Close Up: Food for Thought
Courses on Sustainable Eating
- Date
- 4 December 2025
- Time
- 17:00 -19:30
- Location
- BG 3
- Room
- VOX-POP
Food is an integral part of our daily lives, from grocery shopping to cooking and eating, it shapes our routines and habits. What and how we eat affects not only our health, but also the environment.
Join us at the dinner table for a conversation about food and sustainability. A delicious three-course vegan meal by Toko Nani will be served, and Lotte Ooms, Olav Hofland, and Maximiliaan Koebrugge will guide the discussion, each shedding light on different aspects of food production, ethics, and sustainability. Bring your own thoughts to the table and help us explore new perspectives on “food”.
This event is led by VOX-POP's Close Up Team 2025-2026.
Practical information
The event will start at 17.00 sharp—please be on time. During each course of the meal, a speaker will shed light on food production, ethics, and sustainability.
Speakers
Lotte Ooms is an ecocultural designer exploring how food, nature and cultural narratives shape our daily lives. Through myth, overlooked species, craft knowledge and sensory experiences, she creates new ways of relating to our living environment, collaborating with chefs, craft based communities and children to imagine more connected food cultures.
Dr. Olav S. F. Hofland specialises in the history of food in the USSR. In 2024, he defended a dissertation on Soviet food service at the European University Institute in Italy. Currently, he teaches modern history at the University of Amsterdam and broods on a future project on meat consumption in the twentieth century.
As a grower in an agroforestry system on Utopia Island, Maximiliaan Koebrugge links food production with ecosystem restoration. He works toward a healthy food chain in which humans and nature come together again and reinforce one another.
My name is Nani and I come from Pematang Siantar in North Sumatra. Love eventually brought me to the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, I worked as a coordinator on Prinsengracht for 21 years. All that time, I had a dream: to start my own Indonesian Toko, but because I had been working for the same company for so long, I never dared to take the plunge—until COVID-19 came along. I lost my job, but that also gave me the opportunity to follow my heart. That was the start of Toko Nani. Every Saturday and Sunday, I park my food truck at Karwei on Klaprozenweg in Amsterdam-Noord. During the week, I'm busy with catering, and sometimes I'm at festivals to share my Indonesian dishes with even more people. You don't have to fly to Indonesia for good food!
