suggested
that there is a cycle of construction (discipline), deconstruction (anti-discipline) and
reconstruction of disciplines. Recognizing that knowledge systems are always in
motion provides a good standpoint for training students, offering them both a
concentration and the means to communicate with other disciplines. Learning to
work productively with scholars in other disciplines should be part of the basic
curriculum of food studies programs.
Food,
Culture
Society
& Academic and Professional Training in Food Studies
Ray observed that food studies programs offer multidisciplinary education and
volume 18 training for undergraduates, but as students get higher degrees, the less
issue 1 multidisciplinary they become. This raises again the question of what kinds of
march 2015 employment opportunities we envision for our students with different degrees.
175
Should food studies aim to train specialists or generalists; should they have a focus
on a particular food or region, or a specialization in either academic or applied
work? What career paths are available for food studies students in the United States
and Europe, or for foreign students who are being trained in these regions? How
will degrees and certificates in food studies or food systems help students find a
food-related job?
Jonathan Deutsch pointed out that currently no jobs require applicants to have
a degree in “food studies” (although Wilk mentioned that he had seen one in early
2014). This might be attributed to the fact that food studies programs are fairly
recent, or that those in the position of hiring are unclear about what food studies
graduates are prepared to do. Most of the participants agreed that graduate
students and junior scholars who wished to pursue an academic career in food
studies have to focus first on establishing themselves in a discipline, where there
are more job opportunities, and pursue food studies as a secondary or later career
interest. Indeed, this was the path taken by most of the participants in the workshop
(though this may reflect a generational difference). Susan Levine gave the example
of the extremely wide range of qualified candidates who had applied for a recently
advertised postdoctoral position in food studies—very few came with training from
food studies programs.
But the job market is changing rapidly, and the group discussed how the job
market will change with growing popular interest in food studies, as more and more
food studies programs produce competitive graduates, and as food systems are
being challenged and changed around the world. Still, food studies-specific
opportunities in academia are rare. Food studies faculty should be prepared to
advise undergraduate and graduate students on what careers a food studies
certificate or degree might lead to; however, this can present a challenge to faculty
experienced in academic, rather than applied, settings. Pedagogy and the
applicability of food studies outside of the academy were core themes discussed
during the workshop.
Amy Trubek proposed that a skill-based food studies program rather than
(single, inter- or multi-) disciplinary-based approach is an alternative framework for
food studies pedagogy and training. Following this, Jonathan Deutsch elaborated
how Drexel University’s holistic food-oriented approach gives students
opportunities to learn about food topics with hands-on experience, to earn a degree
that includes practical culinary skills like cooking and menu making. Food
preparation experience is a crucial approach, he said, because it moves beyond the
mind–body divide and teaches students skills that are useful both for thinking and
doing. Boston University’s program also emphasizes multisensory enhancement,
asserting that kitchen skills and experiments with food as a substance are right at
the core of food studies, as a basic and potent form of pedagogy.
The Center for Food and Culture (foodandculture.org), led by Lucy Long, also
aims to bring together food as performance (embodiment, experience, practice)
and as a concept, an ideology and a way of engaging with the world. While empirical
scientific and interpretive humanities approaches to food studies have worked well
at many institutes in the United States and Europe, hands-on experience, working
176
with communities and activists, and the direct experience of fieldwork and
internships are fundamental in effective training in food studies.
Fabio Parasecoli suggested that food scholars should not underestimate how a
sense of community enriches student engagement in food studies programs. The
development and incorporation of food studies into undergraduate education and
extracurricular opportunities can greatly enrich food studies, a notion echoed by the
work on student engagement and sustainability by Barlett and Stewart (2009). Amy
Trubek is testing this proposition at UVM, where the college campus is conceptualized
as an experimental lab where students can learn the connections between field and
fork, using all of their senses and abilities. In the short term, however, students
craving a multi-sensory complement of practical skills and training in food preparation
and service will have to rely on culinary schools, some of which are broadening their
training to include academic topics. An urban community setting provides NSPE with
opportunities to hold public food-related events, on topics such as history,
sustainability and food justice. Food studies alumni now offer internships for current
students, something Simone Cinnotto’s program at UNISG in Pollenzo, Italy uses as
a way to ensure student job placement after graduation. SOAS’s program in food
studies aims to link community, practice and learning through its directed practical
study course, in which students have internships and directed readings, so that
students may meaningfully connect theory and practice. Involvement and
collaboration with communities, organizations, businesses and governments will help
students develop the trans-disciplinary skill sets and knowledge they will need in
pursuing careers in a rapidly-changing food system.
The workshop participants also generated some new proposals for collaboration
across campuses and continents. Food studies teachers could remotely link the
same course across two universities, and participate in shared lectures and
discussions. Collaborations could also involve working on a webpage or paper
together, coordinating and sharing research, or contrasting topical interviews in
two different regions or countries. For example, how are freegans in New York
different from those in Barcelona? How are food deserts in the United States
different from those in Japan? Students could also compare the ingredients,
packaging and advertising of a single food product in different countries.
Some programs already have active collaboration across national lines. Simone
Cinotto reported that compared with food studies programs in the United States,
most students in the food studies program at UNISG are international students
from the European Union, North America and beyond. UNISG designs its field school
programming to allow participants to engage with food artisans and visit distant
communities. UVB has an active collaborative strategy that has developed
international degree programs in history with the universities of Tours, Bologna
Food, and Barcelona. While multilingual, trans-regional programming offers a potentially
Culture
Society
& rich and exciting future for food studies, Peter Scholliers cautioned that
international programming requires students to travel long distances, making them
volume 18 expensive. Coordinating a collaborative program can also require a great deal of
issue 1 time, and issues like insurance, informed consent and credit transfer can become
march 2015 unexpected obstacles.
177
Future of Food Studies

During the final session of the meeting, the participants broke up into three groups:
establishing food studies labs and pedagogy; engaging the public beyond the
campus; and fundraising strategies for research and training. The following sections
will outline the recommendations stemming from these breakout group discussions,
including the recent development of the John Dewey Kitchen Institute.
The Food Studies Labs and Pedagogy

Jonathan Deutsch, Lisa Heldke and Amy Trubek worked to develop ideas for
experiential learning opportunities in programs interested in teaching about food
systems, food studies, food and the environment, etcetera. In this session they
developed “A Lab Manifesto: Putting the Food back in Food Studies.” The materiality
and necessity of food requires not only food ethics and knowledge but also a very
new, perhaps even radical, pedagogical philosophy. Courses and programs that
claim to teach about food need to develop teaching methods grounded in a
philosophy of learning-by-doing. There can be no mind–body split in curriculum
that looks closely at food—especially those focused on farm-to-table provisioning
systems. At the same time, recent changes in the delivery of education, including
online courses and massive open online courses (MOOCs), project-based learning,
service learning and other forms of engagement are necessary complements to the
traditional independent/solitary reading, discussion of ideas and concepts, and
production of research papers. When it comes to all the many dimensions of food,
this traditional approach is particularly ineffective; first, because of the intrinsic
materiality and functionality of food, and second, because practical competence
connected to food gardening, shopping, cooking), are best learned through practice.
A food curriculum that fully integrates experience, theory and practice could be a
unifying thread for all courses and programs that claim to cover food studies and
food systems. Making this a core requirement will give food studies greater
coherence to what is sometimes a scattered and idiosyncratic form of training.
In June 2014, Deutsch, Heldke and Trubek, along with UVM colleague Cynthia
Belliveau, put this proposal into practice with the launch of the John Dewey Kitchen
Institute. Seventeen participants attended the workshop, hosted by UVM and held
in its Nutrition and Food Sciences Foods Lab. The participants were all educators,
primarily from higher education institutions in the United States and Canada, but
there was also one participant from a national museum and one from a university
in France. Their tag line is “Integrating the experiential with the intellectual in food
studies.” Potential participants were then informed of the group’s mission: “We
think there’s a problem with food studies, when no food is present in it. Thus, over
the course of this two-day workshop we will be exploring the following question:
how can we put food back into food studies?” Participants were asked to submit a
course syllabus to which they would like to add or enhance the curriculum with
experiential learning through cooking, tasting and eating. The workshop was
designed so that everyone could participate in experiential activities that enhance
student comprehension of important concepts to the fields of food studies and food
systems. These activities included a sensory tasting of artisan cheese, a taste
178
memory exercise with potato chips, working together to create a shared meal, and
a mystery basket exercise based on a randomly selected concept important to a
typical food and culture course. The activities combined with a series of rich
discussions of how best to teach about food, while bringing participants together
in tasting, cooking and eating, made the workshop a success. The organizers are
committed to continuing to build the John Dewey Kitchen Institute through
workshops, publications and more.
Engaging the Public beyond the Campus

The second breakout session focused on how food studies can develop as a field in
a way that continues to connect people—scholars from different disciplines and
regions, academics with the public and policy-makers, researchers and activists.
However, these connections alone will not address many of the most pressing issues
of food studies on a changing planet. Nor will academic critiques of the food system
connect with the general public, particularly those who take cheap and convenient
food for granted. Public outreach requires training and commitment to facilitate
better communications between academia and the public. At a time when higher
education is under increasing scrutiny, this is necessary work. Food studies students
should be able to communicate why their work is important, both within and outside
of the university. Just as many students have been able to ground their scholarship
in the study of food, the broader public may also find learning about the world
through the lens of food an enriching experience.
The public engagement discussion group also explored how food studies
students and scholars could engage in public discussions and food politics through
writing and other media. Managing a blog, wiki or other online format is a great way
to make food studies visible to the public. Blogging offers a relatively inexpensive
learning platform for practicing how to write for both the academics and the public.
The New School incorporates public writing skills into its food program, by running
its website, The Inquisitive Eater (http://inquisitiveeater.com/). The website enables
students to make their food-related internship experiences and academic work
publically accessible. Likewise, graduate students in Indiana University’s food
studies program run the Indiana Food Review, (http://www.indianafoodreview.com),
a web-based journal in which graduate students gain applied experience editing
and managing a publication, while writing food-related papers for both academic
and public consumption. Independent scholars—like workshop participant Michael
W. Twitty—disseminate information and knowledge through blogs and other social
media. As Twitty so aptly demonstrates, one does not have to be an academic to
be a food studies scholar. However, for those of us privileged to have an opportunity
to study food within a university environment, it is important to consider how and
Food, what we as university/college food scholars can contribute to wider food-interest
Culture
Society
& groups. As everyone eats, food is inherently a topic that brings diverse groups
together.
volume 18 Nevertheless, we need to understand that public engagement requires particular
issue 1 skills; scholars may think they and their students are equipped with them, but often
march 2015 they are not. Public speaking and writing differ from academic writing and the
179
presentations we perform at conferences. Most universities offer “public speaking”

courses for undergraduate students; however, graduate-level public speaking and
writing courses are rare. Historically, graduate programs have been in the business
of producing academic specialists, deeply trained in communicating with other
highly specialized academics. Food studies has great potential to make the value of
higher education more visible and accessible, and there are many ways that we
might develop our practice of public engagement and present our work to new
audiences, including museum op-ed exhibits, writing op-ed pieces and popular
science articles, creating events and gatherings for tasting and discussion, and
building on organizations promoting local history and culture, as well as culinary
tourism. While writing for academic journals is still required in academia, it is
crucial that food studies makes itself more visible in popular media outlets. The
New School’s engagement with media communities such as the New York Times,
Huffington Post and television programs, not only makes the food studies program
visible in the public mediascape, but also gives students opportunities to learn food
from the perspective of cultural media and communication studies. Those of us
engaged with contemporary food movement issues of production, sovereignty and
health would also benefit from this kind of active public engagement. Community
outreach, such as participatory research and/or open presentations at farmers’
markets and collaborative projects with producers, will further curriculum
development and public engagement within food studies.
Fundraising Strategies for Research and Training

The third breakout group addressed the difficult issue of how to fund food studies
as it grows in many different directions. Locating funding to support food studies
students is particularly important if we are going to build training programs.
Possible funding sources were discussed, including the conventional research
foundations such as the National Science Foundation in the United States, as well
as other agencies, such as United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) and the National Endowment of the Humanities. We should also explore
private corporate funds using community and other local networks. University
development offices do not always understand what food studies entails, or what
kinds of funding sources would be suitable. Large donors are often already
supporting major programs, and small new programs may not be allowed to
approach these donors. One way to get support from development staff is to keep
up a program of issuing press releases and generating media content that calls
attention to food studies. Contacting your campus’s media liaison with a list of
topical specialties can help to garner media interest.
Sometimes it is easier to get money for technology-centered grants, which allow
students and faculty to use tools like geographic information systems and remote
sensing to study food systems, or can be used to equip a lab or a teaching kitchen.
Alumni are also an important source of support, particularly after programs have
been established for a while. The University of Gastronomic Sciences uses the Slow
Food network as a way of keeping in touch with ex-students. Graduates can be
asked to return to serve on an advisory board for the program, or as mentors for
180
incoming students. Conventional research grants can help food studies by

supporting graduate students in predoctoral positions, and it can also be used for
postdoctoral fellowships. There are often small pots of money scattered around a
university in areas like sustainability and campus life that can be used to support
research and student projects. It is important to find the people in university
administration who are interested in food research, and work with them. As part
of a land-grant university, the food system program at UVM receives research
funding from USAID to conduct applied research. Students are affiliated with faculty
and work on applied research projects funded by the agency. However, large grant
proposals, like the US National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education
and Research Traineeship can be risky—submitting a proposal is labor-intensive,
and the odds of receiving funding are very low. Existing disciplines often do not
want to share their funding streams with new actors; moreover, funding agencies
may be loath to support unproven new fields that use innovative and
interdisciplinary methods. All of this kind of external funding requires careful ethical
consideration, particularly on the issue of how research data and findings will be
used, and who decides on research priorities.
Corporate funding has many pitfalls as well as opportunities. Collaborating with
corporations wishing to “greenwash” their reputations is always a possibility,
though the dividing line between earnest support and a token greenwash is often
indistinct and can only be seen in retrospect. It could be useful to survey food-
related companies and corporations within a local area, and then approach the
most likely candidates. Large transnational companies are very different in this
respect from small local businesses, and they may have more money to fund
students or research, as is the case at UNISG where major national food producers
and processors strongly support the university, much more than local or community
endeavors. Ethically murky funding may be appealing to cash-strapped university
administrators, but can appear questionable to prospective students and
community members. In a hypothetical scenario, nobody at the workshop was
willing to take funding from Monsanto or other mega-food corporations with clearly
toxic reputations, and the consensus seemed to be that all funding had to be
discussed in context on a case-by-case basis.
The group had a number of more specific ideas for projects that could include
fund-raising from a variety of sources:
• Alumni events, such as inviting alumni in the summer or for a short program
during the year where they can meet students, learn what kind of research is
being done, and meet faculty.
• Set graduate students in a class to research possible donors, and to find out
Food, who is funding food-related research at other universities. Compile a useful
Culture
Society
& online database of potential funding sources both for the program and for
individual research projects by faculty and students.
volume 18 • Develop a long-range research project that can be used for training students as
issue 1 they cycle through the program. Some countries have bilateral educational
march 2015 agreements with others which can support collaboration.
181
• Explore crowdsource (or crowdfunding) proposals and research funding within

a program, or between departments, programs or universities. Funding from
Indiegogo.com, Globalgiving.org or Microryza.com could be used for small
research projects that meet an urgent need, or as a pilot for a larger
conventional proposal.
• Find a producers’ organization, local tourism board, or co-op that needs
historical research to establish legitimacy or uniqueness for an appellation or
other form of heritage.
• Act as a consultant for a community activity such as a revival of a foodway,
source or production method that has been lost or abandoned. Recover old tools,
techniques and methods in the kitchen through public collaboration and
contribution (a method now called “microtasking”).
Communities can also provide funding opportunities and niches for food studies.
This can include farmers markets, food banks and other charitable organizations,
urban agriculture and gardening groups, departments of parks and recreation, K-
12 schools and school boards, and hospitals that want to improve the quality of the
food they serve patients and staff. In the United States, local cooperatives, land
trusts and sustainability councils may want to engage in collaborative projects that
are eligible for state funding. Members of local communities may be interested in
working with a food studies program while planning a new business or seeking
financing for a community garden, orchard or edible landscaping project. Slow
Money is a fast-growing organization that may fund collaborative community
development projects in the United States, particularly those that have to potential
to become self-supporting. At the University of Mississippi’s nonprofit Southern
Foodways Alliance, director John T. Edge locates funding through individuals,
foundations and corporations who are enthusiastic about Southern food and drink.
Following are several specific ideas for projects that could include sponsored
service-learning activities:
• Have individual students learn a kitchen skill during a semester which could
then be demonstrated at a banquet or pitch-in meal at the end of a semester or
year. Have students in a class evaluate the economic and environmental impacts
of a banquet or meal.
• Assign students to identify unique local foodstuffs, interview producers,
marketers, preparers, and record knowledge and skills that may be in danger.
• Find, survey and interview hunters, fishers and gatherers in a local area in
collaboration with a local department of natural resources or an environmental
organization.
• Have students in a program meet and interview agro-industrial players in local
communities, including youth organizations (like 4-H and the Future Farmers of
America in the United States, or a young farmer group like Rural Youth Europe).
Include traditional gardeners who may not participate in the “foodie” sphere.
• Develop a project of outreach to ethnic restaurants and markets, including
studies of immigration and adaptation of foreign foods to local tastes.
182
Conclusion (and What Is Missing)

This paper is intended to open, rather than close a discussion on the future of food
studies in higher education. The FoFS participants did not reach consensus on many
issues, and found that the institutional position and content of food studies
programs were very much place-based. Nevertheless, participants agreed on many
of the key roles that food studies can play in education, particularly as a way of
connecting research and scholarship with a broader public.
Future food studies programming must face administrative tradition and
conventional discipline-based structures in higher education. Intercollegiate
networking, academic conferences and collaborations among researchers enable us
to pursue an integrative food studies, without losing the invaluable training that
each discipline may offer to students. Despite the broad scope of the topic, food
studies in the United States and Europe still has under-explored and under-
represented many themes. Food studies needs to find a constituency in African and
Asian universities and public institutions, and build legitimacy as a worthwhile and
important topic that should be part of an undergraduate education. Food studies
should engage in more active collaboration with environmental studies, journalism,
media and communication studies, and various forms of international, global and
regional area studies, both for pedagogical purposes and as a means of bringing
food systems and sustainability to wider audiences. The connection between food
and climate change is a particularly important area for continuing research,
outreach and education.
Food studies has great pedagogical potential as a bridge between the academy
and the public, enriching everyone’s experience of food. However, we need to
continue exploring how we might better practice food studies using both qualitative
and quantitative research, and tools from the humanities and the social and natural
sciences; building bridges across the entire university, and becoming deeply
involved in the food systems that sustain the institutions and communities where
we work and live. Those who plan to establish a new program should consider
developing a program based on what already exists; a cross-departmental
certificate or degree minor program may be a good start. Local community colleges,
cooking schools or vocational programs can also play an important part in building
the foundation and a broad constituency for food studies. Intercollegiate
collaborations nationwide as well as internationally can also offer great
opportunities for food studies faculty and students to explore and benefit from
experiences and expertise that home institutes cannot offer. In addition, we should
never forget that our students, colleagues and communities are all deeply concerned
with what they eat, where their food comes from, how it affects their health and
wellbeing, and its connections with issues of social justice and the environmental
Food, crisis prompted by the need to feed 9 billion people on this small planet.
Culture
Society
& The purpose of this paper is to share some of the ideas that arose in the FoFS
workshop, and we hope to prompt a much wider discussion of these same issues
volume 18 and opportunities. As the launch of the John Dewey Kitchen Institute has already
issue 1 proved, innovative, intercollegiate food studies is possible. The seeds have been
march 2015 sown. Keep on the lookout for a great harvest!
183
Acknowledgments
The year-long Sawyer Seminar was organized by two faculty (Todd and Wilk), a
postdoctoral fellow (Logan), two graduate fellows (Hamada and Minard), and Lillian
Brown, a graduate student in the Indiana University Food Studies program. The
authors thank all workshop participants for reviewing and providing comments on
the manuscript of this paper.
Shingo Hamada is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana

University, and a project researcher at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature
in Kyoto, Japan. He received his PhD in anthropology at Indiana University in 2014, and
was formerly Mellon Sawyer Seminar doctoral fellow at Indiana University. His research
focuses on seafood production, distribution, consumption and waste with approach of

actor-network theory. Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kita-ku, Kyoto-shi,
Kyoto 6060014, Japan (hamadas@chikyu.ac.jp).
Richard Wilk is Provost’s Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, where he

directs the food studies program. He has also taught at the University of California, New
Mexico State University, and University College London, and has held visiting
professorships at Gothenburg University, the University of Marseille and the University
of London. Much of his recent work has turned towards the global history of food and
sustainable consumption. His most recent book is Rice and Beans, co-edited with Livia
Barbosa (Bloomsbury, 2012). Department of Anthropology, Student Building 130, 701 E.
Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA (wilkr@indiana.edu).
Amanda Logan is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at

Northwestern University. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of
Michigan in 2012, and was formerly Mellon Sawyer Seminar postdoctoral fellow at
Indiana University. Her research examines the historical roots of chronic food insecurity
and the development of local tastes in West Africa using archaeology and ethnography.
Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, 1810 Hinman Avenue, Evanston,
IL 60201, USA (amanda.logan@northwestern.edu).
Sara Minard is a PhD candidate in food studies at Indiana University, where she is an
associate instructor in the Department of Geography. She has an MA in anthropology
from Indiana University and was a Mellon Sawyer Seminar doctoral fellow. She applies
a transdisciplinary approach in her study of food waste, drawing on cultural
anthropology, cognitive psychology, political geography and social history to help
understand the dynamics of human–resource interactions. Department of Anthropology,
Student Building 130, 701 E. Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
(sminard@indiana.edu)
Amy Trubek is an associate professor in the University of Vermont’s Department of

Nutrition and Food Science and Faculty Director for the university’s Graduate Program
in Food Systems. Her research interests include the history of the culinary profession,
globalization of the food supply, the relationship between taste and place, and cooking
184
as a cultural practice. Her publications include Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented
the Culinary Profession (2000) and The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir
(2008). Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, 251 Carrigan Win, 109 Carrigan
Drive, Burlington, VT 05401, USA (amy.trubek@uvm.edu).
Notes
1 Additional funding for the Seminar and Workshop was provided by the generous support
of the Institute for Advanced Study and the Office of Vice Provost’s International Affairs
at Indiana University.
2 There are some exceptional cases, such as NYU Steinhardt and Syracuse, both of which
incorporate food studies, nutrition, and public health in one department, and neither of
which are land-grant universities.
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Food, Culture & Society

An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

ISSN: 1552-8014 (Print) 1751-7443 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rffc20

The Future of Food Studies

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The Future of Food Studies

students with the necessary skills for post-graduate employment.

in-residence, which provided multiple opportunities for Indiana University food

Locating Food Studies in Euro-American Institutional

a new professional figure … skilled in production, distribution, promotion, and

what kinds of resources exist in a particular setting. According to participant

colleges, programs and campuses.

Training Undergraduate and Graduate Students within

distinction. The division between academic (questioning why) and professional

Fig 1: Wordle Image Based on the Bibliographies Submitted by Participants (with

Future of Food Studies

The Food Studies Labs and Pedagogy

Engaging the Public beyond the Campus

presentations we perform at conferences. Most universities offer “public speaking”

Fundraising Strategies for Research and Training

incoming students. Conventional research grants can help food studies by

• Explore crowdsource (or crowdfunding) proposals and research funding within

contribution (a method now called “microtasking”).

Conclusion (and What Is Missing)

Shingo Hamada is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana

focuses on seafood production, distribution, consumption and waste with approach of

Richard Wilk is Provost’s Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, where he

Amanda Logan is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at

Amy Trubek is an associate professor in the University of Vermont’s Department of

from: http://www.unisg.it/en/storia-e-missione (accessed September 2, 2014).

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