Her research focuses on the nexus between social inequality and neoliberal urban governance, more particularly on the relation between racism, class and gentrification.
Defne Kadıoğlu Polat graduated from the University of Düsseldorf’s Social Sciences Department and obtained her Master’s degree from the University of Essex in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights. After a year of work in civil society she assumed her PhD Studies at Boğaziçi University in the Department of Political Science and International Relations. From 2010 until 2015 she was the executive assistant of the Boğaziçi University-TÜSİAD Foreign Policy Forum. In winter 2012/2013 she was a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at Humboldt University’s Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences (BGSS). She defended her PhD Dissertation titled “Migrants and the City: Gentrification, Ethnicity and Class in a Berlin Neighborhood” in 2015.