CHC's PhD fellow presented her ongoing research in UK

CHC's PhD Fellow, Mrudula Mane, presented her ongoing research at the annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. The UCL and The London School of Architecture in the UK hosted the conference from 12th to 14th May 2023. Mrudula presented a paper, 'Military Ports and Trading Forts of Konkan: Geospatial Analysis of Architectural Evidence of European Expansionism from 16th to 18th Centuries', in the session on Networks of Trade and Industry. Dr Pushkar Sohoni, IISER Pune, contributed to the paper as a co-author. The paper focused on juxtaposing archival research with GIS tools such as viewshed and hillshade to investigate historic built forms. Through this methodology, the paper established the 'cartaz' system - license of passage in the ocean introduced by the Europeans in the Indian Ocean as one of the key triggers for a dramatic rise in fort construction along the Konkan coast. The paper contributed to the discussion on the regional responses to the colonisation as it was about to take a grasp of the Indian Ocean and land in the early modern era.