Ellen Van Damme

Ellen Van Damme, PhD, is a criminologist specializing in ethnographic research on women, gangs, and migration. From 2016 to 2020, she was a PhD fellow of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) at the Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), KU Leuven. Her doctoral research focused on the role of women in and around gangs in Honduras. In 2021-2022, she was a Fulbright scholar at the Center for the Study of International Migration at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she examined female migration from Honduras to the United States. Since 2022-2024, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Université libre de Bruxelles and a consultant for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). In 2023, she founded Field Research Coaching, a consultancy that trains and coaches academics and professionals working on sensitive topics in challenging environments.