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Gastronomy Webinar | Food Heritage: Quo Vadis?
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1st Gastronomy Webinar
Food Heritage: Quo Vadis?
Food heritage expresses the deep link between biodiversity, culture, and ecology. Traditional foodways and agricultural practices embody biocultural values—knowledge, skills, and meanings rooted in long-term human–environment interactions. These values are essential for the resilience of local food systems and for maintaining both ecological balance and cultural identity.
Amid global homogenization and climate change, protecting food heritage is vital for future sustainability. This webinar showcases studies of local food valorization and tries to offer models of social cohesion, sustainable rural development, and ethical relations with nature.
It examines how food heritage and local ecological knowledge can inform regenerative, culturally grounded food systems that nourish both people and the planet.
Date: 19 November 2025
Time: 5:00PM CET | 11:00AM EST
Webinar ID: 849 3258 2036
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Meet Our Speakers
Prof. Rosi Song
School of Modern Languages & Cultures, Durham University, UK;
H. Rosi Song is Professor of Spanish at Bryn Mawr College and author of Lost in Transition: Constructing Memory in Contemporary Spain (2016), and she is co-editor of the volumes Traces of Contamination: Unearthing Francoist Legacy in Contemporary Spanish Discourse (2005) and Towards a Cultural Archive of la Movida: Back to the Future (2013). She has published widely on contemporary Spanish culture, film and literature. Her frequent travels to Barcelona over almost two decades have shaped her appreciation and knowledge of Catalan culture and its gastronomic traditions.
Prof. Michele Fontefrancesco
Department of Sociology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy;
Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology and convenor of the Bachelor's program in Gastronomic Sciences and Cultures at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy. He is one of the convenors of the Anthropology of Economy Network at the European Association of Social Anthropology. His research focuses on the intersection between artisanship, entrepreneurship and local development with attention on the food sector. He conducted fieldwork in Southern Europe and Eastern Africa, publishing numerous works, notably The End of the City of Gold?: Industrial and Economic Crisis in an Italian Jewellery Town (Cambridge Scholars, 2013), Food Festivals and Local Development in Italy: A Viewpoint from Economic Anthropology (Palgrave, 2020), and, in Italian, Il cibo nel futuro: Produzione, consumo e socialità (Carocci, 2021, edited with Paolo Corvo).
Prof. Dauro Mattia Zocchi
University of Bergamo, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Culture;
Dauro Mattia Zocchi is a Research Fellow in Economic and Political Geography at the University of Bergamo. He holds a PhD in Ecogastronomy, Education and Society from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, where he developed a project on the social and cultural dynamics related to the promotion of food heritage in East Africa. His research focuses on food geography, food scouting, and the valorization of food heritage. He has conducted research projects in Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) and Latin America (Peru and Bolivia), mapping and documenting local gastronomic heritage. More recently, his work has also explored the socio-economic challenges of foodscapes in Alpine and pre-Alpine areas through the promotion of cultural and creative tourism.
This webinar explored current perspectives on food heritage across different European contexts.
Professor Rosi Song (Durham University) opened with a conceptual overview, presenting food heritage as a flexible and dynamic process shaped by everyday creativity, migration, and social change. She emphasized that heritage is continually reinterpreted by individuals and communities.
Professor Michele Fontefrancesco (Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan) offered an ethnographic case from Northwest Italy, showing how heritage-making involves negotiations between producers, institutions, and markets. He highlighted that heritagization and innovation intersect.
Dr. Zocchi (Bergamo University) examined Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland, where multiple actors—from local administrations to producers and tourism networks—collaborate and sometimes compete to redefine and promote regional food heritage.
Together, the interventions highlighted food heritage as a complex, negotiated, and multi-actor process central to identity-making and regional development.
The webinar was hosted via Zoom and required registration to attend. The full recording can be found below. In order to learn about future webinars, you can sign up to our newsletter by clicking “Subscribe" at the top of the page.