A Greenhouse research talk by Penelope Volinia. All are welcome.
In the late 1970s a growing interest in underutilised shellfish on the Norwegian coasts fuelled commercial and aquaculture project for sea urchins. Although being a delicacy in other geographies such as the Mediterranean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, sea urchin does not appear on Norwegian menus, despite its large presence. Confronted with three narratives, I am looking at the perspective of human, kelp, and urchin to read the entanglement of culinary preferences, the paradox of a widespread edible pest absent from menus, and the perception of invasiveness between plates and archives. Bridging cultural history, environmental humanities and food studies, I will present a reading of my primary sources on the presence and absence of sea urchin on the Norwegian table.
Penelope Volinia (she/her) is a culinary environmental humanities PhD Researcher at the University of Augsburg, working with the ‘Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment’ research group, led by Dr. L. Sasha Gora. She focuses on how cuisines adopt or reject so-called invasive species, and the shifts in human appetites shaping cultural and gastronomic sensibilities. Although she is currently diving deep into the (culinary) Blue Humanities, she sprints from a background that spans between design (BA in Design, IUAV) and ethnobotany (MA in Food Innovation and Management, UNISG).