Sharing the Table: Culinary Journeys from the Middle East to the North of the Netherlands and the World

is Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Historical Studies at the University of Groningen. She specializes in the cultural and social history of Ottoman and Mandate Levant, with a focus on Great Syria, Palestine and their communities. She is currently conducting research on foodways, Biblical orientalism and photographs in Mandate Palestine. Her recent publications include “Orthodoxy and soli­darity: Niqula Khoury’s journey to the League of Nations”, in E. Freas (Ed.), Palestine’s Christians and the Nationalist Cause: The Late Ottoman and Manda­tory Periods (Routledge, 2025), with Sarah Irving; Commensality and Cultural Heritage: Bringing the Foodways of the Middle East and Its Diasporas to the Table, edited with Heather J. Sharkey (University of Groningen Press, 2025) and Palestine in Transition: Frank Scholten’s Visual Archive on British Mandate Palestine, edited with Sary Zananiri (Amsterdam Uni­versity Press, 2026).

is a Professor in the Depart­ment of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). Her books include Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (University of California Press, 2003); American Evangelicals in Egypt: Mission­ary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton Univer­sity Press, 2008); A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2017); and Crossing Continents: Global Microhistory from Egypt and the Sudan (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026). She edits the book series on “Food and Food­ways in the Middle East, North Africa, and Their Dias­poras” for Edinburgh University Press.

is a PhD candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Groningen. His research explores the migration of Ottoman Arab Christians to Latin America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on identity, heritage, and transnational connections. Brazilian-born, Coelho spent his formative years in Turkey, where he completed his undergraduate studies in Sociology and Anthropology, and earned Master’s degrees in Cultural Studies and History. With A. M. Beylünoğlu, he is co-editor of Deprem Sonrası Antakya: Tanıklıklar, Miras ve Gelecek (“Antioch after the Earthquake: Testimonies, Heritage, and Future”) (Istos Publishing, 2025).