Antonella Campanini is currently working specifically on the social history of food between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance and on the history of food heritage. She has conducted and conducts analyses on manuscript and printed recipe books, cross-referencing them with coeval sources, in order to reconstruct through both content and formal aspects the evolution of the society that produced them, with particular regard to the European circulation of practices, ideas, identities.
Another area of research is that of the history of food heritage, in order to identify between the Antiquity and the Middle Ages the first steps towards the localisation of food products, recipes and customs, which constitute the starting point for recent discourses on food as cultural heritage, developed both on an international (UNESCO) and national level (not necessarily in an academic environment), also in order to refute the excessive story-telling carried out in recent times.
She has also carried out and continues to carry out archival research – she has explored the Archivio di Stato di Bologna in particular – in order to identify the archives and, consequently, the institutions that produced them, which allow reconstructions of food history on a territorial basis. She is consequently interested in new explorations regarding the history of food production in rural areas.
She has studied and is still studying Hildegard of Bingen, in particular her scientific work and, within it, her relationship with food.
