Education Archives — The Common Table

a squash bee sleeping in a squash flower

The Honey Merchant

29. January 2026
11 minute read

Diego Contreras is a biologist and honey expert from the uniquely biodiverse region of Oaxaca. His project Nunduve aims to educate consumers about honey's origins and environmental issues, rather than just its flavours and uses.

people sittimg together at a dinner table

Through the Lens of Food

20. January 2026
12 minute read

Journalist Nathan Thornburgh is the co-founder and publisher of Roads & Kingdoms. He also worked closely with Anthony Bourdain on the Explore Parts Unknown series and the travel podcast The Trip. Here he talks to The Common Table about print as self-care and how food can form the soul.

The Living Recipe

24. November 2025
10 minute read

Chef, writer, student, father, Nathan Farrell addresses the received wisdom of the recipe in formal culinary education. He calls for a decolonised food literacy taught in a way that remembers without freezing and transforms without erasing.

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.