Rebecca Hanson
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida

Rebecca Hanson is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. Her research agenda is focused on state and non-state armed actors, state security policies, and the lived experience of insecurity in Latin America. She is the author of Policing the Revolution: The Transformation of Coercive Power and Venezuela’s Security Landscape During Chavismo (Oxford University Press, 2025), which draws on ten years of ethnographic, interview, focus group, and survey research in Venezuela. Her other books include The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime, and Policing During Chavismo (2022, University of Pittsburgh Press) and Harassed: Gender, Bodies, and Ethnographic Research (University of California Press, 2019). Her research has been published in journals such as Latin American Research Review, Sociological Forum, The Sociological Quarterly, and Journal of Latin American Studies.