Keynote speakers

Charlotte Biltekoff 

Charlotte Biltekoff is Professor of American Studies, Professor of Food Science and Technology, and Darrell Corti Endowed Professor in Food, Wine, and Culture at the University of California Davis. Her research, teaching and service builds bridges between scientific and cultural approaches to questions about food and health. She is author of Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge (2024) and Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health (2014). She was recently a Co-PI on the UC AFTeR Project, a multidisciplinary research project examining the Bay Area Agri-Food Tech sector. Biltekoff has published work in academic journals that span a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary terrain and frequently collaborates across disciplinary differences. At UC Davis she teaches classes on food and culture as well as innovation in the food system. 

Learn more at her website:

https://www.charlottebiltekoff.com/

Susan Kovacs

Susan Kovacs is Professor of Information-Communication sciences at Enssib (Lyon) and member of the Elico Research Group. Her research areas are information culture, knowlege circulation and food literacy. She is specifically interested in the links between food and information literacies and the ways in which food knowledge is mediatized, adapted and received in specific social environments. She co-edited in 2022, with Simona De Iulio, a volume of essays Food Information, Communication and Education : Eating Knowledge (Bloomsbury) and has published on the circulation of food knowledge in different educational and information spheres.  

Marketa Supkova

Markéta SUPKOVA is Executive Director of the consulting agency TDA Territoires de Démocratie Alimentaire, which aims to support the growth of food democracy in France. After founding and directing IUFN International Urban Food Network between 2012 and 2019, she now has over 15 years of professional experience supporting local authorities, NGOs, and national institutions on sustainable territorial food systems. In 2008, she founded her first consulting agency, UrbanFoodLab, to promote the notion of territorialized food systems, expanded (or renewed) governance, and the systemic dimension of sustainable food. She has worked with national stakeholders such as the Ministry of Agriculture, INRA, INSERM, and ADEME, foundations, and NGOs such as WWF.

Late 2012, Markéta Supkova launches IUFN – International Urban Food Network – to support the acceleration of the transition of French local authorities toward sustainable territorialized food systems through the implementation of Territorial Food Projects (PAT). 10 years later, TDA Territoires de Démocratie Alimentaires is launched with a range of services to support local authorities in the co-construction of more inclusive food policies (PAT) and with food democracy as the operational approach to this collective work.