Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food

Kate Brown is the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. She is the author of the prize-winning histories Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford 2013) and A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Harvard 2004). Her work has also been supported by the Carnegie Foundation, the NEH, ACLS, IREX, and the American Academy of Berlin, among others.  

Ayşen Tanyeri is an economist with extensive experience in international development as a researcher and practitioner, currently serving as a Teaching Professor in the Economics Department at Northeastern University in Boston. She has published on agriculture and food policy and is currently working on a manuscript about historical factors shaping food systems and culinary practices in the Mediterranean World. 

Nil Tekgül is an assistant professor of history at Bilkent University, holding a PhD from the same institution. Specializing in the history of emotions in the early modern Ottoman Empire, she has published several works, including the book Emotions in the Ottoman Empire (2023). 

Renata Motta is a sociologist whose interdisciplinary research interests include food studies, critical agrarian studies, and gender studies, focusing on the role of social mobilization and state-society relations in struggles over food and agrarian futures. She is a Professor at the Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies at the University of Heidelberg and leads the Food for Justice Research Group, examining food inequalities in Brazil and German. 

Dr. Hanna Garth is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and a sociocultural and medical anthropologist whose research focuses on urban food access and the global food system. She studies these themes in Latin America and the Caribbean and among Black and Latinx communities in the United States, and is the author of Food in Cuba (2020). 

Prof. dr. Peter van Dam is Professor of Dutch History at the University of Amsterdam and his research focuses on the history of civic initiative and activism. His current work examines how people have tried to promote various forms of sustainability. 

Max Hell is a research master's student in History at the University of Amsterdam. He wrote his BA thesis on the early history of vegetarianism in the Netherlands and was a research intern on the project “Food as Commons in Amsterdam” at the University of Amsterdam. 

Joel Mead is a third-year PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Liverpool, focusing his doctoral research on the history of eggs in Britain, 1943-1999. His research adopts a holistic approach examining production, consumption, and societal context in relation to gender, health, and animal welfare. 

Ayra Kip is a writer and cultural curator. Together with her twin sister Ira she is the co-owner of KIP Republic: an agency focused on storytelling through cultural art projects and events that encourages conversation, critical analysis, and community building. 

Aastha Gaur is pursuing a RMA at the National University of Singapore focusing on culinary developments in the Poona Cantonment in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. She holds a BASc degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from The University of Hong Kong, with a focus on Food Studies and Social Innovation and a minor in History. 

Dr. Richard Herzog is a postdoctoral research fellow in the History Department at Philipps University Marburg (Germany) and at the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 138. His research interests include Spanish America in a global perspective, Nahua history, food studies, and the history of emotions. His PhD thesis on native scholars of colonial Mexico was published in 2024.  

Ary Budiyanto is a lecturer in Anthropology  at Universitas Brawijaya.  His research focuses on the intersections of religion, cross-cultural dynamics, and food studies in Indonesia. He has authored key works on Indonesian cuisine and is currently engaged in the "EthnoSotography" project exploring the socio-cultural history of Soto.

Dr. Bernardine Farrell is a food anthropologist bridging academia and industry. She is known for leading teams since 2015, and has received awards and gained recognition for innovative sustainable practices and education. Her work empowers food citizens, especially children and families, through sustainable food skill programs that support connections for developing sustainable and healthy food choices. 

Jessica Kenyatta Walker is an Assistant Professor of American Culture and Afro-American and African Studies at The University of Michigan. She explores food and racialization within everyday cultural landscapes, drawing on interdisciplinary fields like Black Studies, Critical Food Studies, Black Feminist Theory, and theories of space and place. She received her PhD in American Studies from The University of Maryland. 

Prof. dr. Ken MacDonald holds the position of Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto, where he is also Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and a core member of the Culinaria Research Centre. His research encompasses many transnational processes, with a focus on cultural formations and food-related work, including studies of cultural economies, markets, and increases in vulnerability within urban food systems. 

Dr. Voltaire Cang is specialized in the study of different forms of Japanese cultural heritage and their relationship to contemporary society, culture, and identity. He is a Tokyo-based permanent  researcher for the RINRI Institute of Ethics (Japan) and holds trustee, board director, and editorial committee positions with various international organizations related to food studies and anthropology. 

Sümeyye Hoşgör Büke is currently a Post-Doc Researcher at the University of Vienna, working on a project tracing the food consumption of Ottomans through tereke registers. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, with a thesis on changes in Ottoman consumption in the eighteenth century. 

Onno Kleyn is a culinary journalist and writer who started writing about cooking and wine in 1988. He is widely recognized for his contributions to De Volkskrant newspaper, including columns and articles, recipe columns, and a regular wine column. He has published more than forty books. Since 2010, he also trains people to write about food and wine at his Academie Culinair/Wijnschrijven. 

Lelani Lewis is a chef, food stylist, and culinary activist who grew up in South London, and now lives in Amsterdam. After studying sociology and working as a social worker, she followed her passion to become a professional cook and started Code Noir in 2017, a platform exploring Caribbean cuisines through research on food, history, resistance, memory, and colonialism.  

Herman J. van Vliet studied history at the University of Groningen and spent two decades as a passionate farmer. For over twelve years, he has run a food truck specializing in regional organic cuisine. He serves as secretary of the Foundation for Historic Food Culture (SHE), and published about the Frisian historical cuisine.

Antonia Weiss is a postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen’s Rural Sociology Group and a Research Fellow at the AMS Institute. Her work uses a multidisciplinary approach focusing on social and urban environmental justice. Her current project, Deep Foodscapes, explores how food environments are shaped by generations of (post)migrants. It aims to co-create a blueprint for a healthier, greener, and more inclusive city with residents.