Angela Wheeler is a Davis Center affiliate and PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Design. Her doctoral dissertation, "Between the Past and the Plan: Soviet Urban Heritage Planning, 1948-1989" 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, 2023) the first comprehensive English-language guide to Tbilisi architecture and urban development. Her work with Imperiia aims to make data about historic sites in the region more accessible to scholars of architecture and urban history working in the region.
