Dr. Hanson holds a joint appointment with the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and the Center. Along with Dr. Richard Kernaghan, she is the coordinator of the specialization in Crime, Law, and Governance in the Americas for the Master of Arts in Latin American Studies program. She has conducted research on participatory democratic neighborhood experiments, socialist ideology in Venezuela, civilian police reform, police militarization and its impacts on organized crime, and the effects of police-community meetings on citizen attitudes and police behavior. Dr. Hanson’s other area of research analyzes sexual harassment and ethnographic fieldwork.
Her first book project, co-authored with Dr. Patricia Richards (University of Georgia), analyzes women’s diverse experiences with harassment in the field to critique the epistemological foundations of ethnographic methodology. Their book manuscript, Sexual Harassment and Qualitative Research: Accounting for the Body in the Construction of Ethnographic Knowledge, is under contract with University of California Press. Dr. Hanson’s second book manuscript, Civilian Policing, Socialist Policing, and Violent Pluralism in Venezuela, traces the implementation and outcomes of democratic police reform during the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Dr. Hanson has extensive experience writing on violence, crime, and policing in the Global South for public policy outlets, publishing in venues such as Insight Crime, the Christian Science Monitor, and Foreign Policy in Focus and the Washington Office on Latin America’s blog Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights. Her scholarly publications can be read in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Crime, Law, and Social Change, Sociological Forum, and REVISTA M. Estudos sobre a Morte, os Mortos e o Morrer.
Dr. Hanson holds a joint appointment with the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and the Center. Along with Dr. Richard Kernaghan, she is the coordinator of the specialization in Crime, Law, and Governance in the Americas for the Master of Arts in Latin American Studies program. She has conducted research on participatory democratic neighborhood experiments, socialist ideology in Venezuela, civilian police reform, police militarization and its impacts on organized crime, and the effects of police-community meetings on citizen attitudes and police behavior. Dr. Hanson's other area of research analyzes sexual harassment and ethnographic fieldwork. Her first book project, co-authored…