Laura Keesman is an Assistant Professor at the department of Sociology. She obtained her PhD (2023) at the University of Amsterdam based on a long-term multi-site ethnographic study into violent interactions within the Dutch Police Force between 2017 - 2022, entitled 'Being in Control: Policing Bodies, Emotions and Violence'. She accompanied police teams throughout The Netherlands in different roles: front line policing, riot policing, specialized arresting units, and trainings for police officers and recruits. Her research explicates how the police put control into being on bodily, emotional, discursive and visual levels. In 2022-2023, she was an Assistant Professor at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen department of Sociology.

In the summer of 2023 she received the Early Career-Prize from the European Society of Criminology (ESC) Policing Working Group, specifically for her article The showability of policing: How police officers’ use of videos in organizational contexts reproduces police culture published in European Journal of Criminology. In 2025 she won - together with Dr. Holly Campeau (Waterloo University, Canada) - the Best Paper Prize (ESC) Policing Working Group for their article “You can't really turn it off”: The police “sixth sense” as cultural schema published Open Access in Sociological Forum.

Laura has held several international positions. In May-July 2025 she was a Visiting Fellow programme laureate at Sciences Po Paris, specifically the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP). In december of 2023 she was a Visiting Scholar at Ghent University (UGent) Belgium, Department of Public Governance & Management, Faculty of Economics & Public Administration, research group 'Governing and Policing Security' (GaPS). In spring of 2022, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Criminological Research (CCR), University of Alberta, Canada.

As of 2025, Laura is a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy where working with colleagues from Vrije Universiteit en Universiteit van Amsterdam to foster a healthy academic environment. Laura is a member of the Kenniskring Taskforce 'Onze hulpverleners veilig', The Amsterdam Network for the Study of Violent Interactions, The Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies (ACCS), and The Resilience, Security & Civil Unrest Lab (VU).
In 2023-2024 she was an editor for the Dutch scientific peer-reviewed Journal 'Mens en Maatschappij' Amsterdam University Press. Currently, she on the editorial board for Dutch scientific peer-reviewed Journal Tijdschrift Sociologie. 

As a former social worker, having worked 7 years in homeless facilities of the Salvation Army in the Red Light district of Amsterdam, she is interested in how people in occupational settings deal with violence. She also worked as a social worker in a domestic violence shelter in Sioux Falls, South Dakota U.S., boys orphanage in Capetown, South-Africa and as a substitute teacher in primary school and high-school for children with emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD). She conducted research into the embodied experiences of social workers with violent interactions and antagonistic behaviors. This study was published in Journal of Social Work, entitled: 'Bodies and emotions in tense and threatening situations'. Finally, she worked as a researcher at an independent research agency, focusing on social policy and the intersection of social- and public governance, conducting interdisciplinary research in collaboration with stakeholders.

Her research interests are violence and violent interactions, policing and police work, police culture, violence in occupational settings (against first responders), public order, actor's embodied experiences, professionalism, legitimacy and accountability, and the interactional dynamics of (de)escalation. 

Currently, Laura is doing internationally comparative research on how European police forces (Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, The U.K. and The Netherlands) deal with (violent) disturbances by non-institutionalized groups together with Don Weenink (UvA). This project, running in 2023-2025, is entitled: 'How do different European police forces deal with (violent) disturbances by non-institutionalized protest groups?' Alongside, she is working on a case study of the Coolsingel riot in Rotterdam (which took place in 2021) which aims to analyze both police officers' experiences and youth motivations.

She uses theoretical insights from micro-sociology, in particular the micro-sociology of violence, phenomenology, cultural sociology / sociology of culture, ethnomethodology, criminology and interactional sociology. Methodologically, she uses qualitative methods such as ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing, supplementing these methods with videos. For her research into violent interactions in policing, she developed a video elicitation method, novel in the field of policing.

Laura was a member advisory committee WODC (Wetenschappelijke Onderzoek en Documentatiecentrum) for two studies. First, for research into repeated aggression and violence against public service providers (police, fire brigade, boa's) entitled 'hot shifts of hot victims?' conducted by DSP-group. Second for research into the effectiveness of increasing sentencing for crimes against state actors with public duties such as police officers and ambulance staff) (in dutch: ‘strafverhogingen bij Veilige Publieke Taak (VPT)-delicten') conducted by  DSP-group together with De strafzaak. Both finalized in 2024. She was also an invited member of the reading committee Politie & Wetenschap for the project ‘Ingrijpen door de politie’ conducted by NSCR in 2022. 

Laura has taught at Bachelor, Pre-Master and Master levels in courses such as Classical Sociological Theory, the Sociology of Art and (Sub)Cultures, Academic Skills, and Qualitative Methods. She supervised Bachelor and Master Theses. Topics include the micro-dynamics of the coronaprotests, sexual street-harassment, homelessness of youth, preferences for reporting cybercrime, violence against firefighters and violence against personnel in intramural care for individuals with disabilities.

At the VU, she is the developer and course coördinator for the Master Course 'Veiligheid, Criminaliteit en Vertrouwen', a joint course for Sociology and Public Administration master students, starting in 2024. She is a Mentor for the Master students, coördinator of the Thesis Design course and for the Master Theses. Since academic year 2024-2025 she is the Chair of the OpleidingsCommissie (OLC) Sociology (in 2023-2024 she was a member).

She worked as a departmental internship supervisor (UvA), and gives guest lectures on violence, policing, and the relationships between Body, Emotions & Culture, for example in the Research Master Social Sciences (RMSS) UvA, the Research Master Sociology of media and the arts Erasmus School of History Culture and Communication, Rotterdam and the Interdisciplinary Minor Violence; Introduction: Setting the stage for the study on violence  University of Amsterdam.

She was nominated Lecturer of the Year in 2022 (UvA).

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