Laura Keesman

Laura Keesman is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), and affiliated with the Social Change and Conflict (SCC) research group. She holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and previously served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. Her research focuses on policing, violence in occupational settings, and public order dynamics, employing qualitative methods like ethnography and video elicitation.

Education:

• PhD in Sociology (2023), University of Amsterdam
• Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology (details unspecified)

Research Interests: Her work examines police practices, embodied experiences of violence, interactional dynamics of escalation/de-escalation, and the cultural dimensions of policing. Key themes include police culture, legitimacy, and accountability. She leads international comparative studies on European policing responses to public disorder.

Awards:

• 2023 Early Career Prize from the European Society of Criminology (ESC) Policing Working Group

Grants & Projects:

• Principal investigator for the How do European police forces deal with (violent) disturbances by non-institutionalized protest groups? project (2023–2025)
• Recipient of a University of Amsterdam Seed Grant (2022) for a Rotterdam riot case study

Labs & Affiliations: She is a member of the Amsterdam Network for the Study of Violent Interactions, Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies (ACCS), and the Resilience, Security & Civil Unrest Lab (ReSCU) at VU. In 2025, she will be a Visiting Fellow at Sciences Po’s LIEPP in Paris.