Viewpoint Archives — The Common Table

Water Buffalo herd wallowing in hot springs

The Capacity to Evoke

17. February 2025
10 minute read

Food and food systems are emerging as a vital focus of investigative cultural practice. The Common Table talked to curator Meriç Öner, former Director of Salt in Istanbul, who brings her unique perspective to the intersection of food, culture and art.

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.

Food Thinking

28. May 2024
10 minute read

Design thinking is no longer fit for purpose. How can design be practised more relationally and inclusively, mindful of complexity and inequality? Through food thinking and asking better questions, says Sophie Lovell, co-founder of The Common Table.

Diet Degrowth

30. September 2023
11 minute read

Sean Roy Parker is part of a movement seeking new connections between food, consumption and digestion. Here he proposes a new "diet degrowth" discourse.

No Cookery Books

11. May 2023
13 minute read

Food connects through time, cultures, community and adversity. A conversation with cookery writer and scholar Claudia Roden about discovering identity and collective belonging through food.

From Farm to Feld

7. March 2023
6 minute read

Chef Jake Potashnick has cooked in kitchens all over the world. Now for his own restaurant "Feld" in Chicago, he wants to source produce the "right "way – even if it is the harder way.

Far From the Madding Cows

19. January 2023
14 minute read

Am I a farmer? A grazier? A conservationist? Fifth-generation tenant farmer Frankie Guy talks about her struggles as well as her joys farming beef on Salisbury Plain in England.

This Bite Will Cost You

18. January 2023
10 minute read

Priya Mani attends a MAD Monday panel talk to hear experts discuss how the current food price crisis is manifesting in the food chains of Northern Europe and Denmark in particular.