Food Stories – the afterlife of a research project

It’s obviously been quite a while since this blog was updated, but that doesn’t mean we have forgotten about Consuming Authenticities!

In fact, plenty of exciting developments have been quietly happening behind the scenes, which I will write more about over the coming weeks and months:

• we have been continuing to publicise and distribute our recipe book, Authentic Recipes from Around the World (Hint: email me for a free copy!) through talks, podcasts and interviews
• we have been working on the academic publications based on our case studies on pulque, acarajé, cider and flaounes: in summer 2017 we submitted these to the esteemed journal Food and History, to be considered by peer reviewers (eek!)
• and, most excitingly of all, our original funders the AHRC have been good enough to invest a little more to develop the legacy and impact of our project still further, through a new project called “Food Stories: Fostering Cross-Cultural Dialogue through Food” which started in October 2017

Food Stories, led by Emma-Jayne Abbots (of cider case study fame), is a collaborative project between University of Wales, Trinity St David, the University of Leicester and Stories On Our Plate (SOOP), an organisation that champions the use of food and storytelling for fostering dialogue and cross-cultural understanding. In addition, SOOP offers culinary support initiatives for home cooks with refugee and migrant backgrounds wishing to gain a foothold in the food and catering industry, and using food stories to share and connect with diners in London. The project aims to foster cross-cultural understanding through cooking and eating food, and by sharing stories of culinary heritage and cultural identity, via a series of creative activities – including cooking workshops, a cookbook, and café-style cookbook launch seminars – in Bradford, Coventry and London. 

Watch this space as more news of all these exciting developments will follow