Katharina Graf

Dr. Katharina Graf is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Faculty of Linguistics, Cultures and Arts, Goethe University Frankfurt. She leads the DFG-funded ethnographic research project Cyborg Cook – Domestic Cooking in the Digital Age, investigating how digital technologies transform domestic cooking practices, knowledge reproduction, and socio-political negotiations around gender, class, and race in German households. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the SOAS Food Studies Centre, University of London, where she conducted research on bread as a measure of urban stability in Morocco, funded by the AXA Research Fund.

Her educational background includes a PhD in Social Anthropology from SOAS, University of London (2016), with fieldwork in Marrakech, and a Diplom in Geography from the universities of Tübingen, Bonn, and Cologne, focusing on water supply in rural Morocco.

Katharina Graf’s research lies at the intersection of cultural anthropology, food studies, gender, urban life, and science and technology studies. She explores how everyday practices—especially cooking—reflect and shape broader social, political, and technological transformations. Her work emphasizes the entanglement of material culture, digitalization, and human agency, particularly in domestic spaces. She investigates how food serves as a lens for understanding political legitimacy, social change, and human-machine relations.

Her recent publications and blog posts from the Cyborg Cook project reveal a strong trend toward understanding digital domesticity through ethnographic, sensory, and feminist lenses. Themes include the role of mothers as technological pioneers, the disruption of routines by smart devices, and the multisensory experience of digital cooking practices. Her earlier work on bread in Morocco highlights how food security and culinary practices are deeply tied to political stability and state-society relations.

• Postdoctoral Fellowship, AXA Research Fund
• Principal Investigator, DFG-funded 'Cyborg Cook' project

Dr. Graf has supervised undergraduate and postgraduate students at SOAS and Goethe University. While no specific grants beyond DFG and AXA are named, her role as principal investigator indicates leadership in competitive research funding. She is actively involved in academic service, including as associate book reviews editor for the FoodAnthropology Blog (Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition) and former co-convenor of the Anthropology of Food Network at EASA. She disseminates research through innovative public formats such as photo exhibitions, cookery classes, and comedy clubs, reflecting a commitment to engaged scholarship.

She is affiliated with the Cyborg Cook research team at Goethe University, an interdisciplinary group using ethnographic methods to study digital kitchen technologies. The project emphasizes collaborative, sensory, and participatory research approaches, often involving co-creation with participants through shared meals and observational cooking sessions.