Elena Butti

Elena Butti is an urban anthropologist and SNSF Research Fellow at the Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Her research examines youth, organized crime, migration, and informal housing in Latin America, with fieldwork concentrated in Colombia.

Education:

• PhD, University of Oxford
• Post-Doc, University of Oxford

Her work investigates adolescents' entanglement in criminal economies, Venezuelan migration dynamics in Medellín, and ethical challenges in high-risk ethnography. She integrates participatory filmmaking to amplify marginalized youth voices, focusing on precarity, neoliberalism, and urban violence.

Recent publications analyze gang marketization, educational barriers in conflict zones, and transformative reparations for marginalized youth. Collectively, they reveal how structural violence intersects with housing crises, migration, and state fragility in Latin American urban peripheries.

Butti has collaborated extensively with humanitarian organizations (UN, UNICEF, ICRC, War Child) on Youth, Peace and Security initiatives. She co-founded the Colectivo Juvenicidio y Resistencias Sociales (JUVIR) and serves as Secretary General of the Société Suisse des Américanistes, driving research on youth assassinations and Latin American studies.