Maria Isabel Rikkers DeBorst

My research interests are broadly focused on state violence, the legitimation of this violence, and resistance to it. I have conducted research on crimminalization of young men and boys in a working class community in San Salvador, as well as the hidden practices of resistance of their community. I have also explored how political movements like Christian Zionism and spectacles of cruelty against incarcerated populations in El Salvador and the United States serve to legitimize authoritarian rule. I am currently interested in understanding how everyday social relationships are organized through authoritarian modes of power. I plan to conduct research in San Salvador and Bogotá—with a special focus on schools, families and religious communities—to understand the grammar of authoritarianism that is pieced together at this scale and then echoed at other scales of authoritarian governance.