Laura KEESMAN

Bio :

Laura Keesman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). She obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in 2023 based on a long-term multi-site ethnography into violent interactions within the Dutch Police force. Before conducting her Ph.D., she was simultaneously a university lecturer, research assistant (UvA), and researcher at an independent research agency focusing on social policy and social- and public governance. Prior to completion of her Ph.D. and joining the VU, she was an Assistant Professor at University of Groningen Sociology department.

Her primary research focus lies in understanding various aspects of violent interactions (particularly in occupational settings), interactional dynamics of (de)escalation, everyday policing and police work. Her previous research focused violent police-civilian interactions and antagonism in social worker-client relationships. As a former social worker herself in homeless facilities, domestic violence shelter and orphanage, she is interested how employees deal with and make sense of forms of violence. She has written about police legitimacy and accountability, police culture, emotional and embodied experiences with violence, and developed innovative approaches to data collection and analysis in policing research, notably the use of video elicitation.

Dr. Keesman currently conducts a large international comparative study into public order policing in Europe, specifically in six countries: Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands, The U.K. and Sweden. In this project she seeks to understand, together with Don Weenink (UvA), how European police forces deal with potential (violent) disturbances by non-institutionalized protest groups and/or pop-up demonstrations and make sense of them. For this study, she conducts ethnographic fieldwork during protest events, demonstrations and riot situations, and (video-elicitation) interviews with both (policing) scholars/experts and police officers in each respective country. Overarching this project is an analysis of current public order policies, constitutional rights, and meaning-making processes. 

In the summer of 2023, she received the Early Career-Prize from the European Society of Criminology (ESC) Policing Working Group. She has also held several international visiting positions, including at Ghent University (UGent) Belgium, Department of Public Governance & Management research group 'Governing and Policing Security' (GaPS) and at the Centre for Criminological Research (CCR), University of Alberta, Canada. 

Dr. Keesman frequently serves as a member of advisory committees, for example initiated by governmental agencies. She has supervised studies regarding violence against first responders, repeated victimization, and police use-of-force. She also holds multiple affiliations and memberships, including the Expert Group Taskforce ‘Safety for first responders’, The Amsterdam Network for the Study of Violent Interactions, The Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies (ACCS), and The Resilience, Security & Civil Unrest (ReSCU) Lab Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She was an editor for the Dutch peer-reviewed journal Mens & Maatschappij Amsterdam University Press. Currently, she is an editor for the Dutch peer-reviewed journal Tijdschrift Sociologie. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets and established journals in the fields of sociology, criminology, and policing studies, including Poetics, British Journal of Criminology, Policing & Society, Symbolic Interaction, European Journal of Criminology, Sociological Forum, Ethnography and Body & Society.