PORTofCALL aims at studying the relation between African-Asian-European encounters during the Early Modern period and the cultural heritage of the Indian Ocean’s port settlements of Portuguese influence.

By highlighting the diversity and values of those heritage sites, the project will create visions and tools for their future usage and manageable conservation, focusing on five representative cases.

PORTofCALL will research how African-Asian-European cultural encounters and negotiation impacted and shaped the built environments and landscape of the Estado da Índia’s network of port settlements, and their respective hinterlands.

Looking at aspects such as indigenous agency, settlement patterns, building technologies, spatial traditions, arts, and agrarian customs, the project will propose new readings for cultural heritage, and create digital heritage maps for each of the five representative cases.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the team will look at port settlements in the contexts of their regional maritime networks, and their respective hinterlands, addressing both urban settings and rural habitats as cultural landscapes of encounters and negotiated interactions.