María Alejandra Vélez, PhD

I am a Full Professor at the Faculty of Economics at Universidad de los Andes. I served as Director of the Center for the Study of Security and Drugs (CESED) from 2019 to 2024 and currently lead CESED’s research area on Rural Development, Illicit Economies, and the Environment. I am also a member of the Colombian Brain Trust of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT).

My research focuses on governance and institutional design for natural resource management in rural communities in the Global South. My work examines the effects of payments for ecosystem services on conservation outcomes; the impacts of collective property-rights regimes on institutional change, land use, and the welfare of Afro-Colombian communities on Colombia’s Pacific Coast; and strategies for the formalization of small-scale gold mining. More recently, I have focused on the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of illicit economies and drug policies, models for cannabis regulation in Colombia, and the effects of drug policy on community well-being and security.

In Fall 2024, I was the Edward Larocque Tinker Visiting Professor at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University in New York City.