Editorial Team

Editor

Sam Bilton studied for a Masters in Culinary Arts at University of Brighton and is now an independent food historian and author. Her recent publications include First Catch Your Gingerbread (2021), Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron (2022) and her third book The Philosophy of Chocolate (British Library Publishing) was published in October 2023. Sam became the editor of PPC in December 2023. Sam also presents the Comfortably Hungry food history podcast and is a frequent contributor to national magazines and websites, food festivals and radio. For further information visit sambilton.com or follow Sam on instagram and X @mrssbilton.

Editorial Board

Sidney Cheung is Professor of the Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He got his PhD in Osaka University on the study of cultural relations between Ainu people and Japanese. His latest book is Hong Kong Foodways (HKU Press, 2022), and his edited and co-edited books include: The Globalization of Chinese Food (RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), Food and Foodways in Asia: Resource, Tradition and Cooking (Routledge, 2007) and Rethinking Asian Food Heritage (Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture in Taipei, 2015); also, he is General Editor of the forthcoming Berkshire Encyclopedia of Chinese Cuisines (Berkshire and Oxford U. Press).

 

Andrew Dalby studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, and University College London, and then worked as a librarian. A part-time Ph.D. at Birkbeck was his introduction to food history: his dissertation was revised as Siren Feasts (Routledge, 1996), while he and Sally Grainger published The Classical Cookbook (British Museum Press, 1996). Since then he has translated three source texts for Prospect Books, most recently The Treatise of Walter of Bibbesworth (2011). Other books include Empire of Pleasures (Routledge, 2000), The Breakfast Book (Reaktion, 2013) and Gifts of the Gods (with Rachel Dalby: Reaktion, 2018). He is an editor of the eight-volume Cultural History of Plants (Bloomsbury, 2022) and a frequent contributor to PPC. He now lives in France, grows apples and makes cider.

 

Daniela Gutiérrez Flores is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of California, Davis, where she teaches courses on early modern Hispanic literature and culture. She specializes in early modern Spanish and colonial Latin American studies, with an emphasis on the relations between texts, food, and the culture of labor. Her research investigates the spiritual, political, social, and cultural meanings of cooking in the Spanish Atlantic (16th-18th c) through the examination of literature, visual culture and historical records. Her work has been supported by the UC Davis Humanities Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the Culinary Historians of New York Association and the Tinker Foundation. She currently serves as Co-Principal Investigator in the interdisciplinary research project Thinking Food @ the Intersections: Justice and Critical Food Studies, a Sawyer Seminar initiative supported by the Mellon Foundation.

 

Mary Hyman is an American historians residing in Paris who oversaw the historical research for the French Inventaire du Patrimoine Culinaire de la France from 1990 to 2012. She is currently working on a history of French food and cookbooks with an emphasis on the publishing history of the books and their use as source material for those researching French culinary culture and the evolution of tastes in France.

 

Philip Hyman is an American historians residing in Paris who oversaw the historical research for the French Inventaire du Patrimoine Culinaire de la France from 1990 to 2012. He is currently working on a history of French food and cookbooks with an emphasis on the publishing history of the books and their use as source material for those researching French culinary culture and the evolution of tastes in France.

 

Dr. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire is a senior lecturer in the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology, Technological University Dublin. He is the co-founder and chair of the biennial Dublin Gastronomy Symposium (2012-present) and a former two-term trustee of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. He is chair of the Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies in TU Dublin, the first such programme in Ireland. Máirtín is co-editor with Eamon Maher of ‘Tickling the Palate’: Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture (Peter Lang: 2014) and New Beginnings: Perspectives from France and Ireland (Peter Lang, 2023), and with Rhona Richman Kenneally on ‘The Food Issue’ of The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies (2018). He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, and in 2018, he presented an eight-part television series for TG4 called ‘Blasta’ celebrating Ireland’s food heritage. In 2021, he guest edited a special issue of Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies 59(2) on Irish Food Ways. He is co-editor of the new European Journal of Food Drink and Society since 2021. He was awarded an IRC Research Ally Prize in both 2021 and 2022 for mentoring doctoral candidates. In 2024 he co-edited Irish Food History: A Companion (EUT+ Academic Press; Royal Irish Academy, 2024).

 

Stephen Mennell is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at University College Dublin. His publications include All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (1985), and as co-author with Anne Murcott and Anneke van Otterloo, The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet and Culture (1992).

 

Karen Metheny is Senior Lecturer in Gastronomy and Archaeology at Boston University. As a historical archaeologist and anthropologist, she works with the material, documentary, ethnographic, sensorial, and archaeological evidence of food and foodways. She is co-editor with Mary Beaudry of the two-volume Archaeology of Food: An Encyclopedia (Rowman & Littlefield 2015), the first reference work devoted to the study of food and foodways through archaeology. Her multi-disciplinary study of the cultural significance of maize in colonial New England is part of a larger exploration of how unfamiliar foods are accepted or rejected, how food is central to the formation and maintenance of individual and group identities, and how changes to food practices can be used to better understand and articulate the outcomes of cultural encounter. In addition to courses on the anthropology and archaeology of food, she teaches classes on the role of food in museums and in public history programming, historical cookbooks as social and cultural texts, and the material cultural of cookery and dining.

 

Piotr Nagórka, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw. As Head of the Laboratory of Cultural Terminology at the Faculty of Applied Linguistics, he directs and conducts research in multilingual terminology while offering terminological assistance to various domains of knowledge, including wine and food science and studies on human values. He has authored two dictionaries dedicated to the field of oenology and numerous articles on Europeans’ ethical concepts. His encyclopaedia Madeira, Port, Sherry: The Equinox Companion to Fortified Wines has gained widespread attention from linguists and wine professionals, having been nominated for the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2021 and recognized by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine, winning the prestigious Prix de l’OIV award in 2022. He has received research fellowship awards from the University of Vienna and Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz. His research results have been published as journal articles and book chapters, and presented at international conferences in Dresden, Mainz, Riga, Venice, Warsaw and Wrocław.

 

Charles Perry majored in Middle East Studies at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. Thereafter he chose a career as a journalist, beginning at Rolling Stone Magazine in 1968 and culminating in 18 years at the Los Angeles Times. He has published widely on food history, particularly of the Middle East, and has translated several medieval Arab cookbooks. He has been a contributor to PPC since issue #7 in 1981.

 

Jeffrey M. Pilcher is a Professor of Food Studies and director of the Culinaria Research Centre at the University of Toronto. His books include Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (1998), Food in World History, 3d ed (2023), Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (2012). He edited the Oxford Handbook of Food History (2012) and is a founding member of the editorial collective of the peer-reviewed journal Global Food History. His next book, Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity, will be published in the fall.

 

Barbara Santich was an early contributor to PPC and Australian representative from 1982 to 2014. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Adelaide, where she developed postgraduate programs in gastronomy/food studies and food writing. She is the author of eight books on food history and culture in both Australia and France, including The Original Mediterranean Cuisine: Medieval Recipes for Today (2018).

 

Shinya Shoda is Head of International Cooperation Section, Department of Planning and Coordination, Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Japan. He is a founding co-editor of Archaeology of Food and Foodways journal.

 

To follow.

 

Nicole Tarulevicz is Food Historian, with a specific interest in Singapore, Southeast Asia, and the British Empire. She has just concluded a term as Head of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania, where she is an Associate Professor of History. Her current book project explores how Singapore, as a free port and historic crossroads of trade, exemplifies and presages various elements of globalized food systems, including the ideas, practices and institutions historically connected to constructions of Food Safety. This research is supported by an Australian Research Council Grant: Search for Safety: Cultural History Lesson on Food Safety from Singapore. Her most recent writing includes a chapter focusing on insects in post-war Singapore, and an article about food fears and meat in colonial Singapore. She is also author of Eating Her Curries and Kway: A Cultural History of Food in Singapore.