Our Food-Webbed World: interdisciplinary culinary landscapes

Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, 6-8 March 2025

This event brings together researchers from different scientific areas to generate cross-disciplinary debate on how food shapes our everyday lives at various levels of society and culture. Food practices such as production, consumption, and intangible food culture together form what is the most intricately connective web of human experience. Beginning from the primal need of an individual body while simultaneously demanding inter-reliance and community, we are undeniably in a food-webbed world. Despite this, food-related studies have traditionally been delegated to strictly separate academic spheres, which is why this conference aims to offer an opportunity for truly interdisciplinary dialogue.

Our Food-Webbed World: interdisciplinary culinary landscapes runs for three days (March 6-8, 2025) at Universidade Católica Portuguesa and other venues in Lisbon, Portugal, and includes a series of keynote lectures, panel discussions, interactive workshops, and off-site excursions with curated culinary programming.

At this multi-disciplinary and international forum, we address the essential role of food for communication and transmission of traditions, and the (re)establishment of peoples and communities throughout time. We are particularly interested in the relationship between food and processes of cultural transformation and change, as well as the centrality of food to/the impact of food on technology, migration, media and communications, political and economic development, social initiatives, and cultural and artistic expressions.

Through this conference, we hope to share and discuss food practices with the awareness that all food-related studies can and should benefit from shared perspectives on how food is both an instrument and a vehicle of culture.

We welcome contributions for paper sessions, interactive workshops, or presentation of case studies related to food studies from researchers with different backgrounds. The aim of this conference is to offer a shared experience through a unique approach based on bringing together theory and practice.

Possible topics (although not exclusive):

• Culinary histories on recipes or menus
• Cookbooks and menus as narrative text / in translation
• Food writing and journalism/ food in the news
• Food in film, literature and fine arts
• Food policies/ the politics/economics of food
• Food and the senses
• Food and memory or cognition
• Industrial food practices production
• Food and the environment
• Food and social media/ food and influencers
• Food and migration/ as vehicle for hospitality
• Food and human rights and/or activism
• Food with social impact/ the social impact of food
• Food, health and nutrition
• Food in/ and institutions (ex. Schools, hospitals, prisons)
• Food and community
• Food and religion/ food and ritual
• Food and tourism

Keynote speakers

Marília dos Santos Lopes (Universidade Católica Portuguesa/ CECC)
Sarah E. Worth (Furman University)

Interactive Tasting Workshops

Olive Oil: production, consumption, socio-ecological cultures in the Mediterranean
Johnny Madge, olive oil and honey sommelier, gustatory educator and author  

Wine:  Socio-political and cultural systems of consumption in Ancient Greece
Sarah E. Worth, full professor of aesthetics, philosophy of food  

Interdisciplinary Workshop

CellAgri Portugal – the Portuguese Association for Cellular Agriculture

Joaquim Cabral, distinguished full professor of bioengineering and biosciences (Instituto Superior Técnico), and President of CellAgri Portugal
Carlos Rodrigues, coordinator of the Bioreactor and Biomaterial Technologies for Stem Cell Manufacturing Lab (Instituto Superior Técnico)

Roundtable: “Food in Migration: diasporic cooking and futures of fusion”

Speakers TBA

Paper proposals

Proposals should be sent to foodconf2025@gmail.com no later than October 31, 2024, and include:

• Paper title
• Abstract in English (max. 250 words)
• Name, email address, institutional affiliation
• Brief Bio (100 words)

Applicants will be informed of their submission results by December 2, 2024.

The registration is open only to those with an accepted abstract. Deadline to register is December 31, 2024.

Paper sessions will run 1.5 hours. Each participant will have 20 minutes for speaking, followed by 10 minutes for Q&A. 

All participants are expected to attend the full conference, for the benefit of knowledge-production and knowledge-exchange.

Fees*

	Early bird	Normal
Senior researchers	200€	240€
PhD researchers	100€	130€
CECC full researcher	–	20€
CECC PhD researcher	–	10€

* The fees include coffee breaks, lunch, and conference materials. Early bird fees are valid until December 15, 2024.

Organizing Committee

Annimari Juvonen
Márcia Dias Sousa
Rissa Miller
Verena Lindemann Lino

Scientific Committee

Adriana Martins | UCP
Ana Margarida Abrantes | UCP
Isabel Drumond Braga | FLUL
Ana Isabel Buescu | NOVA de Lisboa
Luísa Santos | UCP
Sofia Pinto | UCP
Peter Hanenberg |UCP
Rissa Miller | UCP
Márcia Dias Sousa | UCP
Maria Graça da Silveira | Univ. dos Açores