Lecture by explorer, writer, photographer Jeffrey Alford, October 25

Eating Leaves: 
Seeing the World through Food on the Thai-Cambodian Border

The annual John T. Holden Lecture
by Jeffrey Alford

explorer, writer, photographer

Thursday, October 25, 2012
7 p.m.
Murkland 115

free and open to the public

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Jeffrey Alford is an explorer, writer, and photographer, who has co-written, with Naomi Duguid, several books about geography and food, including Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia, Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent, Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker's Atlas, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China, Seductions of Rice, and Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Traditions from Around the World.

Are these cookbooks? Yes, but they are much more than that.  Accompanying the recipes are evocative essays on a wide range of topics—food, people, place, culture, and how they intersect, as well as stunning photographs of the places and people Alford and Duguid have visited. The two have been called "culinary anthropologists," but as the New Yorker observed, "culinary geographers is at least as accurate."

Alford recently moved to a small village in northeastern Thailand, located near the Cambodia border, where he is working on a book about food, cooking, and agriculture in the region.

Alford has spoken widely at universities and in popular media, such as the Martha Stewart Show. His work has been covered in leading news outlets, including a feature story in The New Yorker in 2008.

The Annual John T. Holden Lecture is supported by the John T. Holden Memorial Fund in the College of Liberal Arts, a Fund dedicated to bringing signal scholars in the social sciences to UNH. This event is sponsored by the Department of Geography and the College of Liberal Arts.