Postgraduate research students

Culinary and Cultural Displacement:  Mapping the culinary legacies of India’s Partition through migration and material memory

This practice-led PhD thesis. written in the form of a novel, explores displacement as a result of India's Partition through the lens of culinary heritage and material memory, examining how kitchen objects carry forward cultural knowledge and traumatic histories across generations. The research investigates how food memory and postmemory function as pathways to belonging and identity for both diaspora communities, with particular focus on the Pakistani experience in Glasgow and new immigrants.

The project combines archival research, oral history collection, and community engagement to examine how everyday kitchen objects—cooking vessels, utensils, and inherited tools—serve as repositories for family stories that often remain unspoken. Through the concept of material memory, the research explores how culinary traditions preserve not only cultural practices but also traumatic experiences of displacement, migration, and intergenerational trauma stemming from Partition.

Structurally, the novel draws upon traditional South Asian narrative forms while engaging with postcolonial literary theory, particularly examining themes of language erasure and cultural preservation within diaspora communities. The work investigates how food traditions and inherited objects enable connections to homeland heritage while facilitating adaptation to new environments, contributing to understanding of how postmemory operates through sensory and material culture rather than direct testimony.

The research contributes to diaspora studies, memory studies, and postcolonial literature while producing a novel that gives literary voice to the complex negotiations between tradition, trauma, and belonging within Pakistani-Scottish family histories as well is new immigrants from Pakistan.

• Dr Colin Herd
• Dr Peggy Brunache

Counter Narratives: University of Glasgow Arts and Humanities PG Conference 2025 - Paper title: Decolonising the South Asian Kitchen: Reclaiming Narrative through Culinary Practice.