Rosi Song has been awarded a Horizon Europe Pillar II, Cluster 4 on Cultural Heritage 2024 grant of €3.8 million for RELISH (Reframing European gastronomy Legacy through Innovation, Sustainability and Heritage)
The project offers a pathway to put into practice culinary recipes and food culture as cultural and digital tools to strengthen EU's common cultural heritage. Through an innovative and systematic approach to the understanding and use of traditional EU recipes via digital and AI-powered technology, it embarks on the production of a visual and verbal food storytelling web platform that aims to mediate social cohesion, reinforce EU cultural heritage transmission at home and abroad through education and public engagement, while addressing sustainable practices in the EU hospitality sector.
A significant part of Europe’s abundant and priceless cultural heritage manifests around the world through its rich food traditions. Yet, as Europe’s own food consumption is becoming increasingly global, it is vital to understand how this change in food practice leads to a loss of sense of place and identity. While the connection that exists between food and cultural identity is generally acknowledged, there is no real awareness about how this link can and should be fostered and sustained.
The inspiration for RELISH emerges from the discipline of Philosophy of Food and its ontology for recipes, which articulates how culinary recipes establish lasting links between food discourses and foodways to create and to cement common cultural heritage. It conceives recipes as social artifacts that depend on a process of collective identification. Without this recognition, there can be no cultural transmission. RELISH believes in the importance of creating a cultural framework from which this recognition of traditional recipes can take place to ensure the generational transmission of EU culinary heritage.
The grant is led by Rosi Song, author of A Taste of Barcelona: The History of Catalan Cooking and Eating. MLAC's Daniel Newman will bring his world-renowned expertise in medieval Arabic cookery and recipes to examine its legacy in Mediterranean cuisine, working closely with partners in Italy and Spain. Daniel is author of The Exile's Cookbook: Medieval Gastronomic Treasures from al-Andalus and North Africa.
Learn more about Prof. Song's research
Learn more about Prof. Newman's research
/prod01/prodbucket01/media/durham-university/departments-/modern-languages-amp-cultures-school-of/83288-2-1996X751.jpg)