2017 Oxford Symposium on Food & Drink

The Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery is an annual, weekend-long conference on food, its culture and its history. The oldest and most important gathering on this topic, it brings together up to 220 international scholars, journalists, chefs, scientists, sociologists, anthrolopogists—and even committed amateurs—among others, for a serious discussion about the theme at hand.

Though ‘Food and Landscape’ had been anticipated to be a popular theme, the response was overwhelming. Not only were 178 paper-proposals submitted for 42 available slots, but 40% of us were attending for the very first time. And, in addition to the official programme, there were two pre-symposium satellite events—a Wiki-editathon designed to boost the number of Wikipedia entries related (not only) to women and food, and a viewing of food-related objects from Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum as part of Symposiast Linda Roodenburg’s Oxford Food & Museum Project. So even before the Symposium began, the air at St. Catz was filled with excitement.

I attended as a first time presenter, giving a paper, 'Steps Toward an Ecology of the Cookbook' on aspects of landscape in the cookbook.