Yen Le

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. 

PhD (ANU, Anthropology)

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

Yen's recent publications:

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2024. “Anthropogenic illness and harmony in nature: Redefining health in modern Vietnam”, Anthropology Today 40(4): 17-21

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2024. “Eat, pray, heal? – Prescribing macrobiotic foods in a Vietnamese temple”, The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan focus 22(2). Available online at https://apjjf.org/2024/2/le

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2024. “Epilogue – New directions for research on food, culture and society in Vietnam”, The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan focus 22(2). Available online at https://apjjf.org/2024/2/le2

Le Hoang Anh Thu & Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2023. “Life in numbers: Underground lottery game in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)”, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 38(2): 168-194.

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2023. “ベトナムにおけるキリスト医療慈善団体”（“Christian medical charities in Vietnam”） (in Japanese). In 現代ベトナムを知るための６３章, edited by Iwai Misaki, 216-220, Tokyo: Akashi Shoten.

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen & Le Hoang Anh Thu. 2021. “The “macrobiotics friends association”: nurturing life amidst chronic disease in Vietnam”. In Special issue “Chronic living: ethnographic explorations of daily lives swayed by (multiple) medical conditions”, edited by Ayo Walhberg, Somatosphere: Science, Medicine and Anthropology. Available online at https://somatosphere.com/2021/macrobiotics-friends-association.html/

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2020. “Leprosy, impurity and stigma in Vietnam”, Medicine Anthropology Theory 7 (2): 175-186.

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2018. “The nuns of lepers: Compassion, discipline and surrogate parenthood in a former leper colony of Vietnam”, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 19(4): 350-366. https://org/10.1080/14442213.2018.1480652

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2018. “Once bodies remember: Lived experience, the body and citizenship under post-1975 Vietnam’s state leprosy care”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 13(4): 48-70. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2018.13.4.48

Le Hoang Ngoc Yen. 2018. “Fieldnotes from Bhutan: Reflections on healing and care at the late stage of life”. 42nd Southeast Asia Seminar Proceedings. Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University.