I am co-PI on a interdisciplinary and international team that uses LiDAR, photogrammetry, 360 photography, and geospatial technology, along with conventional research and social stories to document at-risk cultural heritage sites in sub-Saharan Africa. This project was launched as a collaboration between Northeastern University and L’Ecole du Patrimoine (L’EPA) in Porto Novo, Benin in 2023, with a $50,000 grant from Northeastern. Additional financial support has come from NU’s College of Social Science and Humanities, College of Art, Media and Design, the Office of the Provost, and the European Space Agency.
The core Northeastern University project team consists of me, H. Killion Mokwete (Project Lead, Architecture), Patricia Davis (Africana Studies/Communications), and Bahare Sanaie-Movahed (Senior GIS/Remote Sensing Analyst, Data Services). L’EPA’s team is led by Franck Ogou. There have been additional collaborations with Porto Novo’s Cultural Heritage Office, The Ouadada Foundation (Porto Novo), and local architects from Porto Novo and Cotonou. Northeastern University engineering professor Mark Sivak produced a prototype of a VR sim, based on scans the team took of Zangbeto Temple in Porto Novo in June 2024.
As of 2025, the team has documented 8 buildings in Porto Novo, and compiled scans and other documentation on the buildings, and has built a geospatial database of the buildings in ArcGIS online. For further information, you can visit the ArcGIS Digital Hub, and the Project’s instagram. Additional coverage of the project can be found here. The Northeastern portion of the team also published an article in Emerging Media in March 2025 (open access).
