Elena Butti

Dr. Elena Butti is an urban anthropologist, humanitarian practitioner and participatory film-maker interested in youth, crime, activism, and migration in Latin America. She holds a PhD and a Post-Doc from the University of Oxford, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow (Marie Curie equivalent) at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Her forthcoming book ‘We Are the Nobodies: Youth, violence and drug-dealing in and around Medellin’  is an ethnographic exploration of adolescents’ first steps into organized crime in contemporary Colombia. She is currently conducting new ethnographic research on the interactions between Venezuelan migration and organized crime in Colombia. Before joining the Graduate Institute, Elena has worked for several years in the humanitarian sector, collaborating with organizations such as the UN, UNICEF, the ICRC, and War Child. She is also the author of several participatory films available on her website.

Featured work

• Articles & reports

  Elena Butti (2022) From Family to Franchise? Friendship, individualism and the marketization of the Colombian youth gang, Youth and Globalization, 3, 308-331.

  Cirenia Chavez Villegas & Elena Butti (2020) ‘If You Don’t Have an Education, You Are No One’: Understanding the School Experiences of Youth involved in Drug-Related Crime in Mexico and Colombia, Journal of Education in Emergencies, 6(1), 148-174.

  Elena Butti and Brianne McGonigle Leyh (2019) Intersectionality and Transformative Reparations: The Case of Colombian Marginal Youths, International Criminal Law Review, 19(5), 753-782.

  Elena Butti (2016) The Invisible Violence behind the Legal Façade: Challenges of and Strategies for Conducting Research in High-Risk Settings in Transitional Colombia, Journal of the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Issue 1.

• Books & chapters

  Elena Butti (forthcoming 2024) Safe and Ethical Ethnography: Looking Inwards. The New Ethnographer, edited by Caitlin Procter and Brawen Spector. London: SAGE.

  Elena Butti (2022) Reflections on Youth, Norms, and Violence in Colombia’s Criminal World. Violence and Justice in Latin America, edited by Carlos Solar and Carlos Perez, pp. 25-43. London: Routledge.

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