Exeter Food Pechakucha Seminar

The four speakers, their topics, and brief abstracts appear below. Presentations will be short (7-8 minutes), followed by time for discussion.

Julian Garay-Vazquez

Tropical Archaeobotanist (Post Doctoral Research Associate of the LastJourney Project) in the Archaeology department

The Archaeobotany of culinary traditions and indigenous meal preparations of precolonial Borikén (Puerto Rico) 

The act of cooking, aside from a nutritional necessity, is how people transmute ingredients into culturally charged meals. Archaeobotanical research provides a means to recover the alchemical processes or intangible side of cuisine by studying tangible charred food fragments. Using a mixed methods approach incorporating historical recipes allowed us to identify the microstructural composition of caçabí bread from an indigenous archaeological site in Borikén. This paper focuses on how archaeobotanical research can contribute to recovering lost traditional knowledge via the study of charred meal preparations. Ultimately, studying individual meal preparations would allow us to reconstruct past regional cuisines and assess culinary change through time. 

Luciana Torquati

Senior Lecturer in Nutrition. Department of Public Health and Sports Sciences, HLS

Food for gut: why feeding our gut microbiome matters?

This talk will give an overview of key concepts in the relationship between food, gut microbiome and health. The talk will present our previous and current research projects on this topic, including examples of interdisciplinary research that might spark interesting discussions and opportunities for future collaborations across the network.

Steve Emery

Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Agriculture

The culture of cooperation among British farmers

Steven is trained in anthropology, sociology and human geography and his research focuses on the cultural dimensions to farmer decision-making and behaviours. In this talk he will explore the current state of cooperation among British farmers within historical, cultural and environmental context. He will focus specifically on the cultural value of independence and how this mediates farmer receptivity toward cooperation and its wider implications for agri-environmental policy and wider transitions within the food system.

Rebecca Sandover

Lecturer in Human Geography

Acting for Food change -Undertaking Participatory Action with the Food Movement

This talk will explore how we coproduce knowledge with partners when acting alongside the food movement for policy and praxis change. It will explore case studies liked to the Sustainable Food Places network, in particular the formation of partnerships in Devon, as a mode for acting with partners in an attempt to generate progressive change in the food system.