Angela Wheeler

Angela Wheeler is an urban historian, preservationist, and adjunct lecturer. Her doctoral dissertation examines historic neighborhood conservation in the postwar Soviet Union. She is broadly interested in the history of heritage conservation movements, experimental and activist approaches to heritage, and the role of preservation pedagogy in design curricula. After working with the International Council of Monuments and Sites as a Fulbright grantee in Tbilisi and conducting HUD surveys of Hawaii public housing, she completed an MSc in Historic Preservation at Columbia University. She has also contributed conservation research to the State Hermitage Museum, Council of Europe, Museum of Russian Icons, and DOCOMOMO International.

More recent projects include a Graham Foundation grant for “Indigenous Outsiders: Endangered Islamic Heritage in the Republic of Georgia,” an exhibition and publication documenting the wooden mosques of Georgia’s Adjaran Muslim community, and Architectural Guide: Tbilisi (DOM Publishers, forthcoming 2022) the first comprehensive English-language guide to Tbilisi architecture since 1989. Her prior teaching experience at Harvard's Graduate School of Design included courses in urban planning, landscape architecture, and modern architectural history.

RESEARCH & TEACHING AREAS

• Architectural preservation history, theory, policy, and methods
• Research methods for historians and design professionals
• Histories of architecture
• Social movements in cultural preservation
• Landscape architecture and environmental conservation
• Histories and preservation of queer spaces
• Architecture, urban planning, and state power
• Transnational architecture and urban planning exchanges
• Soviet cities, design, and media

PUBLICATIONS & EXHIBITIONS

Architectural Guide: Tbilisi DOM Publishers: 2022.

Wooden Mosques of Adjara: Islamic Architectural Heritage in the Republic of Georgia. Chubinashvili National Research Centre: 2018.

"Birth and Rebirth: Mosques of Russia and the Caucasus," in Mosques, Splendors of Islam. Rizzoli Publishers: 2018.

"Mitigating the Risks of Resource Extraction from Industrial Actors on Northern Indigenous Peoples," Arctic Review on Law and Politics: 2016.

"New Look for Old Tbilisi: Preservation Planning in Tbilisi Historic District," Journal of Identity Studies in the Caucasus, 2016.