On 2nd February, Susan will present a talk on ‘Bere and Brewing History’ at the IBH seminar. The seminar is focussed on working with heritage barley, and the talk will share the FoodCult teams’s experience of recreating sixteenth century beer with bere.
On 6th January 2023 the FoodCult team presented a panel of 7 papers at the SHA annual conference in Lisbon. These papers represented individual ongoing workpackages, but also our efforts to integrate our approaches towards developing a deeper understanding of diet and food culture in Ireland.
Marc Meltonville, FoodCult’s ‘Brewer in Chief’, will present a paper featuring our recent research at the ‘Ale Through the Ages’ Conference at Williamsburg VA. The paper, ‘Beer & Roses, building a Tudor brewery’ reflects on the process of recreating historic beers and the challenges of authenticity. The conference runs from 11-13th November.
On 6th September, Meriel and the FoodCult team will present a paper at the Tracing, Shaping and Reshaping Culinary Heritage Conference in Oslo. The conference is hosted by the FOODIMPACT research project at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo and FoodLessons at OsloMet. The paper will present preliminary results from the Mapping Diet, Isotopes and Organic Residue Analysis work-packages.
Delighted to announce the publication of a new open access article in The Historical Journal. The article, which is based on the forensic analysis of household accounts from Dublin Castle transcribed as part of the Food Microhistories work-package, explores the role of food and drink in the demonstration and negotiation of power in Ireland.
On Saturday 20 August, Charlie is presenting a paper at the annual Tudor and Stuart Ireland conference, held at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. His paper, based on the household accounts of lord deputy William Fitzwilliam, was entitled ‘Dining at Dublin Castle’. The session was recorded and will be available soon as a podcast via the Tudor and Stuart Ireland conference website.
On Thursday 23 June, Charlie will present findings from FoodCult’s research into Irish household accounts at the ‘On Location’ conference, hosted by Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. The conference examines the connection between material space and literary production, and his paper is entitled ‘Food and power at Dublin Castle: reading the household accounts of a sixteenth-century viceroy’.
See the conference schedule and find registration details here.
FoodCult research on early modern drink has featured in a great article on the history of Irish poitin. The article written by Chrissie Russell for the Sunday Independent explores the evolution of the drink through time, and the reasons for its current popularity. We were delighted to share our insights on the development of distillation in the sixteenth century.
Delighted to announce the publication of a new open access article in Food and History. The article, “Food and Social Politics in Early Modern Ireland”, is a deep analysis of fictional representations of food in Gaelic Ireland. It demonstrates the acceptance and interpretation of broader cultural food ideas in early modern Ireland. The article received an honourable mention by the jury for the the Food and History biennial prize.
On 16th June 2022 Meriel will present new findings from the ‘Mapping Diet’ work-package at the 19th Conference of the International Workgroup for Palaeoethnobotany, held in České Budějovice. The paper, entitled “Foodways in Flux”, will explore the nature and meaning of foodways in early modern Ireland based on a survey of archaeobotanical remains from more than 50 excavations across the island.
• Register here