Dr. Shira Wilkof

I am a historian of modern landscape, urban planning, and the environment. My research and teaching interests include transnational history of spatial expert knowledge, environmental history of design. infrastructure studies, and Palestine/Israel landscape production. A central question that drives my work is how the complex relations within the design disciplines—and the multiplicity of professional voices—shape spatial realities. I am currently working on my first book manuscript, which revisits the origins of Israeli physical planning. While the standard narrative centers on architectural modernism à-la Bauhaus as the source of the Sharon Plan, I situate its origins in little-known loci of professional knowledge and pre-state Zionist political imagination of a land emptied of its Palestinian majority. My second project, supported by an ISF grant, explores the postwar history of sustainability in design. The study traces a largely unknown transnational network of landscape architects, whose work during the 1950s-1960s served as a laboratory for environmental planning on a global scale, anticipating much of today’s ecological challenges. I am the head of the “Digital Lab on Landscape History.” Our work focuses on breaking down time disciplinary silos and promoting new kinds of knowledge on space, environment, and time. As part of its mission, the lab focuses on the collection, digitization, and analysis of relevant historical documentation, using advanced DH tools. Together with my expanding team, we are currently working on several interconnected projects spanning both global and local, urban and open spaces (and yes, we are hiring!). I hold the Jacques Lewiner Career Advancement Chair and I am the recipient of the Alon Fellowship (2022). My research has been supported by the Dan David Postdoctoral Prize, Gerda Henkel Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the humanities, Thomas Arnold Fellowship (Tel Aviv University), the Rosenzweig Center (Hebrew University), and the Spinoza Fellowship (Haifa University). I hold a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism at  UC Berkeley (2017); a M.Sc. in Urban and Regional Planning at the Technion (2011); and a B.A. in History and Geography at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2008). Publications