Welcome at the website of Colaboratory Kitchen. Your currently used browser is outdated, probably insecure, and may cause display errors on this website. Here you can download the most recent browsers: browsehappy.com

P R C C
Cooks

15.12.2020

Profile

Anna Kooi

Chef, philosopher, sociologist

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 Amsterdamwhere 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.

The kitchen is a social place, a com­mon place to gather and connect. It is a place to share not only food, but stories, ideas, aspirations and initiatives. Colaboratory Kitchen is an ongoing mobile and on-site project that brings farmers, scientists, creatives and cooks together around the kitchen table to connect, exchange knowledge and prototype new trans-disciplinary solutions to farming; a test ground for ideas that conciliate land restoration, conservation, food production and better livelihood in farming communities. A response to the lack of connection between disciplines that are key for new alternatives towards more sustain­able and just futures.

The questions at stake are: How do we bridge scientific and local knowledge? What kind of interdisciplinary projects can we create towards a better livelihood and ecological resilience of farmer communities? How can we conserve the environment and its biodiversity in balance with sustainable food production and pair local consumption to global demand?

We create a space for a trans-disciplinary community to grow and take action, by sharing and cooking futures together.

The project was initiated in 2016 as a collaboration between Cascoland and the Forefront Project (WUR, UNAM), a joint effort to design spaces and tools of communication and action towards strengthening socio-ecological bonds, south of the Lacandona Jungle, Chiapas, México. Now a days the scheme is being developed in three rural locations in Mexico: Santo Domingo Tomaltepex, Oaxaca, Xochimilco, Mexico City and Loma Bonita, Chiapas, as a collaboration with UNAM, local organizations and a range of collaborations from professionals in different disciplines.