International collaboration that took off with the gastronomy conference in Stockholm in 2023 is now developing. The Stockholm initiative has proved to have both considerable vitality and a distinct taste for travel. In Stockholm, our ambition was to bring together and make visible the broad field of gastronomic knowledge. At Stockholm University, researchers and practitioners met to discuss taste, pleasure, culture, sustainability and societal development. The conference was supported by the Académie Internationale de la Gastronomie (AIG), and the ensuing collaboration acquired a more established structure through AIG’s Scientific Committee (ASC), which I have the privilege of chairing. One of its important tasks is to develop future symposia in collaboration with national academies and universities. Part of the conference’s legacy can also be found in the proceedings so admirably produced by NAFS and Örebro University.
In Madrid in 2025, the discussion was taken further under the theme “Reframing Gastronomy”, with the Spanish Academy of Gastronomy and CEU San Pablo University as organisers. The development of gastronomy through innovation, sustainability and new dining experiences was at the heart of the conference. It has also acquired a scientific afterlife in a special issue of the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science with Gregorio Varela-Moreiras and Teresa Partearroyo as guest editors and with contributions from Charles Spence and Marc Stierand on “Culinary Creativity” as well as by Gregorio Varela and Claude Fischler’s and myself on “Gastronomics”.
Later that same year, in 2025, the focus shifted towards gastronomy’s foundations in nature and society. The symposium in Belém do Pará, in the Amazon, organised in collaboration with the Universidade Federal do Pará, was devoted to “Regional Gastronomy and Sustainability”. Here, biodiversity, local food traditions, cultural heritage and regional development came together. Gastronomy offered a way into a wider conversation about the sustainable development of environments and local communities. One of the symposium’s outcomes was the “Letter of Belém”.
On 5 September 2026, the Chinese Gastronomy Academy, in collaboration with AIG, brought together some 600 participants at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The programme explored gastronomy, health and longevity, science and innovation, and the importance of gastronomy for the identity and development of places. Contemporary research and technology encountered Chinese food traditions and longstanding understandings of the relationship between food, health and wellbeing. A glimpse of the symposium is available here. For me, the symposium made particularly clear how much gastronomy stands to gain from an open dialogue between different traditions of knowledge. A few of us have brought together our impressions in the accompanying essay, “Hong Kong 2026: A Hospitable Table for Gastronomy” – a little reflection with scholarly ambitions.
At the close of the Hong Kong symposium in 2026, the conference flag was passed to Finland. The next symposium will be held at the University of Helsinki on 23–25 August 2027 under the theme “Gastronomy meets systems in food security”. The perspective now broadens to include gastronomy’s place in sustainable and resilient food provision, embracing both everyday meals and society’s preparedness for future crises and security challenges. How can access to food be reconciled with health, environmental responsibility, food culture and the pleasure of a good meal? This is a question to which our Academy has much to contribute.
The announced thematic areas include everyday and Nordic gastronomy, the food and technologies of the future, and questions of culture, equality and access to food. I very much hope that several of you will participate, join one of the thematic tracks now taking shape, or propose a track of your own. Claude Fischler, Guje Sevón and I are planning a track in which we shall continue to explore “what is gastronomic about gastronomy”, taking taste, pleasure and commensality as our points of departure. There is ample room for additional research or policy tracks around the great gastronomic table.
Looking further ahead, two other symposium are being planned already !
To my mind, a clear intellectual progression is emerging across the series. Stockholm brought the field of knowledge together; Madrid reconsidered its conceptual framing; Belém emphasised its ecological and regional foundations; and Hong Kong opened a dialogue between different traditions of knowledge. Helsinki will take us into the major questions surrounding food systems. The emphasis changes, but earlier questions travel with us, acquiring fresh meanings along the way.
This was a pleasant surprise to come across. I enjoyed your perspective and found myself reading more slowly to take it all in.