Robyn Metcalfe

Director, Food+City

Austin

Dr. Robyn Metcalfe is a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in the School of Human Ecology in the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also the Director of Food+City.

Food+City explores the machinery of the global food supply chain and how even the most simple food items arrive on our plates, day after day, an enterprise employing billions of people around the world in spite of incessant and unpredictable disruptions. Food+City also produces an annual food startup competition that challenges entrepreneurs to create solutions to problems within our global food supply chain. Food+City also engages students with research projects and events that explore the relationship between food and major cities around the world. Dr. Metcalfe is the author of Meat, Commerce and the City: The London Food Market, 1800-1855, published in 2012.

Dr. Metcalfe’s past careers include two enterprises, a consulting company and a working conservation farm in Maine, editorial work and production management for Sunset Magazine, strategic planning with Arthur D. Little, Inc., and writing articles and books on a wide range of topics from food history to the theft of high technology. She also founded Kelmscott Rare Breeds Farm and Foundation in Lincolnville, Maine where she actively conserved endangered breeds of livestock for ten years.

She received her BA in American Studies from The University of Michigan and a MA and PhD from Boston University in History, with a concentration in Modern European food history.