Veronica Herrera

Veronica Herrera serves as Associate Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs with joint appointments in Political Science and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES). She directs environmental research initiatives and mentors graduate students while actively engaging in policy advocacy through organizations like LAWaterkeepers.

Her academic credentials include a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College.

Dr. Herrera's research investigates how urban communities in Latin America navigate weak institutions to secure environmental goods and services, focusing on water access, flood protection, pollution exposure, and plastic waste management. Her work bridges political science, urban planning, and environmental justice through frameworks examining collective action, citizenship, and institutional change in contexts of environmental degradation.

Analysis of her 15 most recent publications reveals consistent emphasis on environmental justice movements, citizen-led governance innovations, and policy responses to slow environmental harms across Latin American cities. Her scholarship demonstrates interdisciplinary integration of political theory, urban studies, and environmental science with growing attention to plastic pollution-climate change linkages.

Her award-winning book Water and Politics: Clientelism and Reform in Urban Mexico (University of Michigan Press, 2017) and recent monograph Slow Harms and Citizen Action (Oxford University Press, 2024) establish her as a leading scholar in urban environmental politics.

Dr. Herrera currently advises graduate students Mariana Fajardo-Arboleda and Sebastián Solarte-Caicedo, along with undergraduate thesis student Isabel Sheng. She extends her academic work into practice through board membership with LAWaterkeepers, where she promotes Los Angeles River remediation and shapes California's plastics policy framework.