Gastrospaces: Towards a Theory and Research Programme for Food and Space

Beatrice Serini

Gastrospaces: Towards a Theory and Research Programme for Food and Space

Beatrice Serini 

Abstract: Where do we eat? Restaurants, cafés, kitchens and dining rooms may seem like obvious answers, but eating also takes place in parks, streets, markets, workplaces, public squares, gardens, vehicles and many other spaces. Despite their ubiquity, the spaces in which food is consumed have received comparatively little systematic philosophical attention.

This talk introduces Gastrospaces, a research project developed at the intersection of analytic philosophy, political philosophy and social ontology. The concept gastrospace provides a common analytical category for examining the diverse spaces in which eating takes place and for asking what makes these spaces socially, politically and culturally significant.  The project investigates how material arrangements, social norms, human and non-human agents, and patterns of use interact to shape what can happen in a gastrospace and who can participate in it, asking how apparently ordinary arrangements of food and space can enable inclusion, exclusion, discrimination, conviviality, distinction or care.

The talk will first present the ontological framework and its main components, and then provide an overview of the kinds of questions that the framework can help address. It will conclude by considering how this framework can be extended beyond philosophy, particularly in food studies, geography, urban planning, design and policy.

Bio: Beatrice Serini, PhD, is an independent researcher and co-coordinator of Culinary Mind (International Centre for the Philosophy of Food). Her work explores the normative and conceptual dimensions of food and food systems, with a particular interest in intersections between food, health, and technology, as well as the cultural politics and ontology of the places where we eat.

Zoom Link: https://deakin.zoom.us/j/85740576531?pwd=OK2GIQxhWM1C2LKY2KujrQqCXRXEcw.1

Meeting ID: 857 4057 6531 // Password: 63703912

This meeting is at 12:30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) 15 September 2026 [02:30am UTC 15 September 2026]