Austin Nguyen was born and raised in Vietnam. In 2011, he moved to Canada to go to university. Being ‘plugged’ into a completely different and incredibly diverse culture has encouraged Austin to be more open-minded and motivates him to constantly acquire new ideas from Canadians and other people from around the world.

Grad Project: Instagramming Food

Austin’s project explores the discourse around Instagram and its relation to the practice of photographing food before eating. The study sets out to answer questions from a sociological and anthropological perspective such as what Instagram is; why it is defined as a social platform within our society; why do users constantly photograph their food and expose it for the mass to see; and what is the sociocultural meaning behind this practice.

Project Advisor: Sean Ashley (Sociology)

Tutorial Advisors: Graham Cook (Sociology), Rita Isola (Sociology) and Gillian Crowther (Anthropology)

Resources: Austin used to run the Instagram foodblog @vanchewy. Now it’s run by a friend. With more than 190 different posts about restaurants in Vancouver B.C, @vanchewy is truly a visual menu for its more than 2744 followers and counting.