Andrea Roberts

Andrea Roberts is an associate professor of urban and environmental planning and co-director of the Center for Cultural Landscapes at the University of Virginia.

Since 2014, she had led the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, which leverages heritage conservation strategies to combat historic Black settlements’ invisibility and environmental vulnerability. Through participatory action research, the project spatializes oral histories and archival material on an interactive digital atlas, making previously unknown settlements legible to policymakers and practitioners. The Vernacular Architecture Forum, Urban Affairs Association, and Whiting Foundation have recognized her work.

Roberts is co-project director of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Institute  “Towards a People’s History of Landscape — Part 1: Black & Indigenous Histories of the Nation’s Capital,” a convening of humanists and social scientists exploring alternative ways of teaching social histories of the founding of the United States and the District of Columbia. She is currently writing a book about oral traditions in descendant community preservation, which will be published by University of Texas Press.