Esmé Bosma is a PhD candidate at the political science department of the University of Amsterdam. Her research project focuses on the role of financial institutions in countering terrorism financing and the design and use of technology in this context. By doing ethnographic fieldwork in banks and the financial sector (in the EU) she studies how private actors absorb an increasing amount of security responsibilities and the of ethical and practical dilemmas that this creates in practice. Her research lies at the intersection of (critical) security studies (CSS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS) and seeks to contribute to literature at the finance-security nexus.
This PhD is part of the project 'FOLLOW: Following the Money from Transaction to Trial,' led by Prof. dr. Marieke de Goede (UvA) and funded by the European Research Council. FOLLOW observes and analyses countering terrorism financing efforts in practice. The project follows the path of the suspicious financial transaction across private and public spheres through the analysis of how knowledge is formed and mobilised by banks, FIUs and courts. FOLLOW is interested in the everyday life of security practices and the complex dilemmas faced by the actors at stake, and relies on participant observation coupled with in-depth semi-structured interviews. See for more information: http://www.projectfollow.org/.
Publications
Bosma is co-editor of the book Secrecy and Methods in Security Research. A Guide to Qualitative Fieldwork, which is forthcoming in August 2019 and will be published by Routledge (with Prof. dr. Marieke de Goede and Dr. Polly Pallister-Wilkins). See for more information: https://www.crcpress.com/Secrecy-and-Methods-in-Security-Research-A-Guide-to-Qualitative-Fieldwork/Goede-Bosma-Pallister-Wilkins/p/book/9780367027247