I love making lists. Recently, I sat down and made a list of all the times I’ve moved to a new place (an occupational hazard for precarious academics). I counted nineteen. Some of those moves required just shifting my possessions to a different habitat within a city; others involved changing continents, social insurance, health care, pension plan, and life stage. Some were for longer, some for shorter, and some for very short stays (in my mid-thirties, I moved seven times in as many years). During those periods of vagabondism, I learned to appreciate food as a means of connecting to new places and a constant that could outlast relocating.

The pieces in this issue explore food’s various relationships to place. Place is central to the academic study of food as well as to lived personal, professional, and political engagements with food. Global food chains, local food movements, national cuisines, migrant...

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