2026 SPEAKERS
Keynote speaker: Michael Twitty
“A New Recipe for a Beloved Community:
How Food and Food Knowledge Can Help Repair the Broken.”
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Michael W. Twitty is a recognized culinary historian and independent scholar focusing on historic African American food and folk culture and culinary traditions of historic Africa and her Diaspora. He is a living history interpreter and historic chef, one of the few recognized international experts of his craft—the re-construction of early Southern cuisine as prepared by enslaved African American cooks for tables high and low—from heirloom seeds and heritage breed animals to fish, game, and foraged plant foods to historic cooking methods to the table.
​Michael founded www.Afroculinaria.com, the first website/blog devoted to the preservation of historic African American foods and foodways. He has conducted over four hundred classes and workshops, written curricula and educational programs, giving lectures and performed cooking demonstrations for groups including the Smithsonian Institution, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Carnegie-Mellon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Library of Congress, the Association for the Study of Food and Society, and Oxford University’s Symposium on Food and Cookery. He has been profiled in the Washington Post and Washington Prost Magazine, the New York Times, Grist, PittsburghPost-Gazette, Cuisine Noir, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Jet Magazine, Ebony.com, and other periodicals. He has also been interviewed multiple times on NPR including 0n acclaimed food program, The Splendid Table, and Poppy Tooker’s Louisiana Eats.
IHis book, The Cooking Gene, won two James Beard Awards in 2018 for Food Writing and Best Book and his piece in Bon Apetit, I Had Never Eaten in Ghana Before. But My Ancestors Had was nominated for a 2019 James Beard Award and was selected to be included in The Best American Food Writing 2019. In 2020, The Cooking Gene was named #2 on Book Authority’s list of the Top 60 food books of all time. Michael’s next book, Kosher Soul, is available here.
Keynote Address: “A New Recipe for a Beloved Community: How Food and Food Knowledge Can Help Repair the Broken.”
Saturday, February 14, 6 pm
Plenary Panel 2026:
“Stirring the Pot: How Differences Can Create Unity.”
We invite our panelists to explore how food serves as a universal language, not only as a representation of one’s cultural identitie(s) but also in how it can foster connections across diverse spiritualities and religious traditions.
Ben Battle’s 30-year journey in the food industry began at age 13, cutting fish after school, and eventually led him to culinary school in San Diego. His career has taken him around the globe with the U.S. Navy and even to the NHL, where he served as the personal chef for the New Jersey Devils during two of their Stanley Cup championship seasons.
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Today, Ben proudly serves as the Vice President of Culinary and Community Health Education for Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. In this role, he leads an ACFEF-accredited Culinary Apprenticeship program dedicated to helping “second chance” individuals gain life skills, achieve self-sustainability, and secure credible employment. He is also an ordained minister with a deep love for people.
Food studies faculty Dr. Pamela Runestad, is assistant professor of anthropology at Elon University. She is a medical anthropologist who began to combine interests in biology, social studies, and culture while teaching in Nagano, Japan, from 2000 to 2006. Dr. Runestad moved to Honolulu to study medical anthropology in 2006. She returned to Japan for her doctoral research on HIV/AIDS, supported by Fulbright-Hays and the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship Foundation, from 2009 to 2013. She is particularly interested in medical narratives, and biocultural aspects of infectious disease, chronic conditions, and nutrition.
Rev. Miranda Koberg, CSE serves as the minister for international young adult ministry, Next Generation of Unity. She graduated from Elon University with a B.A. in Religious Studies in 2017, where she founded the Ripple Conference, and was ordained through Unity Worldwide Spiritual Institute in 2024. With passions for youth and young adult empowerment, pop culture, and spiritual action, Miranda focuses on teaching others to build multigenerational third spaces that emphasize community action.