A native Roman who has lived extensively in the U.S., France and Great Britain. Petulia has a deep passion for local culture and what makes a country and a city special and unique: food, folklore, culture. In her previous life she trained to be a lawyer, but more recently she decided to further develop her passion and pursue an MA in social history at the University of Edinburgh.

Born and raised in Milan, Irene moved to Scotland in 2009. She achieved a PhD in Art History at the University of Edinburgh in 2015. Her doctoral thesis looked at the artistic patronage of the Vespucci family in fifteenth-century Florence. Irene currently works at the University of Edinburgh. She loves art, coffee, yoga, and the sun – not necessarily in this order. Despite her reluctance to sit on planes, she is a travel addict and she hopes to tour the world one day. Edinburgh stole her heart and it is now her home.

Charlotte Maberly is a lecturer and co-creator of the UK’s first MSc in Gastronomy. Her love of food has led her around the world, exploring food cultures and the complexities of our global food system. She has lived in Istanbul and the North West US, where she taught urban agriculture and worked with the country’s only organic farmland trust. Experiencing the startling contrast between the bleak industrial food system of the US and the powerful food movement, moved her to pursue a masters in Food Culture and Communications at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy. She has now returned home to Scotland to teach, is involved with Slow Food and supports Scotland’s burgeoning sustainable food movement in any way she can.