Phd scholar Elif Birbiri has been named the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition’s (SAFN) “Future of Food Athropology Fellow” for 2025–2026. Included with the prize is a one-year membership in the American Anthropology Association (AAA) and Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, along with a $500 award. Birbiri has been invited to the SAFN Emerging Scholar’s Mixer in 2025, to plan a session with her mentor for the 2026 AAA meetings and submit papers for publication.
The purpose of the fellowship is to amplify and support the research, community-engaged scholarship, and/or activism of junior scholars of color and catalyze more public engagement with food anthropology, while also building a more inclusive anthropology of food and nutrition.
These fellowships aim to provide an opportunity for junior scholars of color to amplify their voices and scholarship by creating: a platform to share their work via SAFN’s Food Anthropology blog; an opportunity to network and put their scholarship in dialog with others; mentorship throughout this process from SAFN membership; and an opportunity to participate in SAFN leadership.
“This fellowship means much more than the amount of money offered to me. We do not often get appreciated or acknowledged by our colleagues in academia,” Birbiri said. “This is a great opportunity to be recognized by the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. It creates opportunities to work with mentors who have years of experience in the field and to connect with others who contribute to food anthropology.”
Photo of Elif Birbiri
She said PhD life can be overwhelming and challenging, but “receiving a fellowship from a food anthropology community inspires me to learn from the work of others and stay motivated by the diversity of ideas.”
Birbiri holds a BSc degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Arts from Özyeğin University and an MA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University both in Istanbul, Turkey. She was trained as a chef and worked in professional kitchens in Turkey, Hungary and Brazil. Birbiri later discovered the interdisciplinary world of food studies and focused her work on the food cultures at the intersection of geography and history.
Food studies is a broad concept, Birbiri said, and includes a lot of community engagement and activism practices.
“I am an active member of the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, the Graduate Association for Food Studies, and the Canadian Association for Food Studies. I connect with fellow scholars who work on food studies, including but not limited to food banks, food sovereignty, food literacy, food and disability, agri-food systems, and historicizing foodways,” she said.
She finds those engagements helpful for two reasons. First, she said, she gets involved in scholarly debates around food studies. “It is an interdisciplinary field which allows us to work together with wonderful scholars from different backgrounds—anthropology, environmental studies, disaster management, sociology, geography and beyond.”
Secondly, she said, the current food crisis is a part of a larger economic crisis in the world and community engagement and activism enable her to talk about these crises and discuss ways to deal with them, “and feed each other, both methaphorically and literally.”
Birbiri has worked on scientific research projects, a multinational food company, and local food cooperatives, which broadened her perspective on the political economy of food. She enjoys cooking for her friends and family, street photography, hiking trips, and mushroom hunting.
For more information, visit the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition website.