The Memory of Taste: Migration, Identity and Culinary Culture

With Miriam Stock, Nevra Akdemir, Tan Morgül, moderated by Erkin Erdoğan 

Kitchen and food cultures are deeply intertwined with social history, carrying visible and hidden traces of economic conditions, political power, belief systems, and collective memory. This session approaches migrant cuisine not merely as taste or tradition, but as a historical archive shaped by displacement, adaptation, and resistance. Moving from everyday cooking practices to national food narratives, the discussion explores how food habits change through migration: which ingredients are preserved or replaced, how “national cuisines” are constructed, and how debates around purity, pork consumption, refinement, or authenticity emerge. Drawing on perspectives from food history and cultural studies, the panel considers how states, wars, propaganda, and diplomacy have intervened in what and how people eat—while also looking at how migrants reclaim agency through culinary practices.

Miriam Stock is a geographer and Professor of Cultural Studies at the Pädagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd.

Nevra Akdemir is a Berlin-based post doctoral researcher and activist from Academics for Peace Germany.

Tan Morgül is a London based researcher and writer focusing on food and craft beer. Tan is the author of an award-winning food culture book “Raki and Fish: A Mediterranean Seafood Odyssey”.

Erkin Erdoğan is doctor of economics, lecturer and project lead at AKEBI.