Rebecca Hanson is assistant professor of crime, law, and governance at the University of Florida, with a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology, Criminology, and Law and the Center for Latin American Studies. Her research analyzes policing, politics, and violence in Venezuela and Colombia. She has published in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Sociological Quarterly, Crime, Law, and Social Change, and Revista M. Estudos sobre a Morte, os Mortos e o Morrer as well as in outlets such as the Christian Science Monitor, NACLA, The Conversation, and Insight Crime, and with Patricia Richards she authored Harassed: Gender, Bodies, and Ethnographic Research (University of California Press, 2019). Her current book manuscript asks how revolutionary politics in Venezuela transformed state security forces.
Hanson holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Georgia.