"Between Care and Violence: The Dogs of Istanbul" with Mine Yıldırım

Mine Yıldırım is an assistant professor (Kadir Has University, Istanbul) of politics, researcher in urban and critical animal studies, and animal rights advocate. She received her PhD in Politics (2021) from The New School, New York, with a dissertation titled Between Care and Violence: Street Dogs of Istanbul, tracing the history and politics of Istanbul’s street dogs from the early twentieth century to today. Her research examines urban animal worlds, myriad entanglements of law, politics, everyday practices in the making of trans-species bonds, affective regimes of labor, killing and caring traversing human and more-than-human worlds. Her work, drawing on ethnographic and historical approaches, has appeared in books, journals, exhibits, and radio broadcasts, bridging academic research with community-based animal rights advocacy. Her archive research Between Care and Violence: Street Dogs of Istanbul was recently exhibited in Lives of Animals (curated by Joanna Zielinska) at Salt Beyoğlu (2025). She is currently preparing a book manuscript of the same title and developing archival and ethnographic research-led curatorial practices to integrate animal rights advocacy to broader publics in contemporary arts, humanities and social sciences.