Reports from the Young Chefs
In order to make the Symposium experience more accessible to food professionals early in their careers, the Friends of the Oxford Food Symposium sponsor a program of Young Chef Grants.…
Keynote from Harold McGee: A Nose Dive Into Plant Aromas
Harold McGee started his professional life as literature and writing instructor at Yale University, focusing on Romantic poetry: his dissertation was entitled “Keats and the Progress of Taste.” But he…
Concluding Keynote by Krishnendu Ray: Summing up the Journey
Professor Krishnendu Ray is Chairman of the Department of Food Studies at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. A sociologist by training, Ray’s interests focus…
2023 Topic Selection
Symposium tradition dictates that the final session be devoted to democratically selecting the theme for the symposium three years hence. The session is joyfully chaotic and will be hosted by…
Welcome from our President Claudia Roden with Elisabeth Luard and Ursula Heinzelmann
Our President, Claudia Roden, has long been a guiding light of the Oxford Symposium. Her books, among them the ground-breaking The Book of Middle Eastern Food and The Book of Jewish Food, have inspired…
Margaret Atwood on Fictional Foodies in conversation with Mark McWilliams
We’re over the moon (appropriately for this year’s subject) that Margaret Atwood has agreed to address us in our fortieth anniversary year on Fictional Foodies. As one of Canada’s best…
Chef Skye Gyngell: Fresh From the Farm Today
Skye Gyngell says: “When I think of creating a meal, I always find myself starting from the same place. I cast my mind back to memories, very often of my…
Dinner chat
One of the most important qualities of a successful meal is that it inspires good conversation. Let's make this one worldwide, large table by turning your cameras on!
Panel 1 – Hunger & Memory
War, poor governmental planning, and the shock of Covid-19 have all created food shortages and hunger amongst wide swaths of humanity. This panel explores imagination, a mental act of creating…
Panel 2 – Identities
Food can be a marker of national, regional or local identity, and can also maintain strong ties to home for diasporic populations. These papers investigate different ways in which food…
Panel 3 – Science & Technology
Whether in traditional technologies, such as home-based food preservation, laboratory efforts to create plant-based alternatives to animal foods, or theories in the fields of of psychology and neuroscience dealing with…
Panel 4 – Pedagogy
Teaching about food is hot. Whether on a vocation level in helping students to imagine their relationship to food, providing a template for the experienced chef to first create dishes…
