Nate Ela is an Assistant Professor of Law and a Faculty Affiliate in Temple’s Department of Sociology. His research and writing focus on the law and political economy of urban resilience, and on election law reform. Professor Ela teaches Constitutional Law, Land Use Planning, and a seminar on cities and climate change. In 2025-2026, he is a faculty fellow at Temple’s Public Policy Lab.
Before joining Temple in 2023, Ela was Assistant Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Cincinnati. He previously was a Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation and taught at Northwestern Law School and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. His advocacy has included supporting human rights and food sovereignty activists in the United States and overseas, co-founding an online library of model laws for U.S. state legislators, and contributing to efforts to revive electoral fusion in the United States.
Professor Ela’s first book, Cultivating the City: The Long Struggle to Put Land to Use is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press. His articles have appeared in law and social science journals such as the Washington University Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Howard Law Journal, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Law & Social Inquiry, Social Problems, and Social Science History. They have received awards from the Social Science History Association and the American Sociological Association Sections on Law and Human Rights. Ela’s archival and ethnographic research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the Social Science Research Foundation.