In unexpected news, I started playing jazz flute at a local jam session meetup. Pedro (in the yellow beanie) oscillates between drums, bass, and keys, but I’m just trying to revive my 12 year old jazz band self.

To think, that bits and bobs from our fieldwork research in Cambodia will be in the National Geographic Society’s Explorer Base Camp exhibition in Washington DC! 🥹

good god, please do not do this Do not trust this company with ANYTHING sensitive or personal. Or any of them.

It’s 2025, almost 2026, and people still think I’m “unprofessional” because I have a facial piercing and colourful hair 😵‍💫

Just thinking about how I'll finally wrap-up my LAST academic article this year in a few days and I cannot wait to be free. 2025 was my first full year away from a FT academic role, but somehow we cranked out 5 papers and the book. Wow.

Nobody is really talking about #Cambodia and I’m not surprised, just saddened.

The book proofs are here and I’m getting shaky and achey…almost there 😭🫥

Our #copywriter is so kind about the #book. They're enjoying it loads, have kept the unique tone of our writing voices, and apparently have gone as far into doing extra research on our topic because of curiosity spurred by reading on it. I love it! I'm happy it resonates! I'm happy we're breezing!

Could this be the year I break 100 leisure #reading #books? I'm at 89 now, about to finish 2 more today. Aside from hitting a personal record, I think I've read such a wide variety of genres this year and I'm so proud!

Former student and co-author sent me this during our meeting dedicated to dealing with Reviewers 1 & 2's laundry list of minor revisions 😵‍💫

The manuscript is being handed off towards the production team! 🥹😭

This has been a year of figuring myself out and frankly, as much as it has sucked, it's been very beneficial. I still love research. I still love writing. I still love teaching. But I needed time to feed other interests/desires.

Our manuscript has been accepted to a Q1 #PublicHealth journal and I am so emotional. I am so proud of my small, yet mighty cohort of #globalhealth graduate students who dedicated their studies and time to advancing #menstrualhealth #education in Cambodia 🥺— will share more as it progresses!

My partner Pedro is off the bean-juice and my attempts to support him through #gastro-solidarity have been a nightmare. I only drink MAX 2 little coffees a day. I need to stop. Italy changed me...maybe for the worse.

🗣️ Upcoming talk: Digital #Gastro-solidarity and #Mukbang — come hear Stanley and I discuss all things #food, #digitalmedia, and #digitalfoodactivism! ℹ️ More info 🔗 : www.oxfordobesity.org/seminars-and...

Manuscript submitted! 😭 Can’t wait to share more about our upcoming #academic #book #publication with #Routledge! 📖 🥹

Writing up acknowledgements!

I was thinking about getting into writing-for-me-writing again. I feel like Twitter used to be that space for me. A space of overflowing thoughts and sprawling takes. I would write them up and share them. Now the sky is blue, and I am here, so I'll start doing that again!

Just peeked our book cover mockup and I’m emotional 🥹

Received a major revisions response for an article I'm co-writing and my immediate thought was "Oh yay, not a rejection!" Besides, everything in life is basically "major revisions" :')

Hey, the first draft is done! 🥹 I am shaking with JOY💖✨

I've been having a hard time on the #job search at the moment with everything going on in the U.S. I'd appreciate any leads on #copyediting either in #food #health or #tech as I've spent 5+ years doing that. I'm nearing the end of the #book writing sabbatical so please send me luck + leads, thanks.

Went to my first book talk event at Portland’s legendary Powell’s Book Store. Got to meet @vietthanhnguyen.bsky.social and have him sign some books 📚✨

Spilled iced coffee all over my laptop because a bird nearly flew into the window my desk looks out onto. First time I’ve ever done this so fingers crossed it boots up tomorrow 🤞🏽 What a chaotic way to end day 🥲

I've been having a hard time on the #job search at the moment with everything going on in the U.S. I'd appreciate any leads on #copyediting either in #food #health or #tech as I've spent 5+ years doing that. I'm nearing the end of the #book writing sabbatical so please send me luck + leads, thanks.

🏔️ 🌊 I am so in love with #nature and it actually makes me sad that some people can’t enjoy this the way I do 🩵💚 #PNW #hiking

I am so behind and so “out of the loop” because I’ve been writing and doom-working(?!) but I wanted to say that I had a phenomenal time at #sfaa and it was so fun + inspirational for me to meet my #anthro pals from the old Twitter times in-person 💖— best (and first) anthro conference ever 🥹

🗣️ New #publication alert!🚨 We wrote about the #therapeutic applications of #poetry against #loneliness #globalhealth 🔗 : www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

all scrolling is doomscrolling under fascism

It’s been a rough few months preparing for this international move. It’s been just over a week of me living in Portland and I’m feeling lots of feelings. On the brightside, we are 20k words away from finishing the book. ✍️

Anthropogenic Global Warming: Fossil Fuel Pollution, Severe Weather, CO2, Plants, Food, Nutrients, Food Chains, & Supply Chains 🧵 www.scientificamerican.com/article/corr...

🚨 JOB ALERT!! We're looking for a PhD student to join our group! Are you interested in evolutionary medicine / anthropology? Already have a master's? Apply with your own project ideas! See link: jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie... #EvMed @bioanth.org @ehbea.bsky.social Please RT!

Today on #Platypus, Global Health researchers Isabell Hedke and Aikaterini Mitselou discuss ongoing intersectoral efforts toward achieving menstrual health and hygiene through creative and collaborative educational initiatives in Cambodia. Read it here: blog.castac.org/2024/11/gree...

⭐️ @maythehan.bsky.social and I wrote about the ways that #digital #food #media creators are pushing #interspecies relationalities by dining with their #dogs. #scicomm #STS #anthro ✍️ 🖼️ Dog portrait by Maythe Han 🐶 Read/ Listen to it here 🔗: blog.castac.org/2024/11/dini...

Anyone ever used #datacamp to learn new skills? Also, if you got a certification did it help you transition or move up to different roles? #Hiring managers, I also want to hear from you! 🤓 #datascience #R #python

Just how sorry are they after rejecting your paper? Like, on a scale from 'I lose sleep over it every night' to 'I can't handle this, I’m quitting my job,' where do they land? Asking for a friend. 🙃

👋🏽 Hello, my name is Thao and I’m a medical #anthropologist, #ethnobotanist, and #food writer. I’m a #Firstgen #Khmer and #Vietnamese American scholar relocating to Portland, Oregon after 8 years of living abroad in the U.K., Italy, and Netherlands. I study (digital) food, health, and plants. 🌱 🍲

We sent off 2 more chapters of the book on Friday! Going to try to keep this awesome momentum and inspiration that is beginning to flourish within this time. Slowly, but surely.

So in this month of sabbatical I’ve written around 23k words towards the book — I received some positive feedback and am trying to be patient with this process. Prepared some manuscripts and had them rejected, oh well.

Dutch govt: we are broke, no houses, we must cut a billion euros from higher education, close the universities and kick out the foreigners Also dutch govt: we are going to buy 250 million euro in weapons from israel

Chrck out my new article on the coloniality of academic freedom and the Palestine exception. It is free access. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Related: “less known are the more revolutionary connotations of offering free breakfast to children. For some scholars, widespread free breakfast programming didn't begin with the federal government, but rather, with radical actions from the Black Panther Party.”

Brains are so odd. Writing is a funny process for me. I had 600 words written within my first hour of wakefulness and now I’m a bit stuck in bureaucratic paperwork, which has considerably slowed down my “fun” writing.

1500 words today, I’ll take it!

Today I’m writing about airplane food and travel eating. I’m talking boozy cocktails for breakfast, coveting the soggy squished meal deal sandwich, and accepting the up charge of your favourite snacks in an act of desperation for culinary comfort.

Sent off some book chapters today. Co-writing a book with someone is so intimate and hilarious because there are moments where you kind of forget who wrote which bits. I hope that’s a good thing, nice to have a collective voice with occasional breaks to be our weirdo selves.

Colleague Ahab Bdaiwi has started this fundraiser for a fellowship at the Institute of Philosophy at Leiden University. This one-term fellowship will provide vital resources and a platform for a woman scholar from Gaza or the West Bank. Info and how to donate 👇 www.steunleiden.nl/fundraisers/...

Every time I tell myself this is the 'last time' where I shortcut citations when I'm writing a manuscript draft it is CLEARLY NOT THE LAST TIME and I need to GET IT TOGETHER and NEVER DO THIS AGAIN?! Going back and fixing references is awful ahhhHHHHhdsalsaldjsda

The Best Thing I Ate Last Week was this wedge salad from Void, a stellar new Italian restaurant in the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago. It was covered in an incredible creamy garlic dressing that was made from silken tofu!? (ps: I think I’m going to start drawing the best thing I eat every week😊)