From promise to practice Anticipatory work and the adoption of massive parallel sequencing in forensics

January 2019, the Netherlands: suspect P. is found guilty of raping a young woman in the vicinity of Amsterdam. In a world’s first, massive parallel sequencing (MPS) technology proved decisive in the conviction of a suspect, constituting a crucial moment for both this particular case and the broader field of forensic genetics. In this chapter, we pause with this critical moment, and investigate how MPS could be translated from a forensic promise into practice. We demonstrate the distributed character of this translation by highlighting the (partially invisible) anticipatory work by a variety of actors and how they together configure the space necessary to successfully adopt MPS in forensics. We ethnographically unpack this particular case by following the actors involved through their laboratories and courtrooms, showing how anticipatory tinkering practices but also serendipity, receptivity among the judiciary and a forensic enterprising spirit plays into the translation of a technology from a promise to application in practice.