Food Studies

Food Studies is a relatively recent academic phenomenon, which has been steadily growing internationally since the last decade of the twentieth century. It is only in the last 15 years, however, that the discipline has been introduced into the field of Irish Studies, principally due to scholars and researchers in Technological University Dublin. The emergence of the first Dublin Gastronomy Symposium in 2012 and the 2014 publication of ‘Tickling the Palate’: Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture are seminal moments, while the 2015 special issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, on ‘Food and Drink in Ireland’, marked the topic’s acceptance into the mainstream. The number of postgraduate students and scholars interrogating various aspects of food and drink related themes within the field of Irish Studies continues to grow. The recent global success of the multi-award-winning Irish Food History: A Companion (2024) confirms this as does the breadth of current food and beverage-related research projects with the TU Dublin Centre for Irish Studies.  These include the development of culinary education in Ireland, the history of wine writing in Ireland, the history of Irish cookbooks, and research on food within the Irish folklore collections across the island of Ireland.