Kristen Hackett

Kristen Hackett is an activist, scholar, and educator working towards decolonized, anti‑racist, and just futures. Since 2017, she has supported multiple grassroots groups led by neighbors living in public housing. This includes serving as a steering and executive committee member of the Justice For All Coalition (JFAC), and a member of the Save Section 9 Coalition. Starting in 2021, she also began working with Rockaways Neighbors Helping Neighbors as a research and organizing consultant, and was recently appointed to be honorary director by their board.

In 2024, Kristen also completed her PhD in the environmental psychology program at the Graduate Center (GC), City University of New York (CUNY). Her dissertation elaborates the critical and hope-full narratives elicited by tenant-led formations towards unhinging dominant development narratives and imagining just housing futures. While Kristen completed a traditional dissertation, she is also in the process of creating an online archive of this research that can support tenant-led advocacy and organizing efforts.

Previously, Kristen was a a GC Digital Fellow with the GC Digital Initiatives, a student coordinator with OpenCUNY, and a Digital Pedagogy Fellow with The OpenLab at CityTech (CUNY). In addition to these more creative pedagogical pursuits, Kristen served also filled more traditional teaching roles and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on psychology, environmental psychology, urban studies, urban research methods, and social movements at John Jay College (CUNY), Queens College (CUNY) and The New School.

Her published work includes peer-reviewed research on community land trusts and housing stability in Housing Studies and on participatory budgeting in immigrant communities in New Political Science, and as a book chapter in Immigrant Crossroads : Globalization, Incorporation, and Placemaking in Queens, New York. She has also written multiple opinion pieces on housing and development (justice) in New York for City Limits, East New York News, and Jacobin.