About

I am currently a Reader (Associate Professor) in Media and Communication at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. I joined QMU in 2014 to develop and teach on the then new programme MSc Gastronomy, which understands food through its many tightly connected perspectives and disciplines: from food science to production and systems, and from culture, politics and communication to Scottish food and drink. Apart from food communication and culture, I now also teach modules related to media, politics and culture; political communication; and introductory modules to media and communication.

My research has been situated at the crossroads between the social anthropology and cultural studies of my undergraduate degree (Koper, Slovenia, 2006), and critical discourse analysis and food studies, where my doctorate took me as I explored how global food media and brands, such as Jamie Oliver, transform when recontextualised, and how this contributes to shift in genres and discourses locally (Lancaster, UK, 2012). This topic, which is based on the method of critical discourse analysis, has been the focus of my first book: The Discursive Construction of Class and Lifestyle. Celebrity Chef Cookbooks in post-socialist Slovenia (John Benjamins, 2017). In this book, I also examined construction of the national culinary identity in post-socialist Slovenia.

Overall, I am interested in and have published on lifestyle food media, food discourses related to racism, nationalism and anti-Semitism, and media debates related to EU through food. In Food and Cooking on Early Television in Europe: Impact on Postwar Foodways, an edited collection which focuses on culinary television history in Europe (Routledge, 2022), I explore food television history in Europe and in socialist Yugoslavia.

In 2018, I founded the Biennial Conference on Food and Communication with an aim to bring together and facilitate academic and professional discussion around food, media and communication broadly. Since 2023, I am also President of the Association for the Study of Food and Society.

Here, you can find my university profile and my abbreviated CV.