Dr Stefania Merlo

  • Partner - Cambridge Heritage Research Centre
  • Senior Research Associate - McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
Dr Stefania Merlo

About

I am the remote sensing digital data co-ordinator and project manager of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) project.

I studied Classics and Archaeology at the University of Padova (Italy) and hold an MSc in GIS and Remote Sensing (2001) and PhD in Archaeology (2011) from the University of Cambridge. I was a fixed term lecturer in GIS at the University of Leicester in 2006, and a lecturer in computing archaeology at the University of Botswana from 2007 to 2012. Before joining the McDonald Institute in September 2020, I was a Senior lecturer in GIS in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand (2013-2020). I have directed archaeological research projects in Libya, Sudan, Botswana and South Africa. I am a registered Professional GIS practitioner with the South African Geomatics Council.

Research

I am an Africanist and archaeologist with a specialisation in GIS and remote sensing. My research examines short- and long-term transformations of cultural landscapes across different environments, cultures and time periods through multidimensional integrative approaches. Recent and current field research includes projects on settlement and landscape dynamics of the past 500 years in Northern and Southern Africa, where I have developed various digital expert and participatory approaches for mapping, analysing, managing and disseminating cultural heritage.

In my research I engage with legal and ethical issues around the use and dissemination of spatial information, in particular the need for inclusive, open and low resource environments in the creation of sustainable spatial data infrastructures.

I am currently a principal investigator in the collaborative project metsemegologolo - a multimodal digital platform for the exploration of African urbanisms - (https://metsemegologolo.org.za/) based at the University of the Witwatersrand and funded by an African Digital Humanities Mellon grant and the co-Pi of the AHRC funded project Reframing the African past: using museum collections and digital storytelling to increase accessibility for and participation by low-resourced audiences