Elena Neri

• Neri, Elena (2026). Buckwheat, Cows, and Consubstantiality: Transforming Food Systems and More-than-Human Entanglements in Rural Bhutan. In Pavone, Vicolo del (Eds.), The AnthroFood 2050 Manifesto: Anthropological Perspectives on the Future of Food. Casa Editrice Vicolo del Pavone. ISSN 9788875032869. p. 253–262. doi: https:/www.vicolodelpavone.it/store/detail/anthrofood-2050-manifesto. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The AnthroFood 2050 Manifesto: Anthropological Perspectives on the Future of Food presents a critical call to action and an intellectual framework for transforming global food systems by the year 2050. Developed through a multi-year collaborative effort by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) FoodNet—originating at a landmark international workshop at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan—this volume demonstrates that technology and market mechanisms alone cannot resolve the compounding crises of climate disruption, supply chain fragility, and food insecurity. Moving beyond traditional academic critiques, the volume argues that food is not merely biological fuel, but a relational field embedded with emotion, identity, cultural memory, and power dynamics. It highlights how systemic food insecurity is structurally produced by financialization, corporate concentration, and the marginalization of non-Western epistemologies and informal care labor.

• Neri, Elena (2026). Seedless Chilies and Dried Turnip Leaves: Food and Transnational Connections between Bhutanese Migrants in Australia and their Home Villages. HIMALAYA The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. 44(2), p. 48–67. doi: 10.2218/himalaya.2025.10695. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Based on one year of anthropological fieldwork in a group of villages in the Haa Valley of western Bhutan, this ethnographic paper examines how Bhutanese migrants in Australia maintain connections to their home villages through food. Although migration to Australia has become a prominent phenomenon in Bhutan (and across the Himalayan region), the paper challenges mainstream accounts of rural depopulation that portray young Bhutanese as progressively detaching from their culture and villages and migration as a linear process of separation from the country of origin and integration into the society of destination. Instead, it argues that moving to Australia prompts Bhutanese migrants to engage with their home villages and social networks in ways they may not have done otherwise. The paper highlights the central role of food in how migrants reconnect, reaffirm, maintain, reinforce, and forge new ties with their home communities. It concludes that migration—particularly in a Himalayan context—should be understood not as a linear process of detachment but as one of connection and continuity, with food and food practices serving as key means through which transnational relationships are nurtured and sustained.

• Neri, Elena; Thompson, Claire; Hayes, Caroline; Bostock, Nancy & Wills, Wendy (2025). A Commercial Determinants of Health Perspective on the Food Environments of Public Hospitals for Children and Young People in High-Income Countries: We Need to Re-Prioritize Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH). ISSN 1661-7827. 22(4). doi: 10.3390/ijerph22040601. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  There is growing evidence that public hospitals in high-income countries-in particular, Anglo-Saxon neoliberal countries (USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia)-have been engaging with food retailers to attract private capital and maximise their incomes in a drive to reduce costs. Added to which, public hospital food can have a substantial influence on the health of children and young people. However, there is still relatively little research on food for young people in healthcare settings. This is concerning, as an appropriate food intake is vital not only for the prevention of and recovery from diseases, but also for the physical growth and psychological development of young people. This critical narrative review examined the available evidence on hospital food provision, practices, and environments, as well as children's experiences of hospitalization in high-income countries, drawing on both peer-reviewed articles and the grey literature. Our analytical lens for this review was the Commercial Determinants of Health (CDOH), a framework that necessitates a critical examination of commercial influences on individual, institutional, and policy practices relevant to health. Our findings illustrate the mechanisms through which the CDOH act as a barrier to healthy food and eating for children in hospitals in high-income countries. Firstly, hospital food environments can be characterised as obesogenic. Secondly, there is a lack of culturally inclusive and appropriate foods on offer in healthcare settings and an abundance of processed and convenience foods. Lastly, individualised eating is fostered in healthcare settings at the expense of commensal eating behaviours that tend to be associated with healthier eating. Public hospitals are increasingly facing commercial pressures. It is extremely important to resist these pressures and to protect patients, especially children and adolescents, from the marketing and selling of foods that have been proven to be addictive and harmful.

• Neri, Elena (2025). Smells, rhythms and bodies of Vucciria: sensing and navigating a contested Sicilian foodscape. Food, Culture, and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. ISSN 1552-8014. doi: 10.1080/15528014.2025.2543985. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This ethnographic case study explores the contemporary everyday life of “Vucciria,” a square in the historical center of Palermo, home to one of Sicily’s oldest food markets. In the past few decades, Vucciria has been transforming significantly, with the introduction of new foods, smells, rhythms, and bodies to the square. One of the most recent changes has been the opening of a Senegalese restaurant, which has become the arena of interaction between Palermitan locals, West-African migrants and Western tourists. By performing a sensory and spatial analysis of this “foodscape,” I aim to expose the relationships of power, inclusion and exclusion reproduced within it, tracing them back to the political and historical context of Palermo and Sicily, the relationship between North and South of Italy, and the country’s (post)colonial relationship with Africa. By narrating the foodways and everyday life of a square, I expose how daily interactions are embedded with a history of oppression. Most importantly, I raise attention to how everyday small acts of resistance can subvert these structures.

• Neri, Elena (2025). Urban foods beyond urban food environmmets: reflections from a rural village in Western Bhutan. Urban Planning. 10. doi: 10.17645/up.10679. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This ethnographic article, based on anthropological fieldwork carried out between March 2024 and March 2025, aims to challenge the concept of urban food environments by focusing on the ways in which industrially produced foods—conceptualised as “urban foods”—and associated negative health outcomes proliferate beyond urban built spaces. In particular, it looks at the ways in which these foods penetrate what is considered a remote and rural village located in the Haa valley of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, exploring the mechanisms through which local inhabitants incorporate urban foods into their long‐established rural practices, shifting them from a capitalist logic of consumption to communal ethics of care. The article illustrates (through three ethnographic vignettes) and discusses how industrially produced foods become embedded in local practices and diets through social, cultural, and affective processes, suggesting that, to capture the complexity of contemporary food systems, we need to examine such processes in our analyses. We therefore need to think beyond urban food environments: firstly, issues associated with such environments have gone well beyond urban built spaces; secondly, by perpetrating the narrative predominance of the urban over the rural, we fail to notice the mechanisms that allow unhealthy urban food systems to exist, proliferate, and cause harm. This article contributes to the literature thinking beyond urban food environments by exploring some of the ways in which food spaces are constantly transforming into a (re)combination of urban and rural elements and relations.

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• Neri, Elena (2026). Guest Lecture (ONLINE for DiSCi, University of Bologna). La mia ricerca sul campo in Bhutan: metodologia e temi principali (my fieldwork in Bhutan: methodology and main themes). Full text in Research Archive
• Daele, Wim Van; Neri, Elena & Kattel, Kanchan (2026). EATWELL open seminar. Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2026). Conference presentation (International Association for Tibetan Studies - IATS): Transforming women-forest relationships in the Haa valley of Western Bhutan. Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2026). Guest presentation (CADS, Leiden University): An ethnography of food, relationships and change in rural Bhutan. Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2026). Conference presentation (Ecologies of Food, Umbra Institute): Transforming food systems and more-than-human entanglements in the Haa valley of Western Bhutan. Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2026). Blog post: From buckwheat to white rice: transforming food systems and multispecies relations in rural Bhutan - Leidenanthropologyblog. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Elena Neri, a visiting PhD fellow at Leiden University, explains her research on transforming food systems, multispecies relations, and more-than-human health in a community of rural villages in western Bhutan, where she carried out fieldwork between March 2024 and March 2025.

• Neri, Elena (2025). Guest lecture (DILSTAL, University of Bologna): I sistemi e le pratiche alimentari del Bhutan (Food systems and practices of Bhutan). Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2025). Guest lecture (DiSCi, University of Bologna): La mia ricerca sul campo nel distretto di Haa, Bhutan occidentale (My ethnographic fieldwork in the Haa valley of Western Bhutan). Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2025). Workshop presentation (University of Vienna): Food and shamanism in the Haa valley of Western Bhutan. Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2025). Conference presentation (Royal Anthropological Institute, Durham University): Food for more-than-human health, exploring food offering practices and environmental spirituality in the Haa valley of Western Bhutan. Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2024). Blog post: Nublang, the precious treasure of Western Bhutan - EATWELL. doi: https:/www.eatwell-bhutan.net/post/nublang-the-precious-treasure-of-western-bhutan. Full text in Research Archive
• Neri, Elena (2024). Conference presentation (Himalayan centre for Environmental Humantities, Royal Thimphu College): Following the Nublang: transforming circulations and entanglements of Western Bhutan. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Nublang, the native cattle of Haa district in Western Bhutan, are known for their ability to travel independently into the forest. Still, they are strongly entangled with the lives of other beings, such as local deities (from which they originated), native forest plants, wild animals and, of course, humans. However, various interconnected transformations - such as the advent of the road, electricity and climate change – are changing their home locale. Nublang have drastically decreased in favour of imported cattle breeds such as Jersey, considered to be more “productive” (in terms of milk). In this chapter, I argue that the decline in this highly mobile species is changing the circulations of many other beings. The movements of villagers are now rotating around their Jersey cows, who remain static in cow sheds, requiring fodder to be carried to them. Higher quantities of milk and surplus dairy products determine circulations to nearby markets and beyond. The different microbial composition of Jersey’s manure, fed mostly of imported rice and industrial formulated feed, is affecting how beings move within the soil and the quality of staple crops. Forest neglection is also conditioning where local deities direct their forces and anger. While the decline of Nublang has raised national concerns, they have only been researched as a resource for the utility of human beings or as potential tourist attraction, ignoring the important part that their mobility plays in local ecosystems. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring this cattle species in an ethnographic and less anthropocentric way. I “follow” Nublang in their micro and macro circulations around homes, cowsheds, forests, trails, roads and tourist festivals, capturing their transforming entanglements with other beings and the environment. By using the circulations of Nublang as my theoretical and methodological focus, I aim to provide new ethnographic insights on how many other beings (e.g. imported cattle breeds, villagers, endemic and exotic plants, deities and microbes) entangle and circulate within Western Bhutan and beyond. Ultimately, I reflect on how the transforming mobilities of these beings in relation to the decline of Nublang are affecting local food systems and more-than-human health.

• Laine, Emilia & Neri, Elena (2023). Blog post: Thinking like a slime mold and sharing mushroom ice cream: Reflections from the CSSM PhD School – The Centre for the Social Study of Microbes. doi: http:/www.socialmicrobes.org/current/thinking-like-a-slime-mold-and-sharing-mushroom-ice-cream-reflections-from-the-cssm-phd-school/. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  By Emilia Laine & Elena Neri

• Neri, Elena (2023). Summer school presentation (CSSM, University of Helsinki): Microbes, food & Bhutan. Full text in Research Archive

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