Amanda Green
SAFN President
SAFN is excited to announce its 2025 Future of Food Fellows: Elif Birbiri and D.H. We. Started in 2023, the aim of this fellowship is to amplify and support the research, community-engaged scholarship, and activism of self-identified junior scholars of color and catalyze more public engagement with food anthropology, while also building a more inclusive anthropology of food and nutrition. Read more about our past fellows Dr. Vanessa Castenada and Carolyn Mason here. Our next application cycle will take place in 2027.
Elif Birbiri is a researcher, cook, and graduate student pursuing a PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology at York University in Toronto. Her work sits at the intersection of food studies, anthropology, and social justice, with a focus on food politics, biocultural heritage, and alternative food networks. She approaches these themes with a critical eye toward histories of place, labour, and gender, while investigating how broader ecological and economic processes shape everyday food practices.
Elif holds an MA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University and a BSc in Gastronomy and Culinary Arts from Özyeğin University. She also completed formal culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu Istanbul. Her academic path is grounded in practice as much as theory. Her MA thesis, Rethinking the Local: Adana Kebab and Artisanship at the Intersection of Geography and History, explores how locality is culturally produced through food and craft. This work continues to inform her broader research interests in the politics of food and place-making.
Before beginning her doctoral studies in Canada, Elif worked in professional kitchens and contributed to collective research projects on agro-food systems in Turkey. She gained practical experience in kitchens across Turkey, Brazil, and Hungary, which continues to shape her ethnographic perspective. Most recently, she took part in a research project funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, called “Neo-Peasantry and Agricultural Transformations in Turkey.” The project investigates the emerging migration patterns of “neo-peasants” from urban to rural areas in Turkey and explores how their diverse forms of capital—cultural, economic, and social—impact their agricultural and everyday practices. Elif presented this research at the “Rural Geographies in Transition” conference at the University of Groningen in June 2023 and at the Canadian Anthropology Society conference at McGill University in May 2025.
In addition to her doctoral research, Elif actively contributes to food scholarship through multiple platforms. She serves as a board member of the Graduate Association for Food Studies (GAFS). She is also a member of the Canadian Association for Food Studies and the American Anthropological Association. With her colleague Srijita, Elif co-organizes Edible Dialogues, a talk series that brings together food scholars from diverse disciplines to share their research projects, dissertations, and experiences navigating food studies across institutional and geographical boundaries.
Elif is committed to creating spaces for dialogue around food and believes in the importance of community in food practices. She shares her culinary and research journey on Instagram (@elifbitestheworld), where she documents her experiences living and cooking abroad. She acknowledges the daily and structural struggles and possibilities of accessing food. With that in mind, she enjoys cooking for her friends and family, and gathering people around a table as she believes that it creates a collective memory.
