Dr Asma Khan: "Food and Heritage: The Politics of Food"

The food of our ancestors and our heritage is part of our DNA. It is so intertwined in who we are that we often take our family culinary traditions for granted. As an immigrant, a mother, and a storyteller—and finally as a restaurateur of an all-female immigrant kitchen—I want to highlight the politics of food. Who has a seat on the table, who is making hot chapatis in the kitchen, the gender inequality: women eat last, and girls eat least.

Indian-born British restaurateur Asma Khan is a trailblazer in London’s culinary scene and an outspoken activist. Her Michelin Guide restaurant, Darjeeling Express, known for its revolutionary all-female kitchen has become a favourite of Hollywood A-listers while remaining a safe space for women. Through authentic, homestyle food, it has risen to the upper echelons of the food world while staying true to Khan’s commitment to grassroots social and environmental causes.

In 2024, TIME magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people. She is a chef advocate for the UN World Food Programme and holds an honorary doctorate at SOAS and honorary fellowships from Queen’s College, Oxford, and King’s College London, where she earned a PhD in British Constitutional Law.

Khan was the first British chef on Netflix’s Chef’s Table and has appeared on Celebrity MasterChef and Top Chef. Her third cookbook, Monsoon, celebrates seasonal Indian home cooking. In 2025, she hosted the 10-episode series ‘Secrets of the Curry Kitchen’ on the Food Network and became the first patron of the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation, championing food justice.

The SOAS Food Studies Centre was founded in April 2007 to promote research and teaching in the field of Food Studies at SOAS and to foster and facilitate links between SOAS and other individuals and institutions with an academic interest in Food Studies. Through the Distinguished Lecture Series, the Centre seeks to provide a forum for scholars to address timely food-related issues of public concern.

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