The Inter-University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE) under Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, has entered into an academic collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania on the Kerala Maritime Communities Project.
The project, headed by Thomas F. Tartaron at the Department of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania, has been put in place with P. Sanal Mohan and Sujith Kumar Parayil, both from with the IUCSSRE, as co-investigators.
The project, which seeks to engage several traditional fishing communities in Kerala, aims at preserving the vanishing cultural heritage of these communities in the form of physical and virtual open-source archives, besides documenting changing ways of life as impacted by disruptions to the coastal environment. The Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR), too, will associate with the project.