Peace Kitchen - Food and Everyday Acts for Peace
Feb 25, 2025 7:30 AM
Dr Elaine Pratley
Peace Kitchen - Food and Everyday Acts for Peace

Peace Kitchen believes in the power of food to bring people together and foster mutual understanding about sometimes divisive topics. Drawing on Elaine Pratley’s doctoral research on food and peace, this interactive session puts peace theory into practice, showcasing how the language of food can serve as an effective tool for dialogue and self-reflection.

Elaine Pratley is founder of Peace Inc. and Peace Kitchen in Australia. Through Peace Kitchen, she facilitates meaningful conversations over food to promote mutual understanding, connection, and community-building. Peace Kitchen creates fun spaces for corporate teams and community groups to have connecting dialogues about thorny issues across differences and divides. These initiatives support Peace Inc.’s PeacePlay programs in schools, promoting positive conflict skills through fun and experiential learning.

A practising lawyer in Australia and New Zealand, Elaine is a Rotary Peace Fellow, an Asian Peace Innovator with the Salzburg Global Fellowship, and a Rotary Positive Peace Activator with a PhD in food and youth peacebuilding.

Having lived in Switzerland, Malaysia, China, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand, she has served as Co-chair of the Global Peace Conference, adviser to the New Zealand Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade’s aid and development program, Global Partnerships and Outreach Adviser to Women Peace Makers Cambodia, and is an affiliate at Monash University’s Global Peace and Security Centre.