Junior Research Group

Peter van den Bemden – Carp, Stockfish, crab on a table and oysters in a crock pot (between 1641 and 1654)

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Junior Research Group
“Off the Menu”

Since May 2023, the Elitenetzwerk Bayern has been funding a new International Junior Research Group at the University of Augsburg that focuses on spotlighting culturally shaped eating practices as key sites of environmental transformation and, thereby, rethinks the environment through a culinary lens. It is led by cultural historian Dr. L. Sasha Gora.

How food is produced and consumed is intimately linked to the environmental crisis. The research group “Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment” brings together food studies and the environmental humanities to introduce what it calls the “culinary environmental humanities.” It began its work in May 2023 under the direction of cultural historian Dr. L. Sasha Gora. Its goal is to spotlight culturally shaped eating practices as key sites of environmental transformation and, thus, rethink the environment through a culinary lens.

Eating is one of the most direct ways people interact with environments by literally digesting them. Food is also how people experience climate change and confront the challenging question of how to feed a growing population on a planet with limited resources. Cuisine is, therefore, a unique entry point for contextualizing the sixth mass extinction and the future of planetary health. Food connects the micro with the macro and studying it bridges law and politics, economics and environmental sciences, sociology, history, and more.

The “Off the Menu” research group takes an interdisciplinary, environmental humanities approach to contextualize the planetary emergency by highlighting the intersection between culture and the environment with a focus on seafood. Three case studies will address how human appetites create and destroy marine ecosystems:

The Newfoundland “Cod Rush” and the environmental crisis,
The ethics of endangered foods and culinary extinction, as well as
The question of how cuisines adopt or reject “invasive” species.

In tandem, they investigate the emergence of climate-conscious eating practices. Cuisine reflects how cultures categorise and mediate human relationships to plants and animals and its study helps scholars from across disciplines to further understand how people transform the worlds around them. This research group, therefore, seeks to historicise the intimate relationship between cuisine and environmental change, as well as the emergence of sustainability as a culinary practice.

Project start: 01 May 2023 (duration 6 years; i.e. until 30.04.2029)

Junior Research Group “Off the Menu”

Junior Research Group
“Off the Menu”