Warren Belasco

Warren Belasco is Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He is the author of Food: The Key Concepts, Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food, and Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, co-editor of Food Chains: Provisioning, from Farm Yard to Shopping Cart, Food Nations: Selling Taste In Consumer Societies and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. He also serves as editor-in-chief of Food, Culture, and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research.

Diane Bisson

Product designer and anthropologist Diane Bisson is an Associate Professor at the School of Industrial Design at the University of Montreal. She launched her own studio in 1983, and has since been active both in the theory and practice of design. Since the early 1990s Bisson’s work has addressed eco-efficiency focusing on the medium of recycled plastics and substitute materials, including edible plastics and plastic-based composites. Since 2000, Bisson has also been responsible for organizing the ECOMONTREAL triennial conferences. With her background in anthropology, she has also integrated socio-cultural research into design projects. In her research on culinary habits and the dinning experience, she has developed an ethno-design methodology and conducted participatory workshops to involve the public in the design of tableware. She recently founded the Design + Society Research Group and the Design + Food Lab (University of Montreal).

Nathalie Cooke

Nathalie Cooke is Associate Dean of McGill's Faculty of Arts and member
of the English Department. Her publications include literary analyses of
Canadian poetry and fiction, as well as explorations of the intersections of Canadian cookbooks and culture.

Liz Driver

Liz Driver is the Director of the historical foodways program at Montgomery’s Inn Museum in Toronto, and teaches Applied Food History at George Brown College. A past president of the Culinary Historians of Ontario, she also writes the introductions for the “Classic Canadian Cookbook Series” published by Whitecap Press. She will be talking about her new book, Culinary Landmarks: A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks, 1825–1949.  

Laurette Dubé

Laurette Dubé is a Professor and holds the James McGill Chair of consumer and lifestyle psychology and marketing at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University, which she joined in 1995. Dr. Dubé received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1990, specializing in consumer and lifestyle psychology and marketing. She has received prior to her doctoral degree a MPS in Marketing and Management (Cornell University), a MBA in Finances (HEC), and a BSc in Nutrition (Laval). Dr. Dubé’s lifetime research interest bears on the study of affective processes underlying consumption and lifestyle behavior and how such knowledge can inspire more effective product and service design and management, as well as health and marketing communications. Her academic achievements are solidly anchored in both marketing and health management. She examines affective processes from their neurobiological manifestations to their conscious experience, to develop more effective communications and service management strategies. She is the founding scientific director of the McGill Integrative Health Challenge Think Tank, created to foster partnerships among scientists and decision-makers from all sectors of society to encourage a more ambitious notion of what can be done for more effective health management.

Dorothy Duncan

Dorothy Duncan is the recipient of the 2006 Gold Award for Media and Publishing from the Ontario Hostelry Institute and the Women’s Culinary Network’s 2005 Woman of the Year. Her publications include Nothing More Comforting: Canada’s Heritage Food and  Canadians at Table, which just received a Gold Award from Cuisine Canada,  and Food, Fellowship, and Folklore: A Culinary History of Canada. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Museums Association, the Association for the Study of Food and Society, and a member of Cuisine Canada; she has served as Executive Director of The Ontario Historical Society and Museums Advisor for the Province of Ontario.

Charlene Elliott

Dr. Charlene Elliott is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at the University of Calgary. She works in the areas of sensorial communication, communication and taste, and obesity and public health. Elliott is Principal Investigator of a CIHR funded grant on the marketing of food to children, and sits on the Board of Trustees for the Canadian Council of Food and Nutrition.  She has published in journals such as Obesity Reviews, Canadian Public Policy, Canadian Journal of Communication, Senses and Society, Journal of Canadian Studies, Law and Social Inquiry, Journal of Cultural Research and Canadian Review of American Studies. Elliott is co-editor of Communication in Question: Competing Perspectives on Controversial Issues in Communication Studies (2008, Thomson Nelson).

Rachel Engler-Stringer

Coming soon

Roger Haden

Roger Haden directs the Research Centre for the History of Food and Drink at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He has a BA in English literature, a postgraduate diploma in Journalism and a PhD in Cultural Studies. A long-time interest in the history of food and drink, and a career as a restaurant chef in Australasia and England (in 1995 he was personal chef to the then Australian High Commissioner, Dr Neal Blewett) now inform Roger's academic work. Research interests focus on the relationship between technology, food production, cooking and taste. In 2006, Roger hosted the international conference, Cookery Books as History. He is currently working on a book, The Food Culture of the Pacific Islands, to be published by Greenwood Press in 2008. Other publications include “Taste in the Age of Convenience” in The Taste/Culture Reader (2005); “Pandora's Lunchbox: On Aesthetic Education, Children and Food” Food Culture and Society (Fall 2006); “Culinary Assuagement and National Aspiration: Reading the Cultural Imaginary in A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) and The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook (1950)” (in progress).

David Howes

David Howes is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal, and the Director of the Concordia Sensoria Research Team (CONSERT). He holds three degrees in anthropology and two degrees in law. He has conducted field research on the cultural life of the senses in the Middle Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea, Northwestern Argentina, and the Southwestern United States; he is presently researching the sensory life of things in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, and also involved in a project investigating current trends in multisensory marketing. Other research interests include cross-cultural jurisprudence, constitutional studies, indigenous psychologies, and aesthetics. David Howes is the editor of The Varieties of Sensory Experience (Toronto, 1991), Cross-Cultural Consumption (Routledge, 1996), and Empire of the Senses (Berg, 2004), the co-author (with Constance Classen and Anthony Synnott) of Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (Routledge, 1994), and the author of Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Michigan, 2003).

Alice Julier

Alice Julier is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. After spending the early part of her career on feminist health activism, Alice began writing about food in 1995. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Hospitality in Black and White: Food, Friendship, and Inequality in the United States, and co-editing a book about masculinities and food, emerging from a co-edited double issue of Food and Foodways entitled “Mapping Men onto the Menu: Food and Masculinities” (March 2005). Her food-related publications include: “The Political Economy of Obesity: The Fat Pay All” in Food and Culture: A Reader; “Hiding Race, Class, and Gender in Discourses of Commercial Food” in From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food; “Food Preparation and Work,” in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, and “Julia at Smith” in a commemorative Julia Child issue of Gastronomica, Summer 2005. Alice was the president of the board of directors of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) for four years. She is currently the program chair for the 2008 joint conference with Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, which will be held in New Orleans in June.

JoAnne Labrecque

JoAnne Labrecque (Ph.D. Cornell) is Associate Professor at HEC Montreal in the Marketing Department since 1991. She teaches the Retailing Management course at the B.A.A. program and the Marketing Channels course at the M.Sc. program. Her research work focuses on topics related to food behaviours and to food distribution including consumers’ acceptance of functional foods, customer satisfaction and category management. She has written diverse expert reports and she is a member of different board of directors.

Jordan LeBel

Montreal-born Jordan LeBel is Associate Professor at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. He is a food and foodservice management and marketing expert; he was previously a chef and served as restaurant inspector for the Distinguished Restaurants of North America award program. His research focuses on pleasure, its dimensions and impact on consumers' choices and behaviours. His current food research deals with comfort foods, chocolate, and other "feel good" foods. He has served as the resident marketing expert for the French television morning show “Salut Bonjour !” and on Canal Argent (TVA Networks, Canada); he also served as the resident food expert on “Homerun,” the CBC’s drive-home radio show. Prior to joining Cornell, he taught advertising and "experience marketing" at the John Molson School of Business (Concordia) where he was the recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Teaching Award. He currently contributes a column on marketing for Commerce magazine, a French language monthly. Recognized as one of America’s foremost experts on chocolate and comfort foods, LeBel has worked with the likes of Cadbury, Procter & Gamble, and Quaker Oats. He is a member of the International Steering Committee of the McGill Integrative Health Challenge, an international think tank addressing issues relating to childhood obesity. LeBel is also the co-developer of the award-winning internet-based course “Marketing Yourself” (www.marketingyourself.ca) and co-author of the textbook by the same name.

Harvey Levenstein

Harvey Levenstein is Professor Emeritus of history at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His publications include the two-volume history of American food, Revolution at the Table and Paradox of Plenty, and a two-volume study of American tourists in France, Seductive Journey and We’ll Always Have Paris. Professor Levenstein is currently working on a book on food fears in twentieth-century America.

Marie Marquis

Marie Marquis is a nutritionist and holds a PhD in Administration with a major in Marketing. As an associate professor at the Department of Nutrition, Université de Montréal, she teaches topics related to food marketing, consumer's eating behaviour and qualitative studies in food and nutrition. Her research is oriented toward the determinants of food choices for different segments namely youth, overweight children, mothers and men. She is currently interested in the evolution of food and eating during the twentieth century by documenting different topics in La Presse newspaper. Her research has been funded by the Canadian Research Foundation in Dietetic, Danone Institute of Canada, Québec Association for Diabetes, FRSQ, CRSH, the Montreal Sainte-Justine Hospital Foundation and The Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation. She has published her research findings in Social Behavior and Personality, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of Consumer Behavior, La Revue Canadienne de la pratique et de la recherche en diététique, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Nutrition and Food Science, International Journal of Consumer Studies, Journal of Consumer Marketing et Journal of Youth Studies.

Janet Mitchell

Janet Mitchell is a lecturer in the Food Science Department at the University of Otago and a registered dietitian. Her research interests include the social and cultural aspects of food and food history. She has just completed a three year research project with colleagues from the Dept. of Anthropology entitled The development of New Zealand’s culinary traditions. Her part of the project included the use of cookbooks especially community cookbooks to evaluate the uptake of nutritional information by the community.

Pauline Morel

Pauline Morel is currently pursuing her research, as a doctoral student, on contemporary Canadian literature at McGill University. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled Rag Bags: Textile Crafts in Canadian Fiction since 1980, examines contemporary and multicultural representations of domestic arts connected with storytelling, such as spinning and weaving, sewing and quilting. While completing her dissertation, she has worked as a researcher and guest curator as part of a SSHRC-funded project on Canadian foodways carried out by McGill University and the McCord Museum. Part of her mandate included researching questions of cultural diversity and food history to produce a report on the history of ethnic food sources on the Main, and a virtual exhibit on Canadian food history using images from the photographic collections of the McCord. Her interest in food is also a family affair, as several close family members are professional French chefs!

Jessica Mudry

Jessica Mudry is an assistant professor of technical communication, and society and technology in the General Studies Unit at Concordia University. She has a bachelor’s degree in organic chemistry from McGill University, a Master’s degree from Imperial College, UK, in Science Communication, and a PhD in Communication from the University of Pittsburgh where she wrote a history of American nutrition communication by examining US Department of Agriculture food guides. Jessica has worked in children’s television production at the BBC, and Canada’s Discovery Channel. Dr. Mudry’s research addresses how and why we quantify food, and she continues to write about this in venues such as: Food, Culture and Society, and Social Epistemology. Her book, Measured Meals: Communicating the Idea of Nutrition in America is forthcoming in 2008 on SUNY Press. Jessica’s current research examines the history of human calorimetry and human nutrition laboratories in Germany and America.

Alan Nash

Dr Alan Nash received his PhD in historical geography from the University of Cambridge in 1984. After spells as a postdoctoral research fellow at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and a research associate at the Centre for Canadian Population Studies at the University of Western Ontario, he worked at the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Ottawa for three years, before moving to Montreal to join Concordia University’s Department of Geography, Planning and Environment in 1989, where he is currently an associate professor and department chair. Publishing in journals as varied as The Canadian Geographer, and Migration, his research interests include Canadian immigration policies, environmental refugees, the diffusion of gravestone iconography, and the evolution of ethnic restaurants in Montreal from 1951-2001. The Canadian co-author of an introductory geography textbook, Dr Nash currently teaches courses on “place, space and identity”, geographical concepts, and the geography of food.

Rhona Richman Kenneally

Rhona Richman Kenneally is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University. She holds a BA in English literature, an MA in Canadian history, and a professional degree and PhD in architecture. Recent publications address aspects of food culture in mid-twentieth-century Canada, and a second research thread explores museums and heritage landscapes, and food, as evidence of Irish national and cultural affiliation. In 2005 she co-curated the exhibition Expo 67: Not just a souvenir at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

David Sutton

David Sutton is Associate Professor, Sociocultural Anthropology, at the Southern University of Illinois. He is interested in questions of memory, history, and the relevance of the past in people's everyday lives. He has conducted extensive research on the Greek island of Kalymnos in the Eastern Aegean Sea. His current research focuses on video ethnographies of cooking in Greece (with some excursions into Southern Ilinois), particularly in the role of recipes as plans, tool use and kitchen arrangement, and measuring devices in the conceptualization and execution of cooking, and how these practices have been affected by processes of modernity/ modernization. His publications include Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food; Memory and Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance of the Past in Everyday Life; “Cooking Skill, the Senses and Memory: The Fate of Practical Knowledge” in Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture, ed. C. Gosden, E. Edwards & R. Phillips, 2006; “Voices in the Kitchen: Cooking Tools as Inalienable Possessions” (with Michael Hernandez) Oral History 35: 67-76, 2007. He is also the co-editor of The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat.

Lucia Terrenghi

Lucia Terrenghi is a designer and a researcher working in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Her interests address the relationship between humans and technologies and the ways in which technological artifacts can enhance social engagement, self-expression, and creativity. Since December 2004 she has worked as research assistant at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, in Germany, where she has recently attained with honor her PhD in Computer Sciences. Her research has developed in the context of the FLUIDUM project (www.fluidum.org), which explores techniques for interacting with ubiquitous computing technologies, in settings of everyday life. Lucia also holds a Master of Science in Industrial Design from the Politecnico di Milano, in Italy.

Amy Trubek

After college, Amy Trubek was an apprentice to a chef in a French restaurant and eventually went to Cordon Bleu Cooking School. She then went on to pursue graduate studies in Food & Culture, eventually earning a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1995. She is now an assistant professor in the Nutrition and Food Science department at the University of Vermont. Her present research includes a cross-cultural examination of the taste of place, or goût du terroir, looking particularly at France and the United States. She is also involved in an in-depth ethnographic project on cooking skill and cooking knowledge and the relationship to individual health. Amy was the executive director of the Vermont Fresh Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting direct partnerships between farmers and chefs. Amy was a 2002-2004 Food and Society Policy Fellow, and before that she taught at New England Culinary Institute for eight years. She is the author of Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession (2000) and has a forthcoming book, The Taste of Place, A Cultural Journey Into Terroir (2008).