Johanna Mendelson Forman's Linkedin Analytics

An experienced expert on foreign policy - Latin America, post-conflict environments and development - I am now focused on the way food policies drive conflict. I created Conflict Cuisine in 2013 to illustrate the way diaspora populations and their cuisines provide an important lens from which to understand the power of food as a tool to build peace. This includes food entrepreneurship as a tool to immigrant integration and ways in which refugees can build community. My work examines culinary and gastro-diplomacy as expression of soft power that nations and sub-national groups can use to help build national brands around positive experiences related to food and gastronomy. At the Stimson Center I am currently developing a food security program that focuses on national security dimensions of food. Taking the discourse about food to a wider audience, and working with chefs and food experts who want to use their skills to promote good is an important part of the work I am doing as we look at such global problems as migration and refugees, climate change driven conflicts and the impact that urbanization has on food supply. My website, www.conflictcuisine.com is a helpful starting point to learn more.