Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Tessa Diphoorn
2023-2024
Home institution
Utrecht University
Country of origin (home institution)
Netherlands
Discipline(s)
Anthropology and ethnology
Theme(s)
Digital Society
Labor, Capital & Innovation
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Tessa is a NIAS Theme Group Fellow (Re-imagining Security Labour) during 2023-2024.
Tessa Diphoorn is an Associate Professor (with ius promovendi/promotion rights) at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. Her research and teaching focuses on policing, security, violence, and authority in Kenya and South Africa. She is currently the educational director of the Masters Programme, Cultural Anthropology: Sustainable Citizenship.
In September 2024, she commenced as PI of the research project 'Making Sense of Communities of Arms' (ARMIES) that is funded through a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). This project is a comparative analysis of the ways in which firearms produce diverse communities in Brazil, Germany, and South Africa.
Between 2021-2023, she participated in an international project on Algorithmic Policing, wherein she focused on the role of algorithmic governance in the private security industry in South Africa. Between May 2017 and February 2020, she worked on a NWO-funded (Veni) research project titled 'Policing the Police in Kenya: Analysing state authority from within', wherein she analysed the various ways in which police (mis)conduct is documented and regulated in Nairobi, Kenya. Before that she conducted extensive ethnographic research about private security in South Africa and her book, Twilight Policing. Private Security and Violence in Urban South Africa, has been published with the University of California Press (2016). She also worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, where she conducted research on public-private security assemblages in Kenya, Israel, and Jamaica.
Tessa Diphoorn is the co-host and co-founder of the podcast series Travelling Concepts on Air. Together with Brianne McGonigle Leyh, they explore the notion of travelling concepts in academia.
She is also one of the co-founders and former coordinator of the Institutions for Open Societies (IOS) and Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges Contesting Governance Platform.
Research Project
Experiencing Security Technologies
How can a deeper understanding of individuals in the security labor force shape the future of security work? There are myriad examples of how, in general, descriptions of security labour in the media tend to villainize or heroize the workers, criticising them as lazy and uneducated, or, celebrating them as patriotic and brave. This NIAS Theme Group will bring their own deeply informed practices and varied viewpoints regarding the global security enterprise to our collaborative investigation.
As member of the theme group, Tessa Diphoorn is particularly interested in the experiences of the security labourers themselves. She aims to critically examine the effects of technologization and modernization on security labor by investigating how the increased use of technology impacts the demand, interest, and experiences of security workers, as well as exploring the types of relationships that emerge with the adoption of new technologies.
Research Interests:
Security labor and technology; worker experiences of modernization; human-technology relations in security; ethnography of security work
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