Visiting Scholar, Portland State University
Contributing Editor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
Research Interests
Cambodia | Digital Ethnography | Digital Food | Digital Health | Ethnobotany | Food | Medical anthropology | Plant Humanities | Traditional Medicine |
About Ashley Thuthao Keng
Ashley "Thao" Dam is a medical anthropologist and budding ethnobotanist. Their research interests reside in the overlappings of nutritional anthropology, human ecology, gastronomy, and biocultural diversity. Thao also writes, draws, photographs and speaks about food on under the name @ThaoEatWorld. They are currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University. Previously, they were a Lecturer in Global Health at Maastricht University in The Netherlands and Explorer for the National Geographic Society.
Contact
Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Ashley Thuthao Keng's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
Recipes of Resistance: Global Digital Gastro-solidarity for Palestine
From the North in Safad (where my father is from) and Galilee to the South East in Al-Lydd (where my mother is from) and down to Jerusalem and Gaza, the food differs but is united at the same time, through love and history… Palestinian food is found in the home. That is where it all begins. (Joudie Kalla, Palestine on a Plate, 2016) Food is the most precious part of Palestinian heritage. For Palestinian food not to go extinct, the young have to learn from the old. (Aisha Azzam, Aisha’s Story, film forthcoming 2024) Around the world, millions have taken the streets in support of a free and thriving Palestine in the face of active genocide and the continuance of settler colonial violence. Visible on the streets and all over social media feeds, scattered among flags and keffiyehs, are images of the vibrant watermelon. This trinity of nationalist symbols bear (read more...)
“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”: Food, Cooking, and Eating in Video Games
“Are you seriously telling me that this hot mash of mushrooms and fruit is going to completely heal his wounds?” (Gilbert 2019) It is summer 2020 and I, like many others, am sequestered indoors clutching my recently acquired Nintendo Switch playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH). In wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world seemed to swarm either to their handy technological devices or towards the soothing arms of nature. Luckily for me, my technological device included encounters with some virtual greenery—the trees and flowers of my beloved tropical Animal Crossing island. (more…) (read more...)
Dining with the Diaspora: Khmerican Digital Gastrodiplomacy
During my first semester of undergrad, I began my truly independent cooking journey—a path many have taken before me, but few survive. After weeks of failing to replicate one of my mother’s simplest dishes, scrambled eggs with jasmine rice, I was devastated. Arriving home for winter break, I told her about my struggles—how I looked up many recipes online and tried making them all, adding milk, sprinkling in cheese, whisking the eggs with a particular technique. Nothing seemed to replicate the correct taste or texture. The familiar experience of the eggs was absent. She laughed at me and explained she made them “Khmer style,” to which I promptly replied, “What’s ‘Khmer Style?'” Half smirking and rolling her eyes, Ma explained that the scrambled eggs have fish sauce, green onions, and black pepper in them. “Make sure you use the good fish sauce okay? Either Three Crabs Brand or the Squid (read more...)