Dr. Elena Butti is an urban anthropologist interested in youth, institutional violence, organized crime, social movements, and informal housing in Latin America.

She is an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at the Center for International Studies of Sciences Po Paris and a Research Associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding of the Geneva Graduate Institute. She holds a PhD from the University of Oxford.

Her forthcoming book (NYU Press, 2026) offers an ethnographic exploration of adolescents’ engagement at the bottom of Colombia’s drug economy. She has also worked on criminally-managed informal housing markets catering Venezuelan migrants in one of Latin America's largest informal settlement, located in Medellín. She currently leads a new comparative project on 'juvenicide', which examines patterns of youth homicide across five Latin American cities.

Her research has been supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Network for International Studies, the Independent Social Research Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

She is a founding member of the Research Network on Juvenicide and Social Resistance (JUVIR) and the author of several ethnographic photo series and participatory films. She also has extensive experience working in the humanitarian sector.

More information on www.elenabutti.com.

1. Juvenicide: Patterns in youth homicide across Latin American cities; 

2. Criminally-managed informal housing markets for vulnerable urban populations; 

3. Youth engagement in Colombia's drug economy.

• The Latin American City: Urban Challenges and Transformations in Ethnographic Perspective (BA, Poitiers Campus)
• Youth, Violence and Resistance: Global Discourse and Lived Experiences (MA, PSIA)

Books

Butti, E. [forthcoming 2026]. We Are the Nobodies: Youth and precarity at the bottom of Colombia’s drug economy. New York: NYU Press.

Feixa,C., Butti, E., Bonvillani, A., and Muñoz, G. (eds.) [forthcoming 2026]. El Juvenicidio como Metáfora: Genealogías, intersecciones, instituciones, resistencias. Barcelona: NED Ediciones.

Peer-reviewed articles

Butti, E. 2025. Youth Are Not All the Same: On the Appropriateness and Limits of Participatory Methods in Youth Research. Social Sciences, Special Issue Researching Youth on the Move: Methods, Ethics and Emotions, eds. Nele Hansen and Carles Feixa, 14 (18): 1-14.

Butti, E. 2022. From Family to Franchise? Friendship, individualism and the marketization of the Colombian youth gang. Youth and Globalization, Special issue Gangs and Globalization, edited by Carles Feixa and Jose Sánchez-García, 3, 308-331.

Chavez, C. and Butti, E. 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 on Education in Emergencies, Special Issue Education and the War on Drugs, edited by María José Bermeo and Diana Rodríguez Gómez, 6(1), 148-174.

Butti, E. and McGonigle, B. 2019. Intersectionality and Transformative Reparations: The Case of Colombian Marginal Youths. International Criminal Law Review, Special Issue The Ethnography of Armed Conflict, edited by Noha Aboueldahab, 19(5), 753-782.

Butti, E. 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, 1.

Book chapters

Butti, E. [forthcoming]. Youth in Illegal Markets. Invited to submit in the Oxford Handbook of Illegal Markets, edited by M. Dewey and A. Hubschle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abello-Colak, A. and Butti, E. [forthcoming]. Social Urbanism, City Branding and Criminal Mutations in Medellín. Under contract in the Oxford Handbook on Urban Violence, edited by K. Mitton, A. Varsori and Z. Waseem. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Butti, E., Van Damme, E. and Ziosi, E. [forthcoming]. Gangs and Organized Crime in Latin America: Boundaries, Intersections, and Articulations. Accepted in Cross Cultural Perspectives on Gangs, edited by D. Carson, M. Urbanik and R. Shanon. London: Springer.

Butti, E. [forthcoming]. El Ciclo Vicioso del Juvenicidio. Accepted in Juvenicidios, Violencias y Resistencias Sociales, edited by C. Feixa, A. Bonvillani, E. Butti, and G. Muñoz. Barcelona: NED.

Butti, E. 2024. Safe and Ethical Ethnography: Looking Inwards. In Inclusive Ethnography: Making Fieldwork Safer, Healthier and More Ethical, edited by Caitlin Procter and Brawen Spector, pp. 18-32. London: SAGE.

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