Le Hoang Ngoc Yen completed her PhD in Anthropology at the ANU and is currently a Lecturer at School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia Pacific, ANU.

Yen is a medical anthropologist with research interest in chronic diseases, the environment and health, food, alternative diet, stigmatised conditions, and disabilities.

Yen’s research interest in living with chronic conditions in Vietnam inspires her new projects on food, the environment and health. Talking to people living with non-communicable diseases in Vietnam made Yen realise how acutely aware people are of the relation between health, food safety and environmental contamination.

In recent years, Yen thinks a lot more about the environment. When not teaching, Yen will be talking with farmers, teachers, business owners, health professionals, environmental activists, monks and nuns and the local youth etc. about climate change, environmental issues and health, in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam) and the Indian Himalayas.

Her previous research on living with leprosy in Vietnam has won The J.G. Crawford Prize for the Best PhD thesis at the Australian National University (2016); The Peter Kong-ming New Research Award, from The Society for Applied Anthropology (USA) (2016); Asian Studies Association of Australia President’s Prize (2nd place) for the Best PhD thesis on Asian Studies (2016); Best Graduate Student Paper in Vietnamese Studies, awarded by Association of Asian Studies (USA) (2015), and Sir Raymond Firth Prize from Department of Anthropology, College of Asia Pacific, The Australian National University (2014).

Yen has worked in top research universities in Vietnam, Japan and Australia. She has also advised major public health projects in Vietnam.

Before coming back to the ANU as a lecturer, Yen was a Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral research fellow at the Center of Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University.