Helen Mackreath is a writer and scholar working across the fields of critical race theory, urban studies, and postcolonial studies in relation to migration in Istanbul.
She received her PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics in 2025, drawing on theories of political belonging, urban space, black and feminist geography, and critical race theory to map some of the contours through which “the migrant” is being produced in Istanbul. She also holds degrees in Political Science from the American University of Beirut, and in Geography from the University of Cambridge.
Her reportage has been published by Los Angeles Review of Books, London Review of Books Blog, The Economist, Dissent Magazine and Harpers’ and her essays on literature, politics, film and photography have appeared in The White Review, Map Magazine, Kohl Journal, Jadaliyya and K24. She has also published a short story for Salvage Magazine.
Prior to her doctoral studies she worked as a critical migration researcher for a Turkish human rights organisation in Istanbul, and for a Palestinian Women’s Rights organisation in Ramallah. As a scholar committed to collaboration and public engagement, she is currently working with istos publishing house in Istanbul on a critical inquiry into (anti)racism in Turkey, and on a book about James Baldwin’s decade in Istanbul.
email: hmackreath at gmail dot com
blog: helenmackreath.tumblr.com
[Image on front page: Ahmad Zaatar, poem by Mahmoud Darwish, illustrations by Kamal Boullata, back cover of the bilingual edition by Palestinian Union of Artists and Journalists, Beirut 1977.]
HELEN MACKREATH 