Dr Stefania Merlo
Associate Professor
Geography
University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa
Biography
Dr Stefania Merlo is currently working as Associate Professor of Archaeology at University of Witwatersrand
Research Interest
Her research focuses in understanding the transformations of cultural landscapes through long-term, multidimensional models that incorporate large datasets on environment, culture and society. She do this through the use of quantitative and computational methods, in particular geographic information systems and remote sensing. Her geographic areas of interest are the arid landscapes of Southern Libya, South-eastern Botswana and South Africa, where she have conducted fieldwork in the past years and documented settlement strategies from the first millennium AD to the present. More recently, she have worked at the development of participatory GIS approaches for the documentation of the recent past in the island of Mograt (Sudan) and at the World Heritage Site of Meroe. In her PhD work she developed a framework for the use of three-dimensional GIS modelling in archaeological excavations, with a particular focus on the problem of the translation of archaeological practice to a computer environment. This framework is at present being implemented at the Sterkfontein caves for the management of archival and current excavation of the project currently directed by Dr. Dominic Stratford.
