 Hi, my name is Jacob Klein. I'm the convener of the MA program in the Anthropology of Food. Food is fundamental to human life. It underpins our social organization, our cultural identities, our relationships with non-human animals and environments. Food is at the center of many of the key issues of our times. These include inequalities in health and diet, animal welfare, biodiversity and climate change, urbanization and international migration and the future of rural livelihoods, traditional knowledge skills and ways of life. My name is Nafsika Papaharalambos. I'm the co-convener for the module of Direct Practical Study. The course offers a glimpse into the practicalities of food systems and especially being in London, you get the chance to work with small food businesses, with large corporations, with urban beekeepers and do placements in many, many different areas. Hello, I'm Eleni Michael. I'm a recent graduate from the MA Anthropology of Food at SOAS. I got on the course at SOAS after spending seven years working in the food industry. The food program at SOAS enabled me to understand a very different perspective and really look into food ways, culture and how food translates across different contexts. Hi, my name is Wan Ling. I work in a food tech investment firm and sustainable agriculture company before and I find that the program really breached my previous experience and knowledge and is really very intellectually challenging and interesting. My name is Sean. I'm from California, San Francisco specifically and I worked on wineries on five different continents over the course of eight years prior to my studies at SOAS. Essentially, what SOAS or the Anthropology of Food program has done for me has allowed me to tie together all of the systemic aspects of the food system that I witnessed while working in France, South Africa, Argentina, Australia and California. My name is Maria José Jordán. I'm from Peru. I'm also a baker at a bakery here in London and I think what brought me to SOAS was I just started to find a lot of issues in relation to the food system in general first through my own experience as a worker in kitchens and then I felt the urgency to explore a bit more about that. I really appreciated the way the program encouraged us to critically examine concepts like local artisan, slow food, how they're constructed, how they're circulated and contested and the debates we had around things like the industrialization and globalization of food, what makes a cuisine, how food is connected to identity and politics. As anthropologists in this master's program we ground our approaches to these global challenges in the ethnographic study of diverse cultural practices and lived experiences of producing, exchanging, cooking and eating food. With examples from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere we explore a wide range of topics. These include food security and climate change, the industrialization of agriculture and cuisine, food and racial justice, food migration and memory, cooking skills, cuisine and class, culinary tourism and local and artisanal foods. Alumni of the program have gone on to pursue careers in several areas. These include in government, in the food and restaurant industries, in academic research, in food writing and media, in social enterprises and in development organizations. The Food Studies Center is such an incredible place because you have access to such resources, the library here, the colleagues, it's a remarkable environment. I was wildly shaped by this environment, by the city itself. The style of education here, the learning that you're able to undertake is second to none. I moved to London almost three years ago from China and I really appreciate the location of SOAS because it's in the center of Bloomberg and we actually have a lot of amazing restaurants from different countries and it's very connected to the MA anthropology of food program because we talk a lot about the global food chain and also cosmopolitanism and all these heritizations of food. In fact, I found the anthropology of food so inspiring that I decided to stay on at the center to do a PhD. In fact, I can't imagine doing this PhD anywhere apart from the SOAS Food Studies Center. It's been a pleasure to be at SOAS and do the anthropology of food course. Professors have been incredibly influential in the way that I think about food. I've learned so many things about different parts of the world that can be translated into the context that I'm interested in, which is my own country and I think that has been the most enriching part of the program. It's definitely been a life-changing experience to say the least.