Conference on Food & Communication

Welcome to the 3rd Conference on
Food & Communication

Örebro University, Sweden,
13–15 September 2023

The theme for the 3rd conference on food and communication is: "Communicating 'good' foods". Food is one of the key aspects through which we represent ourselves individually and as a community or society. As a powerful symbol, food conveys ideas and discourses linked to cultural, political, and commercial ideals, values, ​​and interests.

Food is put forward as “good” with values suggesting it is healthy, sustainable, or ethical. It is given an origin and portrayed as belonging and valuable to a region or nation. It is communicated as necessary for a specific landscape, biological diversity, or the climate. Food is also linked to certain identities and lifestyles. Often these different ideas and discourses compete or even contradict each other. Through food-related practices and spaces such as food production, policy making, food marketing, grocery shopping, kitchens, and restaurant spaces, we communicate about and are communicated to about food and its nutritious advantages to in everyday life. Food speaks discursively to power, hegemony, and ideology. It is at the intersection of gender, class and ethnicity; nationalism, globalization and social change; through communicating food, social problems, injustices and inequalities are made visible. 

Given this central role of food in society, the aim of the theme is to present and discuss research relating to the mixed meanings of notions of 'good' food. These meanings are expressed in different contexts where different contemporary interests are realized and reproduced through a variety of communicative resources. What different meanings are attributed to ‘good’ food? How is ‘good’ food represented and which discourses can be discerned?

By studying topics at the intersection of communication and food, the conference welcomes scientific contributions covering all geographic areas, historical periods, and methods, including, but not limited to

• food and health
• food and sustainability
• food and ethics
• food and science
• food and branding/marketing
• food and media
• food advice and cookbooks
• food and governmental discourse
• food and corporate discourse
• food and professional communication (chefs, restaurants)
• food and politics
• food and religion

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The Örebro conference was the third Conference on Food & Communication, more information can be found on the link. Previous conferences have been held in Edinburgh, 2018 and Ljubljana, 2021.