MA Anthropology of Food, SOAS, University of London

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book edited by two of the Food Studies Centre's research associates!

Food Beyond Terroir: Tasting Place and Placing Taste in Global Perspective.
Edited by Anna Colquhoun & Katharina Graf. Berghahn, 2025. (OPEN ACCESS)

From winemaking in occupied territories to fishing in polluted seas, home cooking in refugee communities, and vegan cheesemaking, this collection explores the complex ways taste and place intersect with political, ecological, social, and economic issues. Through diverse ethnographic case studies, leading food scholars examine the meaning and making of place and taste. In doing so, the book challenges terroir-inspired notions of a fixed taste of place and pushes the boundaries of what we think we know about taste-place relations.

BOOK LAUNCH, Monday 1st December, 6-8pm, SOAS
Info and registration:
http://foodbeyondterroiratSOAS.eventbrite.co.uk

'Hunger in global war economies' by Alex Dr Waal, first presented at the SOAS Food Studies Centre Distinguished Lecture 2023, is now published open access I'm 'Disasters' journal

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Proud of our former student Tyfanny Choi who won the 4th EASA award for her MA Anthropology of Food dissertation, 'Feeding hungry ghosts in Hong Kong: Thinking with food and hauntology' https://easaonline.org/networks/food/award 👏😊

Anthropology of Food Network - Award This network brings together people who critically engage with the issues related to food, and study food materiality, state institutions, daily practices, family relations, food systems, gender, class and race, as well as many other themes.

Anthropologist Sophie Chao at SOAS Food Studies Centre next week! No registration required. https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/metabolic-injustice-food-hunger-and-ecology-west-papuan-oil-palm-frontier

Calling all alumni of the MA Anthropology of Food programme! We are holding an alumni network event at SOAS on Saturday 8th June. If you have done the programme and would like to attend, or can't attend but would like to be part of the new alumni network, please complete this questionnaire and we will send further info: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=odBNZ2Kux0Kjn2nuGZU3qKP5yrAIYoFJn7TJm_I6BtpUNkJMS0U4M1JaMTRCVTNBRUUxOTBGMVM1TS4u

The Food Studies Centre will be hosting this lecture by Sophie Chao with on 8th May. No need to register. See you there! For more info and abstract, go here: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/metabolic-injustice-food-hunger-and-ecology-west-papuan-oil-palm-frontier

6pm tomorrow at SOAS Food Studies Centre, Annual Distinguished Lecture by Francesca Bray, exploring millet as the key staple in China before rice took over as the essential dietary, economic and cultural staple. Register here: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/realm-lord-millet-empire-rice-rethinking-chinas-history-through-its-cropscapes

Pauline Harlay, PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at SOAS, is presenting her work on “Taiwanese tea merchants and the invention of Taiwanese terroir” next week at the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies.

“We are selling tea from Taiwan”: merchants and the invention of the Taiwanese terroir This talk will attempt to describe how actors narrativize ‘Taiwanese’ tea – the stories they tell others and their customers when they introduce their teas.

Focusing on individual behavioural causes of rather than its political underpinnings reproduces ethnic stereotypes and hierarchies in Somalia, argues Dr Susanne Jaspars in this newly published article

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How do political transactions and governance practices contribute to famine in Somalia? Susanne Jaspars, Nisar Majid, and Guhad Adan take this question on in a new open access publication that you can read here:

Somalia's evolving political market place: from famine and humanitarian crisis to permanent precarity | The Journal of Modern African Studies | Cambridge Core Somalia's evolving political market place: from famine and humanitarian crisis to permanent precarity

Exploring the intensifying politics of meat-eating in India - a fantastic piece by MA Anthropology of Food student

Meat-eating and the marginalisation of minorities Situating James Staples’s work alongside other texts on meat-eating and cow politics in India reveals the centrality of the stigma around meat in perpetuating caste and religious inequality.