Bunch of carrots
Food Studies

Welcome

Food is central to human life. It is therefore no surprise that the research interests of faculty and students across a wide range of disciplines relate to food in some way. In the social sciences and humanities, for example, scholars examine issues including food access and affordability as well as the cultural significance and representation of food and agriculture. In the natural and applied sciences, researchers explore the biological and ecological dimensions of food systems and food-related health issues. For decades, scholars working in these various fields have highlighted important aspects of food’s key position in the human experience over time and across space. Too often though, these streams of inquiry have stayed relatively isolated from one another.

The UO Food Studies Program developed out of a growing recognition that an integrated perspective on food matters is vital to developing fuller understandings of complex food-related issues. Food Studies brings the power of an interdisciplinary approach to widely varied food themes and topics. Such an approach is more than the sum of its disciplinary parts; it provides new insights into the ways in which food mediates social, political, environmental, cultural and economic processes.

Food Insecurity at UO: Then and Now

Food Studies Program Director, Hannah Cutting-Jones, was interview along with Food Studies students for The CHC Post. This feature article looked into food insecurity on the University of Oregon campus. The groundwork for studying food insecurity at UO was laid by...

January 25th: LAND/TRUST

Join us for a screening of the film LAND/TRUST (2022) followed by a discussion with Alexii Signona and Ruth Anne Beutler. LAND/TRUST (2022) documents the effort to restore the coastal prairie in the Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve at Año Nuevo State Park, which...

Fighting Hunger from the Willamette Valley | Oregon Quarterly

Check out Oregon Quarterly's profile on Professor Michael Fahkri! https://oregonquarterly.uoregon.edu/fighting-hunger-willamette-valley?utm_source=ato08-16-23

FEATURED PEOPLE

Get to know the UO Food Studies community! In our brief profiles, Food Studies faculty, staff, and students share about their research projects, why they love the UO Food Studies program, and their favorite recipes, cookbooks, food podcasts, and more.

CONTRIBUTIONS

Folks involved with the UO Food Studies program conduct cutting-edge research in a wide variety of food topics, including food culture, food access, and food sovereignty. Learn about the contributions UO faculty, staff, and students are making to this burgeoning field—locally, nationally, and internationally.

RESOURCES

Our compendium of food-related resources includes services at UO and in Lane County for students facing food insecurity. It also offers a list of food-related organizations at UO and in the community. Students and faculty will find helpful resources for research on food topics, including a Food Studies Research Guide.

Territorial Acknowledgment

The University of Oregon is located on Kalapuya ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. Following treaties between 1851 and 1855, Kalapuya people were dispossessed of their indigenous homeland by the United States government and forcibly removed to the Coast Reservation in Western Oregon. Today, Kalapuya descendants are primarily citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and they continue to make important contributions to their communities, to the UO, to Oregon, and to the world.

In following the Indigenous protocol of acknowledging the original people of the land we occupy, we also extend our respect to the nine federally recognized Indigenous nations of Oregon: the Burns Paiute Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Coquille Indian Tribe, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, and the Klamath Tribes. We express our respect to the many more tribes who have ancestral connections to this territory, as well as to all other displaced Indigenous peoples who call Oregon home.

We thank the Native Strategies Group for this statement.