William Woys Weaver
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William Woys Weaver received his Ph.D. from University College, Dublin and is the author of 15 books and hundreds of articles on foods and foodways. He served as Associate Editor of Scribner’s Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, and until recently served as Contributing Editor to Gourmet. He is presently a Contributing Editor to Mother Earth News and a regular contributor to The Heirloom Gardener.
Dr. Weaver has received many publishing awards, including three IACP cookbook awards, and maintains the Roughwood Seed Collection of over 4,000 heirloom food plants. Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking (Abbeville Press 1993) received the Jane Grigson Award (an IACP Cookbook Award) and was also nominated for a James Beard Award; Heirloom Vegetable Gardening (Henry Holt 1997) was chosen as a main selection for the Rodale/Organic Gardening book club as well as a main selection for the Garden Book Club and received a Julia Child Cookbook Award (for food reference) as well as the Jane Grigson Award for scholarly excellence. Weaver’s other books include Sauer’s Herbal Cures (Routledge 2001), America’s first herbal (1762-1777), and 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From (Algonquin Press 2000). Country Scrapple: An American Tradition (Stackpole Books 2003) forms a trilogy with new revised editions of A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook and Sauerkraut Yankees. More recently the University of Pennsylvania Press published As American As Shoofly Pie (2013), an analysis of Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine.
From 2002 to 2010, he lectured as Adjunct Professor of Food Studies at Drexel University and is presently teaching courses on regional American cuisine in connection with the Keystone Center for the Study of Regional Foods and Food Tourism, a non-profit academic research institute, of which he is presently the director. Dr. Weaver is also a board member of GMO Free Pennsylvania and the Experimental Farm Network, a grass-roots organization devoted to alternative methods of seed production. Weaver received his doctorate in food studies at University College Dublin, Ireland, the first doctorate awarded by the University in that field of study.