The Rutter Project is a six-year research initiative (2019–2025) that investigated how early modern nautical "rutters"—manuals of sailing directions—document the earliest Western understanding of what it meant to navigate the oceans on a global scale. These texts offer vital evidence of how seafarers described, measured and imagined the world in motion.

 

This series presents an overview of the project’s collective research, bringing together the individual perspectives of eleven scholars whose work spans manuscript studies, navigational astronomy, cartography, cosmography and both Arabic and European maritime traditions. Each researcher’s video offers a close-up on their specific topic, method and findings.

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1st CAMERA OPERATOR Miguel Cortes Costa

2nd CAMERA OPERATOR Carlos T. Lopes and Beatriz Orcinha

SOUND RECORDING Carolina Castro Almeida 

MOTION GRAPHICS Beatriz Orcinha and Carolina Castro Almeida

EDIT Francisco Costa

MUSIC Miguel Mateus Pinheiro

YEAR 2025