SELECTED PUBLICATIONS/SCHOLARSHIP (* denotes students)

Forthcoming 2026-27

Book

  • Roberts, A. Never Sell the Land! Freedom Colonies, Black Storytelling, and Keeping Home. In copy editing, the University of Texas Press (2026). Book

Book Chapter

  • Roberts, A. “The Black Parti: Reinterpreting African American Placemaking as Design Ideation,” Rewriting American Architecture, Edited by Charles L. Davis II, Kathryn E. Holliday, and Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, The University of Texas Press (2026). Book Chapter

Book Chapters

  • Roberts, A. “Reimagining AI, Black Heritage Tourism, and Preservation” Edited by Reia, J., Forelle, MC and Wang, Y. (2025). Reimagining AI for Environmental Justice and Creativity. Digital Technology for Democracy Lab, University of Virginia.
  • Roberts, A. (2025). “African American Places in the Making: Freedom-Colony Creation in Digital Spaces Landscapes in the Making, Daniels, Stephen, and Dell Upton, eds. Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University
  • Roberts, A., (2023). “Countering Displacement through Collective Memory: Recovering African American Landscapes Using the Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas.” Design, Displacement, Migration. Lichtman, S. A., & Traganou, J.Editors
  • Roberts, A. and Butler, M. L. “Contending with the Palimpsest: Reading the Land through Black Women’s Emotional Geographies.” Geographies of Displacement/s (2023): 19.
  • Roberts, A. (2020). “The End of Bootstraps and Good Masters: Fostering Social Inclusion through Counternarrative Creation,” Preservation and Social Inclusion. Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture
  • Minner, J, Roberts, A., Holleran, M., & Conrad, J. (2018). “A Smart City Remembers Its Past: Citizens as Sensors in Survey and Mapping of Historic Places.” In New Approaches, Methods, and Tools in Urban E-Planning (pp. 95-129). IGI Global
  • Minner, J., Holleran, M., Roberts, A. & Conrad, J. (2016)”Capturing Volunteered Historical Information: Lessons from Development of a Local Government Crowdsourcing Tool.” Geospatial Research: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications. 319

 

Peer-reviewed (published)

  • “Outsider Preservation: Beyond Rules and Lists”, and “Introduction: What is Outsider Preservation”(2026) Interface Editor and Contributor, Planning Theory and Practice. Taylor and Francis.
  • Roberts, A., Aduen, V., Blanks, J., Carter, S., & Girault, K. (2022). Digital Juneteenth: Territorializing the Freedom Colony Diaspora. Public Culture, 34(3), 419-436.
  • Melnick, R. Z., Roberts, A., & McGilvray, J. (2021). Integrity as Process and Feature: Cultural Landscapes of Underrepresented Communities. Change Over Time, 10(2), 122-140.
  • Roberts, A., & Butler, M. L. (2022). Contending with the Palimpsest: Reading the land through Black women’s emotional geographies. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 112(3), 828-837.
  • Sitton, T. Revised by Roberts, A., Kelly, G., and Carter, S., “Freedmen’s Settlements,” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association. Published 2017, Revised 2022
  • Blanks, J., Abuabara, A., Roberts, A., & Semien, J. (2021). Preservation at the Intersections: Patterns of Disproportionate Multihazard Risk and Vulnerability in Louisiana’s Historic African American Cemeteries. Environmental Justice.
  • Roberts, A. R. (2020). Preservation without Representation: Making CLG Programs Vehicles for Inclusive Leadership, Historic Preservation, and Engagement. Societies, 10(3), 60.
  • Roberts, A. R. (2020). Haunting as Agency: A Critical Cultural Landscape Approach to Making Black Labor Visible in Sugar Land, Texas. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 19(1).
  • Roberts, A., & Matos, M.* (2020). Adaptive liminality: Bridging and bonding social capital between urban and rural Black meccas. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1-22.
  • Roberts, A. R. (2020). Count the Outside Children! Kinkeeping as Preservation Practice Among Descendants of Texas’ Freedom Colonies. In Forum Journal (Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 64-74). National Trust for Historic Preservation.
  • Roberts, A. R. (2019). “Until the Lord Come Get Me, It Burn Down, Or the Next Storm Blow It Away:” The Aesthetics of Freedom in African American Vernacular Homestead Preservation. In Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (Vol. 26, No. 2, 73-97).
  • Roberts, A., & Beazer, M. J.* (2019). Black Placemaking in Texas: Sonic and Social Histories of Newton and Jasper County Freedom Colonies. Current Research in Digital History, 2.
  • Roberts, A., & Kelly, G.* (2019). Remixing as Praxis: Ramstein’s Ladder Through the Grassroots Preservationist’s Lens. Journal of the American Planning Association, 85(3), 301-320.
  • Roberts, A. R. (2018). “Performance as Place Preservation: The Role of Storytelling in The Formation of Shankleville Community’s Black Counterpublics” Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 5(3), 146-165
  • Roberts, A. “Interpretations & Imaginaries: Toward an Instrumental Black Planning History, “in Bates, Lisa K., et al. “Race and Spatial Imaginary: Planning Otherwise.” Planning Theory & Practice 19.2 (2018): 254-288.
  • Minner, J., Holleran, M., Roberts, A. & Conrad, J. “Capturing Volunteered Historical Information: Lessons from Development of a Local Government Crowdsourcing Tool.” International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR) 4, no. 1 (2015): 19-41

Technical Reports

Exhibits and Digital Humanities Projects

  • Roberts, A., Biazar, M.J.* The Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas & Study. ArcGIS StoryMap and Survey 1-2-3 integrated platform for crowdsourcing and spatializing data on historic sites and places associated with Black communities founded in Texas, 1865-1930. http://bit.ly/txfcpatlastwo
  • Roberts, A., Matos, M.*, Simien, J.*, Kuzio, J.*, Roy, M.*, Jones, F*. Kelly, G.*, Martinez, I.*(2018) PLAN 689 Critical Place Studies. “Texas Freedom Colonies Project – Final Student Digital Humanities Projects utilizing The Atlas’ GIS data. http://www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com/2019/01/student-projects.html
  • Roberts, A., Biazar, M.J Matos, M.*, Semien, J.*, Kuzio, J.*, Roy, M.*(2018) PLAN 689 Critical Place Studies. OMEKA Projects: caneycreek.omeka.net, TXFCPpleasanthill.omeka.net, TXFCPmagnoliasprings.omeka.net, TXFCPmosshill.omeka.net, TXFCPjamestown.omeka.net, TXFCPdixie.omeka.net, TXFCPmountuniontx.omeka.net
  • Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (2019) Department of Architecture, MIT Special Acquisition Lecture, Cambridge, MA. https://api.gahtc.org/browse/#89

Public Scholarship: New Media, Essays, Opinion, & Creative Non-Fiction

2025

  • Cheyenne Symonette, “Archiving the Invisible, Recovering Community: A Conversation with Dr. Andrea Roberts,” Scholarly Editing Journal, no. Volume 42 (June 2025),

2024

  • Roberts, A., Sturlaugson, B., Axel, N., Brown, L., Stanek, Ł., Osseo-Asare, D. K., … & Kounkuey Design Initiative. Field Notes on Repair: 7. “A Reparative Framework for Historic Preservation.” Places Journal (2024).

2023

2020-21

 

2018

  • Roberts, A.” Sugar Land: Treat the mass grave of Black prisoners discovered in Texas with respect” Newsweek, August 15, 2018
  • Roberts, A. “A Texas city discovered a mass grave of prison laborers. What should it do with the bodies?” The Conversation August 14, 2018
  • Roberts, A. “Analysis: Why Texas should Brace to Hear about More Mass Graves” Austin American Statesman, August 15, 2018
  • Roberts, A. “The Mass Grave Beneath a Texas Suburb,” City Lab, August 15, 2018

2017

  • Brand, A., Brown, Davis, L, Ford, M., Hood, W., Lopez, S., Roberts, A., Robles Jr., J. “Conversation 030317,” Platform: Convergent Voices, A Journal of the UT Austin School of Architecture, Ed. Nichole Wiedemann and Charlton Lewis, November 2017
  • Roberts, A. “When Does It Become Social Justice? Thoughts on Intersectional Preservation Practice” Preservation Leadership Forum Blog: National Trust for Historic Preservation, July 20, 2017
  • Roberts, A. “Documenting and Preserving Texas Freedom Colonies” (2017). Texas Heritage Magazine. Texas Historical Foundation, Austin, TX. Vol. 2, June 2017
  • Roberts, A. “Critical Sankofa Planning-Mobilizing Texas Freedom Colony Memories,” NotThatButThis.com
  • Roberts, A. “Homeplace: Identity, Place, and Planning” Reading List. Places Journal, April 2017

2016

  • Brand, A., & Roberts, A. Commentary: Better Communities Require Better-Educated Planners. Austin American-Statesman. October 25, 2016

under review

  • Roberts, A. “A Hypothesis of Redress: Embracing Archaeologies of Possibility,” Current Anthropology. University of Chicago Press.
  • Roberts, A. Haunting as Agency: A Critical Cultural Landscape Approach to Making Black Labor Visible in Sugar Land, Texas. Book Chapter Version for Ed. Dudley, T. and Stiefel, B. Sites of Memory and Resistance

MEDIA COVERAGE & PRESS INTERVIEWS 

  • Sincavage, Rhonda, and Priya Chhaya. “Reconsidering Preservation with Andrea Roberts at the Center for Cultural Landscapes.” National Trust for Historic Preservation, September 2023. https://savingplaces.org/stories/reconsidering-preservation-with-andrea-roberts-at-the-center-for-cultural-landscapes
  • Walk-Morris, Tatiana, “The Urgent Effort to Preserve Freedom Colonies and Black Settlements,” Planning Magazine, February 2022.
  • Stayton, Jennifer. “How structural racism hinders efforts to preserve Texas’ Black history,” October 28, 2021, NPR–KUT 90.5.
  • Stayton, Jennifer. “’Everyone’s Story Matters’: Texas Freedom Colonies Project Challenges What Counts as An Artifact,” September 3, 2021, NPR–KUT 90.5.
  • Stayton, Jennifer. “History Is Written by The Victors,’ But the Texas Freedom Colonies Project Works to Change the Narrative,” April 28, 2021, NPR–KUT 90.5.
  • The Cultural Landscape Foundation. “It Takes One: Dr. Andrea Roberts.” January 18, 2021, Stewardship Stories website.
  • Hamilton, Aretina. “People & Places, Not Points and Lines.” November 3, 2020. Esri: ArcNews, Fall 2020.
  • Scanlon, Amy Loewenstein, and Bailey, Heather L. “Building an Inclusive Preservation Plan in Madison, Wisconsin.” September 10, 2020. Preservation Leadership Forum
  • Barnes, Michael. “Texas History: Sizing up Daily Lives in the State’s Freedom Colonies. “August 10, 2020. Austin American-Statesman
  • Jones, DaLyah. “Andrea Roberts Is Working to Define What Free Black Space Is.” July 23, 2020. Texas Observer
  • “Freedom Colonies Provide Unique Learning Opportunity for Students.” February 28, 2020. Texas A&M Today.
  • Lewis, B. “Communities strive to preserve African-American history at Texas Colonies.” December 17, 2019. Houston Chronicle.
  • Witte, K. “A&M professor wins grant to preserve historic African American settlements” [Interview]. July 11, 2019. In First News at Four.
  • Poppe, R. “State-Owned Building Once Served San Antonio’s East Side. Can It Help the Community Again?” June 13, 2019. In Texas Public Radio.
  • Poppe, R. “Texas A&M Professor’s Research Highlights Significance of Texas Freedom Colonies. February 27, 2019. In Texas Standard.
  • Flynn, M. “School district found remains of 95 Black forced-labor prisoners on a construction site and want them moved,” Quoted. October 25, 2018. In the Washington Post
  • Watts, E. “Texas A&M University Project Will Document Freedom Colonies throughout Texas,” October 24, 2018. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
  • Collins, C. “How Natural Disasters Challenge Communities of Color” December 21, 2017. One Crisis Away: After the Flood, KERA-Dallas
  • Feldman, N. “Confronting Urban Design’s Diversity Crisis with a Return to Black Places.” April 17, 2017. Next City
  • Joseph, C. and Mankad, R. “When ‘historic’ doesn’t mean ‘white ‘In Houston and elsewhere, a movement grows to preserve a wider range of places.” December 16, 2016. Houston Chronicle