Assistant professor of Latin American Studies at CEDLA University of Amsterdam
Julienne Weegels works on the entanglement of violence with governance and the politics of (dis)order. Her doctoral research focused on Nicaraguan (former) prisoners’ experiences of imprisonment and the state and on their ‘performing’ of violence, governance, masculinities and change. Simultaneously, this ethnographic work shed light on the emergence of Nicaragua’s hybrid carceral state, underlining the close-knit relationship it establishes between extralegality and the exercise of state power.
After the 2018 anti-government protests, she embarked on research concerning (state) violence and authoritarianism in Nicaragua. Her investigation delves into various facets, notably the state’s use of extralegal governance techniques (including torture and political imprisonment) and (formerly) imprisoned protesters’ divergent claims to the state under the banner of ‘justicia’. At present, she also researches the expansion and contestation of carceral power in different Central American contexts, impacting the ways in which criminal(ized), dissident and migrant bodies are dealt with both in and outside spaces of detention.
Julienne is co-organizer of the Global Prisons Research Network and was a co-convener of the Anthropology of Confinement Network between 2018-2022. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, most of which can be found online open access.
Dr. Julienne Weegles will guide the Managing the Undesirables: Rethinking Carceral and Borde Work workshop together with Angel Aedo professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
