Ken Albala (B.A., George Washington University; M.A., Yale; M.Phil., Ph.D.

, Columbia) is Professor of History at University of the Pacific and also teaches in the Gastronomy program at Boston University. His Food History class is currently being filmed for the Great Courses company. He has authored over a dozen books on food history, including Eating Right in the Renaissance (2002), Food in Early Modern Europe (2003), Cooking in Europe 1250-1650 (2005), The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe (2007), Beans: A History (winner of the 2008 International Society of Culinary Professionals Jane Grigson Award and the Cordon D'Or award for Food History/Literature), Pancake (2008), and World Cuisines (written with the Culinary Institute of America). He has edited three food series for Greenwood Press with 30 volumes in print and has begun a new series with AltaMira. For Greenwood, he also served as Editor of the 4-volume Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia (2011). He has been Book Reviews Editor of the journal Food Culture and Society for over six years and has recently taken over as co-Editor of the journal. Dr. Albala has worked in libraries across Europe--the Vatican Library, the British Library and Wellcome Institute, the Herzog August Bibliotek in Wolfenbuttel, Germany--and many archives in the U.

S. He also regularly attends meetings of the Oxford Symposium, The International Association of Culinary Professionals, and the Association for the Study of Food and Society, where he serves on the Board.