About


I’m an historical archaeologist, food historian, anthropologist, and digital humanist working on the intersections of food and immigration.

Currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology with a Minor in History at Stanford University, my dissertation, “From Immigrant to Settler: Food in 19th Century British Colonial Institutions of Immigration” is supervised by Dr. Barbara L. Voss. It is based on nearly two years of archival and archaeological research on food-related collections from the Female Immigration Depot at Hyde Park Barracks in New South Wales, Australia. I use multi-material analysis to study the socialisation of nineteenth-century British immigrants through food. This project considers the social meanings of institutional provisioning, dining and consumption practices drawing on the literature of historical and contemporary institutional food.

I am also interested in food history more broadly, particularly historical cookbooks and the recreation of historical food (for more see my blog Turnspit & Table). Making manuscript receipt books more accessible through transcription and digitisation is a keen interest, and I have led the crowd-sourced effort to transcribe the Dorothea Rousby Cookbook held in Stanford Special Collections.

Before coming to Stanford, I completed a BA (Honours) in Archaeology and a BA (Languages) in French and Archaeology at the University of Sydney. I have participated in field projects in Scotland and the Cangdong Village Project in China, and performed specialist faunal analysis for an archaeology firm in Australia.

You can contact me at kconnor@stanford.edu, or download my full academic CV here

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