Delia Wendel

Delia Duong Ba Wendel is the Class of 1922 Career Development Associate Professor of Urban Studies and International Development at MIT DUSP. She is a critical peace scholar and urban historian who explores cities in conflict and forms of repair after violence from spatial and trauma-informed perspectives. Her interdisciplinary work draws together Urban Studies, Conflict and Peace Studies, Architectural History, Cultural Geography, and Anthropology.

Current research builds from over a decade working in Rwanda and informs two book manuscripts in progress. Rwanda’s Genocide Heritage (2025, Duke University Press) is an intimate history of memory justice representation that traces relationships to nascent human rights practice in the late 20th century Global South. Her second book, Peace Villages, explores post-genocide peacebuilding as a socio-spatial endeavor: one defined and challenged in the design of homes, settlements, and civic space. Her research has been recognized by grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, Harvard Center for Ethics, and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Current projects also include community-engaged research on memory justice and reparative planning in Providence, Rhode Island and southern Chile. 

Delia received a PhD in Urban Planning from Harvard University. She also holds degrees in Architecture (BArch, Rice University), Cultural Geography (MSc, University College London) and Architectural History and Theory (MDes, Harvard GSD). In 2017-18 she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Wolf Humanities Center. Delia previously taught in UPenn's African Studies department, the Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning departments at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, and was an Assistant Professor in Architectural Studies at University of Edinburgh.

At MIT DUSP, Delia directs the Planning for Peace research group and the Mellon Foundation and MIT CAST funded Memory Atlas for Repair research project and exhibition. She is also the managing editor of Projections, DUSP's peer-reviewed journal on critical topics in urban studies and planning.