Dr. Tessa Diphoorn

Biography

Tessa Diphoorn is an Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, where she focuses on research and teaching related to policing, security, violence, and authority, particularly in contexts such as Kenya and South Africa. She is currently the educational director of the Master's Programme in Cultural Anthropology: Sustainable Citizenship. Diphoorn is leading a research project titled 'Making Sense of Communities and Arms' (ARMIES), which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and aims to conduct a comparative analysis of how firearms produce diverse communities in Brazil, Germany, and South Africa. From 2021 to 2023, she participated in an international project on Algorithmic Policing, examining the role of algorithmic governance within the private security industry in South Africa. Earlier, she worked on an NWO-funded (Veni) research project that analyzed police misconduct in Nairobi, Kenya. Her ethnographic research on private security in South Africa culminated in the 2016 publication of her book, 'Twilight Policing: Private Security and Violence in Urban South Africa,' with University of California Press. Diphoorn has also been involved as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, studying public-private security assemblages in various countries. She is a co-founder and co-host of the podcast series 'Travelling Concepts in the Air,' where she, along with Brianne McGonigle Leyh, explores the notion of travelling concepts within academia.

Research Interests

Experience