Anna Kooi

Anna is chef, philosopher and sociologist based in Amsterdam. She started working in restaurant kitchens at age 16. During her studies at the University for Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, she started cooking with rescued food. For two years, she volunteered as a chef at the anti-food waste initiative Taste Before You Waste in Amsterdam, where a three-course dinner for approximately 80 people is prepared twice a week with a pay-as-you-like policy. She is an active member of the Slow Food Youth Network and was listed in the Food100, a list of changemakers in the Dutch food system. Currently, she works part-time as social designer and chef for Cascoland in Amsterdam New West. At Cascoland’s new urban micro-farm, she collects surplus food at a nearby market and organises biweekly culinary exchanges with local residents. Based on these encounters, she aims to create a biocultural archive of living ingredients, stories and memories that reflect the diversity within the neighborhood.

In her studies, Anna investigates the power relations that shape food systems. Anna is currently following two MA programs: one in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and one in Sociology of Food and Placemaking at Wageningen University. She conducted research about societal transformations towards food commons; food feminism in the Global South; environmental conflicts in rural Latin America; the coloniality of food in gastronomy; Foucault’s notion of ‘alimentary monstrosity’; and the concept of ‘the wilderness’ in climate ethics.

She is part of the network of Colaboratory Kitchen since 2019, when she joined the Asperen Lab&Kitchen as a Chef and “expert” on food waste. In 2020 she joined the team in Chiapas, to develop recipes with fruit leather, corn, food forest foods and conserves.