This activity is the core of our intellectual community. Modeled after the Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics, faculty presenters submit works-in-progress in advance of the meeting. Faculty and graduate student members read and respond during quarterly group meetings (typically two members present each session). The colloquium is tightly structured and moderated in a way that provides substantive feedback to the author as well as stimulates discussion and debate among the cross-disciplinary participants from the social sciences and the humanities.

The colloquium meetings are designed to serve the following objectives: 1) strengthen individual research projects with cross-disciplinary critique from experts, 2) broaden the research that emerges so that it reaches a broader academic audience and general audience, 3) mentor graduate students who are at the dissertation level in the process of writing and revision, 4) instruct graduate students how to balance interest in “food studies” with solid expertise in their discipline, 5) retain the internationally recognized food scholars in our group and recruit the strongest graduate students working on food in our respective disciplines, and 6) increase the prestige of the University of California through the publicity of our works in progress, members, and publications record.