Veronica Herrera studies the politics of development in Global South cities with a focus on Latin America. Her research interests include urban politics, decentralization, civil society participation, social mobilization, and environmental politics and policymaking. Dr. Herrera is also an expert on water policy in international development. She is the author of Water and Politics: Clientelism and Reform in Urban Mexico (University of Michigan Press, 2017), which received the Dennis Judd Best Book Award from the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Dr. Herrera received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and her B.A. from Swarthmore College.

Dr. Herrera is the recipient of several national awards including the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Association of University Women, a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Clarence Stone Young Scholars Award from the American Political Science Association’s Urban and Local Politics Section. She has been a visiting scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, and the Latin American Studies Center at UC Berkeley. Dr. Herrera’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, PS: Political Science and Politics, Perspective on Politics, and World Development.

Dr. Herrera is working on her next book project which examines the creation of urban environmental advocacy movements surrounding toxic exposure from wastewater-contaminated rivers in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bogotá, Colombia and Lima, Peru. This book project, tentatively titled The Politics of Slow Harms: Environmental Degradation and Collective Action in Latin American Cities, examines the search for environmental justice and the diverse demand making strategies of citizens as they seek to influence policy change in resource scarce settings.

Before joining Luskin, Dr. Herrera was an assistant professor in the political science department of the University of Connecticut.