This Research Group (RG) studies the landscape and the organization of the territory that is associated with it, especially in northern Portugal, investigating millenary traces of human presence, accumulated by processes of continuity and change.

The IMG includes specialists with backgrounds in Archaeology, History, Architecture, Human and Physical Geography, and is interdisciplinary in nature. The GI assumes that territorial cohesion is based on knowledge of each region’s cultural identity, informed by its history and heritage, built landscape, cultural artifacts and settlement trends, in its interaction with regional, social and economic development.

This GI encompasses broad avenues of research, investigating, for example, the history of migrations in their relation to rural and urban landscapes in the 19th and 20th centuries; the socioeconomic and cultural development of the Douro region; and the archaeological and vernacular heritage – maritime, industrial, and rural – evidenced in the landscape.

The Group has been establishing relevant interdisciplinary collaborations, among others with CEAU – Architecture and Urbanism Study Center of UP. It has also collaborated with local institutional partners, and invested in a number of dissemination actions, including international congresses and publications.

For the period 2018-2022, this GOI aims to investigate the effective functioning of changing local and regional communities as they relate to identities, territories and landscapes. This research will be integrated into a broader national and international comparative framework. The GI assumes that a stratified knowledge of the past is an indispensable contribution to both the management of cultural heritage and the pursuit of sustainable development.