Dr Anna Sulan Masing is an academic, writer and poet and a fan of a dry gin martini, with a twist.

She is co-founder of SOURCED, a public research platform that explores our global food and drink systems; she is also co-founder and editor-in-chief of Cheese magazine. Anna Sulan’s narrative podcast, Taste of Place by Whetstone Radio Collective, explores the history of pepper. Her debut book, Chinese And Any Other Asian, will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson February 2025.

Anna Sulan has written in various publications, including BBC World Table, CNN, Guardian, Mr Porter, Good Beer Hunting, Waitrose, Apartamento. Her work has been shortlisted at the Guild of Food Writers and Fortnum & Mason Food Awards. She spoken at various symposiums around the world on the topic of drinks, heritage, and sustainability.  

Her doctorate was investigating storytelling practices of the South East Asian indigenous peoples, the Iban, of which Anna Sulan is part of, and how those practices migrated and how identity changes when space and location changes. This looked at the intersection of performance, food and drink, farming practices and identity.

I was born in Canberra, Australia, whilst my father was there finishing his PhD, and have grown up in Sarawak, Malaysia and Auckland, New Zealand, and moved to London at to study performing arts. The thing that people get most confused about is my name - Anna Sulan is my first name, Masing is my last name, and I go by 'Anna' on a daily, informal basis.

My father is Iban, an indigenous peoples in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, and my mother is a New Zealander of predominantly Scottish heritage. The continued crossing of borders and cultures has made me acutely aware of changing identities. My work consistently looks at identity, race and gender and looks to decolonise the cultural spaces we live in.  

I was awarded my doctorate in 2014, which looked at how identity changes when space and location changes. It was through dance, storytelling and food that these concepts of changing identities were embodied - more details here. I still dip in and out of the theatre and the performance world, occasionally even performing myself. In 2021 a version of my play Don't Sing In The Kitchen, Or You'll Marry An Old Man was performed at part of the arts festival Encounter Bow. ​

Food has been a huge part of my life and work. Ask any Malaysian they will tell you that we can talk about food 24/7. Instead of 'how are you?' we ask - have you eaten? Food is fun. It is how we build home and is very much how we learn to navigate our belonging - it is emotional, visceral but mostly.

I have started a number of wonderful projects that look at the scope of what food and drink mean in our world. I co-founded the popular Voices At The Table events with editor Miranda York, which brings together the food, literary and performance world for a literary salon around food; which became an acclaimed podcast. ​

I co-launched the online magazine AMP, short for ‘a meeting place’ and play on the the idea of amplifying. We wanted lift up women's voices in food and drink who had an eye on a sustainable future; I have found that men (and mostly white men) take up a lot of space when there are many women, and those of minority identities, who are doing a lot of incredible work. It was a crowdsourced project and the pandemic  threw off the plans we had for it - I would love to start this up again one day.

In 2020 I founded and run SOURCED with writer, academic + chef Chloe-Rose Crabtree. SOURCED is a public research project aimed at developing lines of inquiry into our relationships with food and drink, focusing on ingredients. In 2020 I also launched CHEESE, the magazine of culture with Holly Catford, Apoorva Sripathi + JB Beroud, the first issue was published in May 2021, and hope to make it an annual publication. 

For over eight years I worked as a brand and communications consultant with PR expert Frankie Reddin on various food and cultural projects, under A + F Creative - this work spanned Europe from UK, to France and Estonia. I am now heading up the brand strategy at Mr Lyan Studio, a creative agency that focuses on the wide world of hospitality, food, and drink.