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Welcome to the first Publisher Chat as part of our newseries, Aroundthe Table, in which I will occasionally be talking to editors andpublishers of journals and book series dealing with topics related to historicrecipes. Today I am chatting with Allen Grieco, editor-in-chiefof the journal Food&#38; History (published by Brepols) and series editor of a new bookseries on FoodCulture, Food History (13th to 19th centuries)published by Amsterdam University Press.You serve both aseditor-in-chief of the journal Food &#38; History and series editor of anew book series on Food Culture, Food History (13th to 19thcenturies). Could you describe the types of research and writing beingpublished in this journal and series?&#160;Anybody working in this field knows to what extent thesubject matter we deal with needs to be approached in a resolutelyinterdisciplinary way. While both the journal and the book series have at theircore an historian’s approach to the subject, as is highlighted by the presenceof the word “history” in both titles, it is readily apparent that the lifeblood of the discipline in the last three or four decades has seen a highdegree of methodologically innovative work. The breakdown of barriers that usedto separate disciplinary fields, a process that characterized the developmentof cultural history in general, has been particularly pronounced in foodhistory. Our field has also witnessed the emergence of a pointed interest inpreviously neglected&#160;sources that have since shown their hiddenpotential.&#160;One of the many examples of this is the “discovery” ofcookbooks a type of document that was considered nothing more than a curiosityand has now produced nothing less than a stream of publications. Much the samemight be said of the imaginative use iconographic sources are put to by bothhistorians and art historians or, for that matter, the serial use of literarytexts used by&#160; historians and literary historians to flesh out thecultural context of food consumption.Both the book series and the journal publish the work ofscholars working in this direction even though we are also open to moretraditional approaches such as work exploring the economic history of food,philological work on important texts, etc. The differences, apart from thelength of the texts, are that the book series ranges from the thirteenthcentury to the early nineteenth while the journal has a much larger chronologicalrange from prehistory to the present.What is your role asjournal editor versus series editor? In many ways they are very similar. As an editor (actually a co-editor in chief along with my colleague Peter Scholliers) working in close collaboration with two first class production editors (Lucinda Byatt and Olivier de Maret) of a journal that has reached sixteen years of age, the task is to ensure the quality of the articles and dossiers but also that what we publish fits the very open editorial line we have followed from the very beginning. Since this is the journal published by the IEHCA (Institut Européen d’Histoire et Culture de l’Alimentation) it needs to reflect the varied membership of this institution both in terms of chronological focus and the fields of research that cohabit under that label.&#160;The yearly meetings held in Paris bring together theeditorial board, composed by a varied, highly international group ofspecialists, that reflect not only what food history looks like at present but alsothe range of topics published by the journal. Choosing the members of the boardis one of the tasks that Peter Scholliers and I undertake after consultationwith the sitting members.&#160;As a series editor (but that has only just begun) I havemore freedom to choose though here too there is a small board that I can turnto both for suggesting interesting manuscripts and for expert opinions. Theythen go to Amsterdam University Press where, ultimately, the publisher approvesthe recommendations Erika Gaffney and I have passed on to them.Food &#38; History 14.1 (2016)Could you tell us howto go about getting published in Food &#38; History and Food Cultureand Food History? What is the process? Are scholars of all career stageswelcomed to try publishing?For Food &#38; History all you have to do is to send your article to Lucinda Byatt and Olivier de Maret. If you want to propose a more ambitious dossier, usually no less than four articles by different authors with an introduction, then you should send a one page proposal and a table of contents that will be evaluated before we come to some kind of decision.&#160;As for the book series the procedure is to begin by gettingin touch with me and/or with thecommissioning editor ErikaGaffney. Send us an informal proposal on the basis of which we will sendyou a more complete Publication Proposal Form to get the kind of informationthat is required by AUP to move forward with your project. It is important tosay that scholars at all career stages are published and that the only provisois that it be new, quality work. I should add that publications are exclusivelyin English and that the series also&#160;plans to publish essay collections.&#160;Do you have anygeneral advice for scholars trying to publish historical research on foodtopics? The advice here might sound a little obvious but food historyis a relatively new field, you might even say a fashionable one. While thatmeans more opportunities to publish (the amount of publishers who have enteredtheir hat in the arena over the past ten years is quite remarkable) this hasalso a corollary which is that standards are not always maintained. The journaland the book series I am involved with are both resolutely bent on qualityscholarship but that does not mean dry and long winded, quite to the contrary.Good scholarship and a lively approach to a subject are of course possible,even though they come at some cost. While Food &#38; History has morelatitude for contributions that are aimed at a very small group of specialists,the book series has to be aimed at a broader readership. So, for example, abook should strive to go beyond our specialized field and speak to historiansin general. This is very important since many a main stream historian stillthinks that food history has nothing to do with them. Our field needs to breakout of what threatens to be a ghetto but to do this I am looking for new ideasand rigorous scholarship communicated in an accessible, lively manner. &#160;Thanks, Allen, forchatting with me! Ifyou’d like to feature an editor or publisher on the Around the Table PublisherChat, please email Sarah Kernan.