Dr Sara Leon Spesny
Sara is an anthropologist interested in the ways institutions of the State seek to manage, control and discipline historically marginalized populations. Her research has focused on the police, violence, migration (notably undocumented migrants), human rights, postcolonial (dis)order and the urban/symbolic borderlands of the Latin American city. Sara has carried out fieldwork in Central and South America. She obtained her PhD at the École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France (2020). She worked under the supervision of Prof. Didier Fassin (Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, USA). She has been a member of the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Enjeux Sociaux (IRIS) since 2013. Sara has also collaborated with projects involving indigenous rights and sex workers.
Policing, The Police, The Policed: My most recent research project in based on an ethnographic account of the work of the military police in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Specifically, this project looks into the ways the police maintain the urban and symbolic borders of the city. These sort of state-led initiatives supposedly integrate the favela to the city. However, “soft” policing strategies that include narratives of human rights, democracy and citizenship often perpetuate a war on drugs and ultimately end up reinforcing precisely the borders they were set up to erase.
Violence, human rights, citizenship & postcoloniality: This research project intersects more broadly with issues of human rights and citizenship in the postcolonial Latin American city. I argue that police violence should be analysed beyond individual moral characteristics of police officers (lawful agents and unlawful ones) including a historically situated understanding of the present moral economy of violence. Police violence is legitimate -or not- according to whom it is directed to. In this sense, we need to redefine what citizenship means and the implications of claiming citizenship rights for marginalized populations. I conceptualize the police in Brazil (as in other Latin American countries) and the (dis)order it produces as a postcolonial entity that is intrusive in their absence and illusive in their presence.
The Politics of Maternal Health, Inequality and Care: I have been interested in health issues for more then a decade, taking into account the particularities of historical, political and cultural contexts. I have carried out research specifically in maternal health, focusing on how attention given to vulnerable populations (undocumented migrants) is shaped by different factors, including health professional’s moral views of women, their bodies and their babies. An informed anthropology can bring together the embodied experience of women with the larger milieu of institutions, policies and histories of power and inequality.I have focused in Latin American contexts, specifically Costa Rica and Brazil.
SCLG1001
SCLG1002
SLSS3602
CRIM2602
Sara has received funding from various institutions, including, laboratoire d'excellence TEPSIS, Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Enjeux Sociaux (IRIS); the European Commission (2010-2012 and 2013-2015); Wenner-Gren Foundation and EASA and University of Milano-Bicocca.
FUNDING, AWARDS & OTHER RECOGNITIONS
2020-2021 The University of Sydney. Student commendation.
Qualitative methods in the social sciences (S1 2020, 2021)
Citizenship Rights and Social Movements (S1 2020, 2021)
2014 Le Laboratoire d'Excellence TEPSIS.
Fieldwork Grant (€5000)
2013 European Union.
16 months doctoral fellowship (€ 26.000)
2016 Wenner Gren Foundation, United States of America.
Travel Grant to attend the European Congress of Anthropology EASA
2016 IRIS- Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Enjeux Sociaux.
Conference Participation Grant for the 8th Ethnography and Qualitative
Research Conference (Bergamo, Italy).
2010-2012 European Union.
Phoenix Dynamics of Health and Welfare Program. Scholarship – Tuition,
travel plus monthly allowance (€ 30.000)
2018 University of Bras lia. Assistant Professor tenured position
(unable to accept)
Publications
Journals
- Leon-Spesny, S. (2024). The Law as a Necropolitical Tool: A Genealogy of Police Violence in Brazil. Critical Criminology. [More Information]
- Leon-Spesny, S. (2020). The "ethical" soldier? How the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro practice human rights morality. Etnográfica, 24(1), 133-154. [More Information]
- Mendes de Souza Teixeirense, M., Leon-Spesny, S. (2018). From expectation to experience: Humanizing childbirth in the public health system in Brazil. Interface - Botucatu, 22(65), 399-410. [More Information]
2024
- Leon-Spesny, S. (2024). The Law as a Necropolitical Tool: A Genealogy of Police Violence in Brazil. Critical Criminology. [More Information]
2020
- Leon-Spesny, S. (2020). The "ethical" soldier? How the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro practice human rights morality. Etnográfica, 24(1), 133-154. [More Information]
2018
- Mendes de Souza Teixeirense, M., Leon-Spesny, S. (2018). From expectation to experience: Humanizing childbirth in the public health system in Brazil. Interface - Botucatu, 22(65), 399-410. [More Information]
2016
- dos Santos, V., Leon-Spesny, S. (2016). Questioning the concept of culture in mainstream occupational therapy. Cadernos de Terapia Ocupacional da UFSCar, 24, 185-190. [More Information]
- Spesny, S. (2016). Resenha (review) de 'The killing consensus: Police, organized crime, and the regulation of life and death in urban Brazil', de Graham Denyer Willis. Dilemas: revista de estudos de conflito e controle social, 9(2), 393-398.
2015
- Leon-Spesny, S. (2015). Undeserving mothers? Shifting rationalities in the maternal healthcare of undocumented Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica. Anthropology and Medicine, 22(2), 191-201. [More Information]
2014
- Spesny, S. (2014). The politics of the body: Didier Fassin’s critical approach to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Historia, Ciencias, Saude - Manguinhos, 21(4), 1498-1500. [More Information]
Selected Grants
2022
- COVID Kick Start, Leon-Spesny S, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/FASS COVID Kick Start Fund 2022
Books
Leon Spesny. S. (in preparation). Pacifying the Favela: A
Fugacious Experiment in Policing.
Other journal articles
Leon Spesny, S. State terror has a colour: A legal history of police violence in Brazil (In
preparation)
Dos Santos, V., Oliveira, C., Leon Spesny, S., Gandolfi. (In preparation). Experiences of
young offenders accessing mental health services in Brazil.
Dos Santos, V., Leon Spesny, S., Kleintjes, S., & Galvaan, R. (2019). Racism and mental
health in higher education: A challenge for LMICs. International journal of methods in
psychiatric research, 28(4), e1799. https://doi.org/10.1002/mpr.1799
Leon Spesny, S. (2016). A Pol cia e o Crime Organizado: O delicado balan o de administrar
a vida e a morte no Brasil. Dilemas: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social, 9:2 pp.
203-231.
Leon Spesny, S. (2016). Punishment through the Looking Glass. A review of Didier Fassin
2016 Tanner Lectures (UC Berkeley) 'The Will to Punish'. PoLAR: Political and Legal
Anthropology Review. https://polarjournal.org/2016/12/08/punishment-through-the-lookingglass/
Leon Spesny, S. (2014). The politics of the body: Didier Fassin's critical approach to the AIDS
epidemic in South Africa. Hist ria, Ci ncias, Sa de – Manguinhos, 21:4, pp. 1498-
1500.http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702014000400016
Leon Spesny, S. (2014). Juger, r primer, accompagner: essai sur la morale de l’ tat.
Horizontes Antropol gicos, 20:42, pp. 405-408. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-
71832014000200018
Book Chapters
Leon Spesny. S. (2019). Urban Warfare. In A. Orum (Ed), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia
of Urban and Regional Studies. Wiley Blackwell.
Saborio, S., & Leon Spesny. S. (2019). Favela. In A. Orum (Ed), The Wiley Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Wiley Blackwell.
CONFERENCES, PANELS & PRESENTATIONS (selected)
2022 Department of Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Sydney, Australia
Workshop: The End of Humanitarian Governance as We Know It? (upcoming)
2021 Sydney Environmental Institute and PhilSoc, The University of Sydney, Australia
Never Again or Never? Environmental Justice in Australia
2020 International Sociological Association. 2020 ISA Forum of Sociology (Online)
Writing an Ethnography of the Military Police in Brazil: Research at the Borderlands
of the Novelistic Narrative
2020 Political symbols: forms, functions, usages. Department of Anthropology, The
University of Sydney, Australia (Online)
Public objects as police order: A symbolic struggle of authority in a “pacified” favela
in Rio de Janeiro
2020 Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, The University of Sydney, Australia
US election: Looking forward, looking back: Panel Discussion
2019 University of Costa Rica. Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Costa Rica
Violencia y tica: La polic a militar en Rio de Janeiro.
2018 Colloque international: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
Pacification as a new strategy in the war on drugs: Some notes of an ethnography of
the military police in Rio de Janeiro.
2016 European Association of Social Anthropologists Conference, Italy
Morality and the civilizing enterprise of the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro: the
construction of the 'ethical' soldier?
2016 Laboratoire d’Excellence Tepsis – EHESS, France
The (Dis)Order Machine: Military Police in Rio de Janeiro and policing former trafficcontrolled
communities.
2016 6th Ethnography & Qualitative Research Conference, Italy
The political and moral life of fieldwork: Some reflections from an ethnography of the
military police in Brazil.
2016 Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Enjeux Sociaux, France
Pacificer la favela, instaurer un ordre moral: Une ethnographie de la police militaire
Rio de Janeiro, Br sil.
2014 K Seminar, Link ping University. Sweden
Towards a new strategy in public security: An anthropological perspective of the
Pacifying Police Unit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.