Gökçen Erkılıç is a designer, researcher, and educator whose work investigates coastlines, rivers, seas, and other hydro-ecological systems as critical sites of global environmental, social, and computational inquiry. Her research is grounded in the central argument of the Atlas: that coastlines bear witness to the interwoven dynamics of health, energy, political, social, collective, climatic, and planetary systems, while remaining deeply personal and lived spaces across diverse geographies.

She directs Coastliner Lab (CLLab), a globally engaged research-creation and mapping practice initiated along Istanbul’s shores and now operating across transnational coastal contexts. CLLab combines participatory mapping, geospatial analysis, machine learning–assisted cartography, and multimodal data integration—including satellite imagery, archival maps, sound, and sensor-based datasets—to surface situated narratives of water-related conflict, care, and environmental change.

Her works have been published, exhibited, and performed on various platforms globally such as Sharjah Biennial, Arts Letters and Numbers, Materia Arquitectura, Salt Research, Dirty Drawings, Arter, Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts, Pera Museum, and Manifold Press.

Gökçen is currently teaching at Northeastern University College of Art Media and Design in Art+Design division.

She is affiliated with metaLAB Harvard, and NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science.

She is a graduate of Middle East Technical University, Department of Architecture in Ankara. She holds a master's degree from Istanbul Bilgi University in Architectural and Urban Design (2012) and a PhD from Istanbul Technical University with her thesis “This is not a line”: Critical Delineation of the Coastline in Istanbul” (2019). She was a visiting researcher at Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies (2021-23).