Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food – 5 & 6 June 2025

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Date: 5 & 6 June 2025

Venue: Singelkerk, Singel 452, Amsterdam

Credits: 1 ECTS

Cities have played a central role in the history of food. Their impact on the organization of food systems, the rise of modern food technologies, and the emergence of new food cultures and identities has been so profound that some scholars have declared it difficult to “separate urban food history from food history tout court.” The growth of cities, towns, and other dense settlements, in turn, has been shaped decisively by geographies of food production and consumption within and across city borders. Food trade, imperialism, and migration have expanded metropoles’ transportation networks, sensory landscapes, and culinary infrastructures. Migrant marketplaces have forged new alignments of global food chains, conjuring new forms of customs, commerce and cuisine.

Programme:

5 June

10:00 – 10:05: Welcome

10:05 – 11:00: Keynote lecture by Kate Brown

11:00 – 12:00: Panel 1: Economics of food provisioning

  • Chair: Lisa Haushofer
  • Ayşen Tanyeri and Nil Tekgül
    Food Provisioning to the Cities in the Early Modern Period: A Comparative Analysis of the East and West
  • Renata Motta
    Alleviate hunger while transforming the city: food sovereignty, diverse economies and agroecology

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch break

13:00 – 14:00: Panel 2: Urban food activism

  • Chair: Amber Striekwold
  • Hanna Garth
    South Central Los Angeles, ways of combatting urban food inequality
  • Peter van Dam and Max Hell
    Feeding the Movement: Food as a Tool for Urban Social Transformation in Amsterdam’s Squatter Communities, 1970s-Present
  • Joel Mead
    Hens in the hinterland: ‘Chickens’ Lib’, and the protest against battery cage eggs in Britain 1971-1989

14:30 – 15:00: Break

15:00 – 15:30: Intermezzo – Presentation by Ayra Kip (Kip Republic)

15:30 – 17:00: Panel 3: Colonial relations in the city

  • Chair: Jon Verriet
  • Aastha Gaur
    Hierarchies of Flesh: Caste and Meat Markets in Late 19th Century Western India
  • Richard Herzog
    What uprisings in Mexico City reveal about Spanish anxieties and food hierarchies (17th century)
  • Ary Budiyanto
    Saoto Peddlers in the Colonial Cityscape: Food, Hygiene, and Urban Life in Java

6 June

09:30 – 11:00: Panel 4: Urban transformation

  • Chair: Merit Hondelink
  • Bernardine Farrell
    Moving and Making: How the herring – ‘silver darling of the sea’ co-designed an urban coast
  • Jessica Kenyatta Walker
    Gardens In the House: Detroit House Music and African American Foodscapes
  • Kenneth Iain Macdonald
    Commercial Class Wars: Food, Mobility, and the Right to the Street in late 19th Century Toronto

11:00 – 11:30: Break

11:30 – 12:30 – Panel 5: Blurring boundaries

  • Chair: Manpreet K. Janeja
  • Voltaire Cang
    Reviving Food Production and Reclaiming Agricultural Heritage in Tokyo
  • Sümeyye Hoşgör Büke
    Grocery Stores at the Intersection of Eating Out and Eating at Home: Food Consumption in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul

12:30 – 13:00: Manpreet K. Janeja
Food and the City: Interconnections.
Some key points across the panels

13:00 – 14:00 – Lunch break

14:00 – 15:45 – Round table discussion The city, food and sustainability

  • Moderator: Jon Verriet
  • Onno Kleyn
  • Lelany Lewis
  • Herman van Vliet
  • Antonia Weiss

15:45 – 16:00  – Wrap up and end of Symposium

Registration: You can purchase your tickets for this event through the Allard Pierson website. ARCHON offers its members a refund of 50 euros on their ticket price when they hand in a report after the event. Please mention that you wish to apply for this refund when handing in your report.

Credits: ARCHON members can receive 1 EC for attending both days of the symposium and handing in a report afterward (send your report to secretary@archonline.nl).