Passionate about and actively supportive of moves towards a differential world, Bahriye Kemal is a creative writer/poet-performer, academic, and cultural activist. She is invested in grasping the struggles of living beings through traveling, writing and reading the world.
She was born in London to refugee parents from the villages of Köfünye and Pile in Cyprus. She has taught at various schools, colleges and universities around the world, including: Cyprus, Japan, Peru and the UK. These moves and moments have inspired her research interest and impact projects, which are in border/broader crossing geographical and disciplinary boundaries, with focus on postcolonial and world literature as related to partition studies, East Mediterranean/ Middle East studies, island studies, spatial studies, migration and refugees, arts and activism.
She is a Lecturer in Contemporary and Postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent. Her creative and academic work have appeared in a range of journals, magazines and books. She is author of Writing Cyprus: Postcolonial and Partitioned Literatures of Place and Space (Routledge, 2019), and co-editor of Nicosia beyond barriers: Voices from a divided city (Saqi, 2019) and Visa Stories: Experiences between Law and Migration (2013). She is currently working on various projects, included writing a research book, impact outputs and creative, on the postcolonial Mediterranean with focus on literature and arts from Cyprus, Palestine, Syria and beyond.
She is trustee for Kent Refugee Help.