Education Archives — The Common Table

Food Design, It’s Complicated

6. August 2025
17 minute read

Can Food Design improve our relationships with food or is it just a grandiose term for decorative plating? Leading voices in Food & Design, Priya Mani, Sonia Massari, Fabio Parasecoli, Laila Snevele, and Sophie Lovell confer at a communal table moderated by our own Orlando Lovell.

Change the (Design) System

1. June 2025
8 minute read

A conversation with Systems Change Designer Ashley Scarborough about how she redesigned her own professional path and found food systems as her medium.

Gastronativism: Us & Them

1. February 2025
12 minute read

Food Studies professor Fabio Parasecoli on gastronativism, the "ideological use of food in politics to advance ideas about who belongs to a community". A conversation about "us", "them", food, politics, and systemic thinking.

Gut Feeling

21. November 2024
9 minute read

Dr Vanessa Kimbell is a sourdough baker. educator and food activist. She talks to The Common Table about her very personal healing journey with sourdough, which led to her mission to change systems in the food industry.

Inside Story: Food Behind Bars

19. October 2024
15 minute read

Chef Natalia Middleton from the non-profit Food Behind Bars talks about about control, mental health, monopolies in the British prison system and creating change through food.

Serendipity and Gastrophysics

28. August 2024
13 minute read

Professor Charles Spence is an experimental psychologist who popularised the term gastrophysics. The Common Table talked to him about serendipitous encounters and food that makes you cry.

On Food & Education: Jeremy Coller

26. March 2024
6 minute read

Jeremy Coller, the founder of the FAIRR Initiative explains how teaching investors more about the global food industry has the potential to effect significant change.

millet koji, kojicon, koji, our cook quest, rich shih

On Food & Education: Rich Shih

19. March 2024
6 minute read

Koji and fermentation expert and co-founder of the Kojicon conference Rich Shih talks about teaching people how to access their lost knowledge of food fermentation.

On Food & Education: Noa Kekuewa Lincoln

12. March 2024
9 minute read

Noa Kekuewa Lincoln, indigenous cropping systems expert at the University of Hawai'i, explains how core human values are deeply embedded in food and agriculture and that there is much to learn from island diversity and resilience.