Natalie Bump Vena
Assistant Professor
Office: Powdermaker Rm. 250
Email: natalie.vena@qc.cuny.edu
Natalie Bump Vena is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies. She received her J.D. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University’s School of Law and Department of Anthropology. Her research and teaching interests concern environmental policymaking in U.S. cities. She was a member of the New York State Bar from Sept. 2017-2025. She is currently on hiatus from the Bar, readmission pending completion of continuing legal education courses.
Vena has an active research agenda in New York City. She is studying the implementation of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (2019), particularly . She has also undertaken fieldwork and advocacy concerning . Vena’s long-term research focuses on environmental racism and the fight for environmental justice in Southeast Queens, including community advocacy related to parks protection, aviation pollution, and groundwater flooding.
Vena has also examined the history of natural resources preservation in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, which protects 69,000 acres of land encompassing Chicago. In her work on the Cook County Forest Preserves, Vena has explored the role of volunteerism, statutory language, and urban development in creating this metropolitan wilderness over the past one hundred years.
Vena is committed to a fully-funded CUNY and has written about how . Before joining the faculty of 춹Ƶ, Vena taught at Williams College, where she served as the Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow in Anthropology and Environmental Studies. She is a member of the New York City Bar Association’s Environmental Law Committee.
Selected publications:
Vena, N. B. (2023). Scientific expertise and volunteer power in the Cook County forest preserves. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space,6(1), 259–279.
Vena, N. B. (2022). Cleaning Streams in Cook County, IL: Forest Preserves, Water Pollution, and Interwar Environmentalism in the Chicago Region. Journal of Planning History,21(3), 249–278.
Vena, N.B. (2020). “Work Relief Labor in the Cook County Forest Preserves, 1931-1942” in City of Lake and Prairie: Chicago’s Environmental History. William Barnett, Ann Keating, and Kathy Brosnan, eds. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press: 150-164.