Experience

CEDLA (University of Amsterdam)

• Netherlands
• Research
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Assistant Professor

  • Aug 2020 - Present

  In terms of research, I am the PI for the research project P(R)OTESTAS: The Politics and Aesthetics of Digital Authoritarianism and Protest (GDC Seed Grant 2021). I am also part of the research project ILLICITIES: City-Making and Organized Crime, led by Frank Muller with the Centre for Urban Studies. Aside from this, I am engaged in grant writing for a multi-sited research project on the hybrid enforcement of punitive politics in Central America. For all of the above, I continue to conduct research on the emergence, evolvement and workings of Nicaragua's hybrid carceral state.In terms of teaching, I currently coordinate the MA courses "Introduction to Latin American Studies" and "Latin American Studies: Deepening the Debates", teach an MA tutorial on Violence, Governance and (In)Security, supervise MA and BA theses, and teach the BA elective "Gender and Social Inequality in Latin America" and qualitative methodology course "Interdisciplinary Methods" at the BA and MA levels. Aside from my course teaching, I provide guest lectures on violence and social exclusion, policing and prisons, the (un)rule of law, extralegal governance and illegal economies, drugs, social policy toward (criminalized) youth, and ethnographic research methods.I am also coordinator of the Latin American Studies Programme (LASP), an interuniversity graduate programme for PhD students working on/in Latin America, for which I organize a Summer School and a Writing Retreat every other year. Show less

• Postdoctoral Researcher

  • Sep 2018 - Aug 2020

  Following the 2018 anti-government protests, I developed a research project on Nicaraguan practices of authority, justice and sovereignty from below. This research project takes the key findings and material from my prisons research as its point of departure, combining it with new research on the changing practices and understandings of policing and confinement in Nicaragua today. In particular, it investigates the government’s strategies of repression and crisis in legitimacy at the hand of its para-state organization, while also seeking to understand the protesters’ divergent claims to the state under the banner of justicia and libertad. In doing so, it focuses on the practices and claims to sovereignty by groups of autoconvocados (self-convened protesters), and the state’s extralegal governance techniques (including torture and political imprisonment). Show less

• Parttime Lecturer

  • Jan 2018 - Aug 2020

  At CEDLA I have developed and teach the MA course "Violence, Governance, and (In)Security in Latin America". I also co-teach the BA & MA courses "Gender and Social Inequality in Latin America" and "Gender in Latin America and the Caribbean: Current Themes and Approaches" with Dr. Annelou Ypeij. Aside from my course teaching, I provide guest lectures on violence and social exclusion, policing and prisons, the (un)rule of law, extralegal governance and illegal economies, drugs, social policy toward (criminalized) youth, and ethnographic research methods. Show less

• PhD Candidate

  • Jan 2013 - Sep 2018

  Research: Tracing the Nicaraguan Prisoner: Moving between Marginality, Violence, and ChangeAn ethnographic research into the experience of prison by young, male, long-sentenced prisoners. Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Michiel Baud (CEDLA), Prof. Dr. Dennis Rodgers (University of Amsterdam). This PhD project is carried out at the Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR).

• Librarian

  • Sep 2009 - Jun 2018

  reception and coding

• Education secretary

  • Jul 2010 - Mar 2013

  student services, public relations and administrative tasks



University of Cambridge

• United Kingdom
• Research Services
• 700 & Above Employee

• Visiting Scholar

  • Sep 2019 - Dec 2019

  Visiting Scholar to the Institute of Criminology's Prisons Research Centre for 3 months (September-December 2019). At the PRC I will be working on my book manuscript "Performing Prison: Power, Agency, and Co-Governance in Nicaraguan Prisons". I will also speak on the PRC annual conference and teach guest seminars at the Cambridge Centre for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and Westminster University. Visiting Scholar to the Institute of Criminology's Prisons Research Centre for 3 months (September-December 2019). At the PRC I will be working on my book manuscript "Performing Prison: Power, Agency, and Co-Governance in Nicaraguan Prisons". I will also speak on the PRC annual conference and teach guest seminars at the Cambridge Centre for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and Westminster University.