Promoting Food Studies in Italy and beyond since 2006

Gustolab International has been active in educating around Food Systems and Sustainability since 2006 when interest in Food Studies was still in its infancy.

Since then our programs have grown to include academic fields beyond food, leading to our new identity as Borromini Institute, the first school of sustainability in Rome. Within Borromini Institute, alongside the original Gustolab which still offers courses, programs and research regarding Food Studies, other academic clusters now offer educational opportunities in Sustainable Urban Studies, Human Rights and Social Justice, and Technology, Media and Design.

For information on our programs see our new Borromini Institute website.

Our approach to education abroad is to make Italy your laboratory and classroom. Students enthusiastically say that participating in a Gustolab International program is an unparalleled experience, both academically and personally. Our students participate in daily Italian life, visit various neighborhoods, shops, restaurants, and markets, and are constantly immersed in a unique environment of investigation and discovery. Our courses are enriched with field work, special projects, workshops, excursions, and activities. Students share that the process of stepping outside of the familiar “comfort zone” of home, adapting to a new international context, allows them to gain valuable skill sets. It is a time of growth, broadening perspectives, and building future professional opportunities. 

In 2006, Dr. Pier Alberto Merli, Director of Leonardo da Vinci Rome School and current CEO of Gustolab Institute,  the Study Abroad Office at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, together with  various faculties and departments at the University (FSHN, Business, ACES, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese etc.), and Professor Fabio Parasecoli – Representative of NYU and GRH – Gambero Rosso and current Advisor at Gustolab Institute, started a discussion about the creation of a program based in Italy that includes a Food focused component. At that time the interest in what is called Food Studies was, in the U.S. and worldwide,  still far from the impressive growth that we can observe nowadays.

In 2007, the first Food and Culture Program of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was implemented in Rome with the participation of 12 students and the Gustolab Srl space was concretely founded.