THE AFTeR PROJECT
Biltekoff is co-PI on The UC AFTeR Project, an NSF-funded multidisciplinary research project across three UC campuses examining the Bay Area Agri-Food Tech sector. The project explores the interests, principles, rhetoric, social relationships and institutional forces that are guiding the sector as a whole. It inventories the sector and – through field work, interviews and media analysis – explores the possibilities, tensions and limits that stem from applying Silicon Valley tech-driven innovation to global challenges in food and agriculture. 

Questions driving the project include: How and why is the Bay Area a unique site for the development of food and agricultural technologies? What are the underlying assumptions of actors within the sector? What aspects of conventional approaches to food and agriculture are being “disrupted,” which aspects are not, and to what end? How do innovators understand and imagine the public? What are the possibilities and possible limits of public acceptance for new technologies and novel foods? Work related to this project has been presented at Swissnex - Farm to Table: 2030.

You can learn more about this project by accessing the following:

• Guthman, J. and Biltekoff, C. Magical Disruption? Alternative Protein and the Promise of De-Materialization. Environment and Planning E, in press.

Real Food, Real Facts: Science, Publics and Politics in the Food System
Charlotte is currently working on a book, 'Real Food, Real Facts: scientific authority and the (un)making of food anti-politics,' about the role that science and scientific authority play in the food industry response to growing consumer concerns about the food system in general, and “processed food” in particular. The project explores how Big Food imagines its public, particularly in relation to science and technology, and considers the politics -- and anti-politics -- of  science communication, transparency, and trust. Work related to this project has been presented at Erfurt University in Germany, the Food Studies at Brown speaker series, the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) conference, and the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S) conference. 

You can learn more about the core ideas of the book by accessing the following:

• Biltekoff, C. 2019. Real Food, Real Facts: Truth, Politics and Power in the U.S. Food and Information Landscape. Humanities on the Edge Speaker Series, University of Lincoln. Lincoln, Nebraska.
  • This talk was reviewed on Watershed: An Independent Blog of Critical Theory, by Ilana Masad (April 23, 2019).
• Food Politics. UC Davis' Unfold podcast. 2019.
• Biltekoff, C. 2016. The Politics of Food Anti-Politics. Gastronomica 16 (4): 44-58.

Unbounding Food Futures: An Experiment in Co-Conjuring

In 2020 Charlotte Received a grant through the UCHRI Living Through Upheaval Program for a project called Unbounding Food Futures: An Experiment in Co-Conjuring which was developed in collaboration with Julie Guthman, Jade Sasser and Elizabeth Hoover. Inspired by afro-futurism and indigenous futurisms,they planned a weekend of experiments in creatively imagining the future of food, along with about 20 humanists, artists and social scientists from across the UC system. More information is available at the UCRHI project page and a Foundry piece about the project is in process.