St Mary’s Hosts Interdisciplinary Food Conference

On Saturday 18th April, St Mary’s University, Twickenham hosted Digesting Modernity: An Interdisciplinary Study of Food. Keynote speaker for the conference was Senior Lecturer in History at Liverpool Hope University Dr Bryce Evans who gave a paper on communal kitchens in Peru. St Mary’s Professor of English Prof Allan Simmons gave the Plenary paper, which surveyed food in literature from the Brothers Grimm to George Orwell. There were a number of speakers at the event, which attracted academics from across Europe, including St Mary’s Professor of Philosophy Prof Geoff Hunt who gave a paper on the ethics of food production, while journalist Liz Hoggard from The Times presented on A Year in Food Trends. Cristiana Pagliarusco, University of Trento, Italy said, “I loved every minute of the conference. Each Talk has been highly stimulating and perfectly fit for the discourse. I'd really like to see all the papers collected in a volume and read them over and over again.” St Mary’s PhD Student, and organiser of the conference, Kim Salmons, said, “The creative culinary detail reflected the tone of the day and evinced gasps of admiration from the delegates. I can say that everyone went away singing the praises of St Mary’s University and demanding that the event become an annual one.”