Australian Food, Society and Culture Network
About the Australian Food, Society and Culture Network
The Australian Food, Society and Culture Network includes members from around Australia and also links to other related networks both within Australia and in other countries. Members of the network are from a wide range of disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences but also marketing, nutrition, medicine, public health and health policy.
Our members are interested in such topics as health, body weight, gender and sexual identity, the family, agriculture and food provisioning, the cross-cultural dimensions of food and eating, the portrayal of food and cooking in the media, the history of food, indigenous foodways and sustainable food systems.
The network particularly seeks to explore the ways in which food and eating practices can be examined critically and theorised using relevant socio-cultural theoretical perspectives.
The main purposes of the Australian Food, Society and Culture Network are:
- To serve as a network and forum that facilitates research exchange, collaboration and synergy between researchers in Australia interested in the social and cultural aspects of food and eating across a range of disciplines.
- To foster international links with similar networks in other countries for research exchange and sharing.
- To draw from national and international expertise of the Network’s members to inform local and global food policy and practice.
The interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of the network is reflected in several thematic groups representing our current membership's research interests. The thematic groups may meet individually, but the Australian Food, Society and Culture Network organises a meeting once a year in an annual workshop where all the thematic groups can come together to present research and exchange ideas. The thematic groups are:
- Food and Socioeconomic Disadvantage
- Families, Relationships and Food
- Gender, the Body and Food
- Food and Ethics
- Methodologies in Food Research
- Food Production and Supply Chains
- Food Policy, Politics and Governance
- Social Histories of Food
- Mass Media, Commodity Culture and Food
- Food and Consumption
- Food and Sensory Experience
- Food and Health
- Time in Culinary Culture
- Food, Race and Class
- Indigenous Foodways
Our people
Associate Professor Cathy Banwell
Associate Professor Kate Barclay
Dr Tania Cammarano
Ms Vita Christie
Associate Professor Tim Dewhirst
Associate Professor Jane Dixon
Ms Shauna Downs
Rosalie Fansheel
Ellese Ferdinands
Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser
Associate Professor Michael Gard
Associate Professor Bridget Kelly
Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Lawrence
Associate Professor Alana Mann
Associate Professor Samantha Meyer
Associate Professor Barbara Mullan
Dr Christina (Lina) Nope-Williams
Anita Peerson
Clinical Associate Professor Smita Shah
Dr Sian Supski
Our events
AFSCN Symposium – Nourishing Futures: Food, Diet, and Health in Times of Crises
- 15 July 2022, The University of Sydney
This interdisciplinary symposium explores changing food systems, practices, and futures in an age of multiple, overlapping crises. The speakers will investigate new ways of thinking about the relationship between ecology, food, culture, and health in an age of self-devouring growth, when environmental and social inequities are intensifying, and health concerns are amplified by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Keynote: Asking different questions: Leveraging ethnography to nourish people, health promotion and policy, Professor Megan Warin (University of Adelaide).
Download the 2022 Symposium Program (pdf, 708.9KB)
AFSCN Symposium – Data, Diets, Digitalism: Emergent Food Research Methodologies
- 15 November 2019, The University of Sydney
This one-day symposium examined emergent research methodologies in the study of food, nutrition, and diet. We looked at the ways in which new methodologies to examine food and food cultures have expanded, both with technologies of the digital age that reconfigure systems of food production and production, as well as new sensory (tactile/haptic, visual, olfactory), representational, cultural, and social practices that shape the food citizen. We also examined moving boundaries in the study of food, society, and culture through the lends of foodscape mapping, reflexive research methods, and indigenous/cross-cultural food pedagogies.
Download the 2019 Symposium Program (pdf, 873.5KB)
AFSCN Symposium- Food and Place, Food and Displace
- 9th November 2018, Flinders University Victoria Square, Adelaide, South Australia
The aim of this one-day symposium was to present and discuss research on the relationships between eating, drinking, place and culture. We looked at the ways in which settings, places and habitats construct opportunities for old and new forms of alimentation and cultural significance. The symposium presented research on the experiences of those who have been, by accident or design, displaced from their foodways. The event included an interactive 'dessert-in-hand' food experience hosted by Post Dining. In the afternoon a workshop was held to discuss the research and actions for the network in 2019.
Download the 2018 Symposium Program (pdf, 383.6KB)
2016 Symposium - Food Paradoxes: Equity, Access and Excess
- 22 January 2016, The University of Sydney
This one-day symposium examined contemporary politics and paradoxes of food in the context of equity, access and excess. In a world where increasing poverty and disadvantage contribute to hunger and health disparities, we are seeing the systematic collection of surplus food that is re-circulated and distributed through local networks, food charity services and food banks. At the same time social issues like obesity are interpreted as symptomatic of excess and a mismatch between biological and social environments, and over-consumption of readily accessible processed foods. Equity, access and excess are thus nodes of complex cultural systems that contribute to current practices of how we eat and the everyday performances and representations of food politics.
Download the 2016 Symposium Program (pdf, 457.8KB)
2013 Symposium - Food, Gender and the Family
- 26 July 2013 - University of Sydney
Download the 2013 Symposium Program (pdf, 148.8 KB)
1st Australian Food, Society and Culture Network Workshop
- 10 December 2012 - University of Sydney
Download the 2012 Symposium Program (pdf, 90KB)
Related links
- Association for the Study of Food and Culture
- Australasian Agrifood Research Network
- British Sociological Association Food Study Group
- Critical Studies in Food and Culture
- Discursive Families
- Charles Perkins Centre for Obesity, Overweight and Cardiovascular Disease (The University of Sydney)
- University of Oxford Unit for Obesity and Bio-cultural Variation
- University of Oxford, Food Governance Group
- Slow Food
- Sustain: The Australian Food Network
- SOAS Food Studies Centre
- NYU Department of Nutrition and Food Studies
- Melbourne University research group Food Matters (website coming)
- Food Values Research Group
- Food Studies
- Health Sociology Review
- British Food Journal
- Anthropology of Food
- Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture
- Food Culture and Society
- Food and Foodways Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment
- Food Culture and Community
- Ecology and Nutrition
- Appetite
- Critical Public Health
- International Journal of Food Studies
- Trends in Food Science and Technology
- Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition
- International Journal of Food Science and Technology
- Food Policy