Feeding the Soul: Transnational Narratives of Food and Belonging
Registration is now OPEN for the IHA Annual conference 2025.
This two-day conference, supported by the Irish Humanities Alliance (IHA) and the UCD Humanities Institute (University College Dublin) seeks to explore the role that food plays in transnational fictional and non-fictional literary works, film, and visual arts. Narratives of food and belonging are vehicles for expressing cross-cultural interactions through the languages of nourishment.
The sensory aspects of food consumption, such as taste and smell, contribute to reflect the complexity of cultural hybridity and often become metaphors of positive encounter and/or contamination. Further aspects concern the issue of food waste in the West, the obesity crisis and, vice versa, food scarcity and starvation in those countries of the Global South that are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis, warfare and the destruction of indigenous food production. The conference investigates how food is used in transnational artistic outputs to articulate notions of belonging, exile, transnational parenthood, memory and identity, but also food production, food consumption and their ecological dimension.
Download Conference Programme PDF
Attendance is free but registration on EVENTBRITE is essential | Book your tickets
Keynote Speakers:
Day 1 | Thursday, 4th September: Dr. Raúl Matta (Centre de Reserche Institut Lyfe, France)
Day 2 | Friday, 5th September: Dr. Tania Aguila-Way (University of Toronto)
Further information and conference programme available HERE
Registration covers both days
Steering Committee: Dr. Bianca Rita Cataldi (University of Galway), Dr. Sarah Comyn (UCD), Prof. Anne Fuchs (UCD), Dr. Megan Kuster (UCD), Prof. Sonja Tiernan (IHA).