Convenor of the course, and of its first, third and fourth modules. Her research is on the material culture of domestic storage — pantries, larders, and the household knowledge that mechanical cooling made unnecessary.
Simone Ravel works on the material culture of domestic storage. Before this course that meant a decade on what households did before mechanical cooling: larders, cold rooms, salting, potting, the shared cellar, and the substantial body of knowledge required to keep food edible without a compressor.
That work produced the argument this course is built on. The fridge’s achievement was never preservation — plenty of things preserved food before it. Its achievement was forgetting: it made a demanding household competence unnecessary, then made it unavailable, and then made its own necessity look like a fact of nature rather than the outcome of a century of manufacturing, electrification and advertising.
Ravel supervises the Fridge Ethnography, and is the person to ask when a fieldwork question turns out to be an ethics question — which it usually does. Disagreement with the course’s central claim is welcome, and is worth marks in the essay.
Consultation#
After each session, in the room, for as long as anyone stays. Otherwise by appointment — email with two or three times that suit you rather than asking what suits her.