Connected Food Histories, Practices and Places | Food and Agricultural History Network

We will open the academic year with two presentations on connected food histories, practices and places. More information can be found below:

Soybeans in Brazil and the Netherlands through the lens of swamps

My dissertation investigates the history of the soybean commodity in chain in Brazil and the Netherlands through the lens of swamps in the second half of the twentieth century. I use the swamps of the Brazilian Pantanal and the Dutch Peel as case studies to investigate how specific places became entangled with the logics, materialities and transnational configurations of soybean-based farming. In doing so, the dissertation seeks to complement histories that followed the soybean to different places by starting from the situated environmental histories of swamps. The dissertation therefore seeks to offer a narrative of intensive agriculture from the margins of its expansion, complicating its expansion with a particular focus on the liquidity and volatility of swamps and showing how the movement of agricultural commodities unfolded alongside moving waters, peoples, knowledges and dynamic environments.

Caroline Kreysel is a PhD Candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds an MPhil in Environmental History from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Heritage and Memory Studies from the University of Amsterdam. She is interested in the history of swamps and wetlands, Latin American history and enjoys exploring different notions of agency in history. In spring 2026, she was a visiting graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge MA/United States.

‘Smaken van Nieuw-West: borden vol verhalen! / ‘Flavors of Nieuw-West: Plates Full of Stories!’

In my MA-research I explored the history of food culture in Nieuw-West and how food and culinary memories connect residents across generations. This led to my current project, ‘Smaken van Nieuw-West: borden vol verhalen! (‘Flavors of Nieuw-West: Plates Full of Stories’), which combines oral history with urban, migration, and culinary history. During the talk, I’ll present the findings from my research and the neighborhood project.

Nikki Manger is a social historian and community connector in Nieuw-West, who collects oral histories that she uses to bring people and local networks in Nieuw-West together through workshops, educational programs, talks, guided tours, exhibitions, neighborhood dinners, and articles. She also created the exhibition ‘Flavors of Nieuw-West: Plates Full of Stories!’ about the culinary memories of various residents, currently on view at BREEN and later on at several Amsterdam libraries.