Regina Sexton

Regina Sexton is a food and culinary historian, food writer, broadcaster and cook. She lecturers across many university programme and she co-ordinates an extensive programme of short courses. She has been researching and publishing in the area of Irish food and culinary history since 1993. Her research interests include food and identity, food and tradition and food in the Irish country house. She has published widely at academic and popular levels. Her publications include A Little History of Irish Food (Gill and Macmillan, 1998) and Ireland’s Traditional Foods (Teagasc, 1997). Regina holds a post-graduate degree from the Department of History, University College, Cork and a Certificate in Food and Wine from the Ballymaloe Cookery School (2002). Between 1995 and 2008, she wrote a weekly food column with the Irish Examiner; and in 1997, for work therein, she was short-listed for the Glenfiddich Regional Writer of the Year Award. Her publications have won her awards. She was joint winner of the Sophie Coe Memorial Prize in Food History, 1995 presented at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, for the paper ‘“I’d ate it like chocolate”: the disappearing offal food traditions of Cork city’. She was also winner of the Sophie Coe memorial Prize in Food History, Special Award, 1999, presented at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford for the paper ‘Porridge, gruels and breads: the cereal foodstuffs of early historic Ireland’. In 1999, she won the Jeremy Round Award, for the most promising first time author for A Little History of Irish food, presented by the British Guild of Food Writers. Following the success of this publication, Radio Telefis Éireann (RTÉ)commissioned Regina to research, write and present an eight-part television documentary, also called A Little History of Irish Food. Most recently, Regina has contributed to the aw

Research interests: Food and culinary history, food studies, food preservation, food and identity, 'traditional' food cultures, constructed and 'invented' food traditions Current activity: I am currently researching Irish manuscript receipt books and the food and culinary cultures of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Ireland from the perspective of the overlapping concepts and notions of traditon, heritage and identity. My interest is the culinary literature of Ireland was prompted in 2010 by my attendance at a week-long seminar, Reading historic cookbooks: a structured approach, with food historian Barbara Ketcham Wheaten& Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger;Library, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. I am a member of the editorial board of the food history journal Petits Propos Culinaries: essays and notes on food, cookery and cookery books.

I teach across a range of university undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and I am also a guest lecture on the MA in Local History https://www.ucc.ie/en/history/graduatestudies/mainlocalhistory/ Department of Folklore and Ethnology: Postgraduate Diploma in Irish Food Studies https://www.ucc.ie/en/ace-pdifc/ FL6804 An Introduction to Irish Food Studies (sole lecturer) FL6803 Food, Festival and Folklore FL6802 Research Methods in Foodways School of History: Postgraduate Diploma in Irish Food Culture, HI6801: Irish Food and Culinary History (sole lecturer) HI1115: An Introduction to Modern Irish History for Visiting Students School of English: MA in Creative Writing, EN6037: Food Writing (sole lecturer) Food Industry Training Unit: Diploma in Speciality Food Production, FE1805: Local Food Production Systems https://www.ucc.ie/en/ace-dsfp/# Adult Continuing Education: Diploma in Local and Regional Studies AD2868 Local Food Studies (sole lecturer) https://www.ucc.ie/en/ace-dlrs/