Irina D. Mihalache

I am a Romanian-born Canadian scholar who writes and researches on the lands of the Huron Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. I am Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Museum Studies at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, and affiliate member of the Culinaria Research Center (University of Toronto Scarborough). I completed my undergraduate degree in Communication at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) in Lynchburg, VA, and my master’s degree in French Studies at New York University. I obtained my Doctorate in Communication Studies from the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in 2011. Before joining the Faculty of Information in January 2013, I spent one year as A.W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Global Communication at the American University of Paris. 

Originally trained in communication and cultural studies, I now find my intellectual home in two interdisciplinary fields: museum studies and food studies. My research often considers the intersections between food and museums but also zooms in on discrete areas within each of these fields. No matter where I find myself on this intellectual spectrum, I aim that my projects are profession-facing and community-oriented, and tuned to historical context. As such, my research output includes a diversity of formats, such as traditional peer reviewed articles, volume co-editing, shorter reflections pieces, roundtable conversations, podcast hosting, and cookbook reviews.  

As my research often connects pasts and presents through archival research and analysis, I am interested in the productive tensions of culture and memory making processes of individuals and communities, as they are mediated through cultural and heritage institutions. I approach museums as complex workspaces, where professional identities intersect with lived experiences in policy and politics rich contexts. I embrace material culture – in and outside museums – as the ideal site of inter-generational connectivity and reflection.   

My research covers histories of volunteer women in art museums (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Seattle Art Museum) and early practices of eating out in museums, intersections between food and museums (with Nina Levent, I co-edited Food and Museums, 2016), the material culture of food (with Elizabeth Zanoni, I co-edited The Handbook of Food and Material Cultures, 2023), and community-centered place and heritage making through storytelling.  Since 2023, I started a new area of research that centers on Romania, aiming to highlight its pre-Communist history as a significant nation making period through two areas: food and museums. 

I am co-chair of the editorial collective of Gastronomica, and a managing editor for Museum & Society.   

Select publications:

• Mihalache, Irina D. (2026) “Food, Memory, and the Everyday.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. Oxford University Press, 2024—. Article published January 20, 2026; last modified, (Jan 20, 2026).
• Mihalache, Irina. D. (2025) “Romania’s Most Famous Cookbook“. Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies  25(4): 30-34.
• Mihalache, Irina D. (2024) “One Could not Have Survived Communism Without a Grandmother: Eating Stinging Nettles in 1980s Romania“. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 19(1/2): 26–32.  
• Mihalache, Irina D. (2020). “The Absent History of Female Volunteers at the Art Gallery of Toronto”. In A. Levin &  J. Adair (Eds.). Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism (p. 187-197). London:  Routledge.  
• Mihalache, Irina D. (2017). A Cultural History of Restaurants in Art Museums: Collaborative Creativities. In P. Naccarato and K. LeBesco (Eds.). The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture (p. 211-225). London: Bloomsbury.  
• Mihalache, Irina D. (2016) A museum’s Culinary Life: Women’s Committees and Food at the Art Gallery of Toronto. Global Food History 2(2): 157-178.

Past courses: