The FAO has declared 2025 the International Year of Glacier Preservation
The 10th edition of the Student Forum on Food Heritage, History and Cultures, although open to discussion on any topic, is particularly focussed on food heritage and cultures that involve preserving the natural and cultural ecosystems associated with frost and the cold.
Climate change is threatening glaciers and mountain landscapes shaped by ice, snow, and cold. Reservoirs of fresh water that feed the watercourses of the plains, the frozen territories balance and interact with the temperate zones, promoting alternation, migration, and adaptation of cultures, populations, ancestral techniques of irrigation, forestry, agriculture, pastoralism, and the transformation of foodstuffs into products of high heritage value. The icy and mountainous landscapes also constitute niches for differentiated valorisation of leisure and touristic activities.
A privileged space for the presentation of research carried out by students across all levels of higher education, in Portugal and abroad, in the inter- and multidisciplinary field of Food Studies, the event accepts proposals for 15-minute papers or posters that look at food issues from the perspective of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. The papers must be theoretically and methodologically supported in the fields of Cultural Heritage, Literature, History, Anthropology, Ecology, Sociology, Linguistics, Arts, Archaeology, Communication, Gastronomy, and Tourism.
Within the scope of the Forum's overarching theme, the following thematic approaches are possible:
- Mountain agriculture and sustainability
- Mountain communities and territories - case studies
- Water resources and riparian food landscapes
- Gastronomy and food processing through cold and smoke
- Mountains, transhumance, and pastoralism: cheese
- Drinks for the cold
- Food cultures and the valorisation of mountain and ice leisure and tourism
Participation is open to bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and post-doctoral students.
Proposals will be selected by the directors of the doctoral programmes in Food Heritage: Cultures and Identities and the master's programme in Food: Sources, Culture and Society.
The event takes place in person at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra.
