Patrick Naef

Dr. Patrick Naef is a Senior Researcher at the University of Geneva, where he received his Ph.D. in 2014. He was also a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted more than a decade of research on urban violence and collective memory in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Colombia, and he is currently working on organized crime in the cities of Medellin (Colombia) and Nairobi (Kenya). He is also working on a book project about the intimacy of criminal governance in Medellin. In addition to two previous books, his academic work has been published in journals such as Political Geography, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Journal of American Studies, and Journal of Anthropological Research.    

Featured work

• Articles & reports

  Patrick Naef (2023) The Criminal Governance of Tourism: Extortion and Intimacy in Medellín, Journal of Latin American Studies

  Patrick Naef (2022) Resistances in the ‘Resilient City’: Rise and Fall of a Disputed Concept in New Orleans and Medellin, Political Geography, 96

  Patrick Naef (2022) ‘100 Resilient Cities’: Addressing Urban Violence and Creating a World of Ordinary Resilient Cities, Annals of the American Association of Geographers

  Patrick Naef (2020) Resilience as a City Brand: The Cases of the Comuna 13 and Moravia in Medellin, Colombia, Sustainability 12(20)

  Patrick Naef (2018) ‘Narco-heritage’ and the Touristification of the Drug Lord Pablo Escobar in Medellin, Colombia Journal of Anthropological Research, 74(4)

  Patrick Naef (2016) Tourism and the ‘Martyred City': Memorializing War in the former Yugoslavia, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 14(3)

• Books & chapters

  Josef Ploner & Patrick Naef (2017) Tourism, conflict and contested Heritage in Former Yugoslavia, London: Routledge

  Patrick Naef (2016) La ville-martyre: guerre, tourisme et mémoire en ex-Yougoslavie, Geneva: Slatkine

Find related experts