It is a great honour, not to mention delight, to be returning to San Juan on Saturday 7 March to deliver a keynote at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico in dialogue with its current exhibition, Trópico agridulce, curated by Alexandra Méndez García.

Caribbean food cultures are thick with codfish, but their local waters are not. Contemporary cuisines therefore archive not only how this fish from icy, northern seas, to quote Mark Kurlansky, changed the world but also how the world has changed cod.

Planks of protein, dried and salted codfish fuelled centuries of trade and chronicle how European appetites remapped the Atlantic with the forced migration of people and plants and worlds. My lecture On Tables, Tongues, and Saltfish Tales will share stories about cod’s historical and contemporary colonial entanglements and about time and temperature and salt.