David Wheeler received his BA from Macalester College in 2009, where he double majored in Theatre and Classical Archaeology. During his time there, he spent two seasons working on Macalester’s excavations at Omrit in Israel and a third season at Kenchreai in Greece. He also spent a semester in Egypt studying at the American University in Cairo, where he was awarded the prestigious Simpson Scholarship to pursue his interest in Egyptian Archaeology. Upon returning from Egypt, he wrote an honors dissertation titled "The Sed Festival and Performance in Ancient Egypt," exploring the creation of space in ancient Egyptian ritual.
After graduating, Wheeler began pursuing an MFA in performance while working in the Site Records department at the Office of the State Archaeologist of Iowa. He later transitioned to positions with the Minnesota Historical Society and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Wheeler then moved to Glasgow to pursue a Masters of Classics, during which he began working for the American School of Classical Studies in Athens on excavations at the Athenian Agora, where he worked for two seasons. This experience led to his master's dissertation, "Performance and the Formation of the Athenian Agora," in which he examined how performances, particularly the Panathenaia, altered the physical and ephemeral landscape of this part of Athens and contributed to the creation of the Classical Agora.
His main interests include ritual performance in the ancient world, specifically the relationship between performance and space, as well as interactions between Greece and Egypt in the Aegean Bronze Age/Egyptian New Kingdom.