Dr Kevin Yildirim

Dr Kevin Yildirim

College Lecturer in Anthropology

Subjects

Biography

For 2026–27, Kevin is College Lecturer in Anthropology at St John’s and a Departmental Lecturer in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. Before coming to St John’s, he was Crieff Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, from 2023–26. He received his PhD and MPhil degrees in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and previously studied Ethnomusicology at Istanbul Technical University and English Literature at Concordia University in Canada.

Teaching

Kevin leads tutorials in social anthropology for undergraduate students studying Archaeology and Anthropology at St John's and lectures, leads classes, and supervises Masters' theses at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.

Research Interests

Kevin Yildirim is a social anthropologist whose research focuses on migration, citizenship, work and labour, moral life under capitalism, and the anthropology of Turkey and the Middle East. His forthcoming book, Nativism at Work: Migrant Labor and Moral Authority in Istanbul’s Recycling Economy (Stanford University Press), is based on long-term fieldwork in Istanbul’s recycling sector and develops an ethnographic approach to nativism as a social relation. He is currently working on a new ethnographic project on how long-term drought affects migration, economic mobility, and perceptions of the national interest in central Turkey.

Recent publications