About the Company

Thank you for visiting The Fork Front’s website. I am Dr. Kelly A. Spring, PhD., the founder and owner of the company. In January 2024, I launched The Fork Front, a Washington, D.C. based company,which aims to dispel the belief that food history is only for academics. Instead, the work of this company bridges the academic and general public worlds to make food history available and accessible to everyone. Through the different services and products offered by The Fork Front, I use my knowledge, skills and experience in new and creative ways to teach people about the wonderful, multifaceted and inclusive nature of food history.

In these pages, you will find the fruits of my labor. I hope this site enlightens and entertains, while providing a platform for wider discussions, debates, and deliberations about your own and others’ food history.

About the Owner

I have worked for over a decade in the field of food history as a consultant, researcher, writer, and lecturer. My MA from Queen Mary University of London and my PhD from the University of Manchester in history focused on the impact of war, and gender on food practices on the British home front during the Second World War.  My research and current projects, including those listed below, focus on the areas of national and international crises, domestic and global food systems, and individual and collective foodways.

Current Book Projects:

• Eating with the Dead: Bereavement, Memorialization and Consumption
• Korean Diaspora: Korean Food and American Identity
• Wartime Rations Today: Wartime Cookery for 21st Century Lives
• Kimchi: A Fermented History

Coming Soon – SPAM: A Global History (Reaktion Press, Spring/Summer 2025) 

“Contradictions and Conformity in a Wartime Boarding House: Gender Roles and British Food Rationing in the Second World War”, in S. Dawson and M. Crowley (eds.), Women’s Experiences of War: Exile, Survival and Everyday Life (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), pp. 131-148

Women & World War II: Serving Their Country (National Women’s History Museum, 2018)

“Imported Food”, in K. Albala (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Food Issues, Volume 2 (Sage, 2015), pp. 826-831

“‘Little Goodies in His Kit Bag’: British Servicemen, Masculinity, and Feeding the Home Front in World War II”, Special Section: “World War II Food Rationing across the United Kingdom”,Global Food History (September 2021), pp. 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2021.1971928

‘“Today We Have All Got to be Fighting Fit’: The Interconnectivity of Gender Roles in British Food Rationing Propaganda during the Second World War”, Gender & History, 32/2 (2020), pp. 320-340, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12446

“The Battle of the Land and The Kitchen Front: Twenty-first Century Museum Representations of Second World War British Food Rationing and Gender Roles”, 2020 Special Issue- Historical Geography, 47 (2019), pp. 37-71, https://doi.org/10.1353/hgo.2019.0000