EHN Meeting: Food before waste in premodern cities - POSTPONED

This event is postponed until further notice!

The Environmental Humanities Network meeting will take place on Friday, April 25, from 12:00 to 13:30 in Room 1313.0309. The meeting will feature a talk by Willem Flinterman, whose abstract is provided below.

Those unable to participate physically, can follow the meeting through the Gmeet link: https://meet.google.com/ctt-kupe-xzq

Food before waste in premodern cities. A putative research project

Cities transform enormous quantities of food into waste. At what point, however, does food become waste? Waste for whom? What social and cultural factors are influencing the cascading transition from food into refuse? In this talk I would like to present the outline of a putative research project on practices (conservation, resell, recycling) and normative frameworks (food charities, purity laws) related to the journey of a selection of foodstuffs in cities. Things are still very preliminary at this stage, but I hope they can develop into an application for an interculturally comparative and collaborative project. As a cultural historian specialized in the premodern MENA-region, my own focus within this broader  endeavour would initially be on Cairo, from the Mamluk period (c. 1250-1382) onwards. In my talk I will give a brief overview of sources that seem promising for this research and show how these can yield new historical value when approached in new ways.

This new direction of research integrates interests and insights developed in my previous work on charitable foundations in Cairo as well as during my applied research practice of previous years. In Rotterdam I have run a bio-circular mealworm farm, pioneering organic waste valorization on a local, neighborhood level.

For other upcoming events, see the table below. Be sure to take special note of the upcoming symposium on plastics—more information can be found here–with a keynote by Prof. Kylie Crane from the University of Rostock.