Policing and security in Africa
Researcher
Since May 2017, Tessa Diphoorn is working on a project on police reform in Kenya titled, “Policing the Police: Analysing state authority from within” (NWO funded, Veni project). Previously, Tessa conducted research on private security in South Africa (PhD research) and engaged in a collaborative and comparative research project on public-private security assemblages at the University of Amsterdam led by Prof. dr. Rivke Jaffe.
Her research focuses on larger questions of power-making by analysing everyday security and policing practices. She is interested in understanding how security is defined, experienced, and practiced across localities and how this shapes larger power structures and social relations.
Key publications
Diphoorn, Tessa. 2016. Twilight Policing. Private Security and Violence in Urban South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Diphoorn, Tessa. 2015. ‘“It’s all about the body”: the bodily capital of armed response officers in South Africa. Medical Anthropology 34 (4): 336-352.
Diphoorn, Tessa. 2013. The Emotionality of Participation: Various Modes of Participation in Ethnographic Fieldwork on Private Policing in Durban, South Africa. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 42 (2): 201- 225.