January 1980 signals the genesis of the project, when the London based architectural historian Dr George Michell began work at the site together with a small group of architecture students, and John Gollings, an Australian architectural photographer. They joined Drs Pierre-Silvain and Vasundhara Filliozat, a husband and wife scholarly team, whose investigation of the Vitthala temple and inscriptional record of the site was already underway. The preliminary drawings and photographs produced at this time provided the basis of a Marg publication, Splendours of the Vijayanagara Empire -- Hampi. (See Project Publications)

In 1981, Michell persuaded the American archaeologist Dr John M. Fritz to come to Vijayanagara to develop the archaeological side of the investigation. Fritz then became co-director of the team and co-founder of the Vijayanagara Research Project. Meanwhile, architecture and archaeology students from Indian, Australian and British schools were recruited to help with the documentation work, with fresh groups of students coming each year.

In 1982, we began a cooperative relationship with the Government of Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums, then directed by Dr M.S. Nagaraja Rao, which provide accommodation and other logistical support. Permission to undertake the work was granted by the Government of India and the American Institute of Indian Studies in Delhi acted as sponsor and administrator of grant funds.

As the Vijayanagara Research Project developed, the area and detail of the documentation work was enlarged until a large proportion of the site was covered. A number of younger scholars were attracted to Vijayanagara and took up their own research projects. This resulted in PhDs on particular aspects of the site, such as earthenware ceramics (Carla B. Sinopoli), hydraulic works (Dominic Davison-Jenkins), pilgrimage (Alexandra Mack), agricultural intensification (Katherine B. Morrison), Anegondi (Sugandha Purandare) and religious traditions (Anila Verghese). Professors Sinopoli and Morrison have involved their own students in aspects of their research, for example, on fortifications (Robert P. Brubaker), on prehistoric political economy (Peter G. Johansen), and on prehistoric landscapes (Andrew M. Bauer). We were also able to attract established Indian scholars, such as C.T.M. Kotraiah. Many of these studies have now been published. (See Project Publications) Senior scholars from different disciplines, including historians, linguists, anthropologists and art historians, also visited the site. The co-directors benefited from lively discussions with them in the field. Meanwhile, Fritz and Michell participated in academic conferences and lectured frequently at universities in India, Australia, the UK and the US, thereby maintained on-going interest in the Project and a seemingly inexhaustible stream of volunteer contributors.

Fieldwork at Vijayanagara continued without any major interruption through the 1980s and 1990s, until more than 20 years had passed, by which time the co-directors felt that sufficient data had been collected. Also by this time, the main source of funding our work in India – grants in local currency by the Special Foreign Currency Fund of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington – was exhausted. It was time to round up the fieldwork and settle down to writing up the data, a process that continues. While quite a number of studies have already been published in our Monograph Series, more are in preparation or are planned for the future.

For history of our Project link to Fritz 2006, 'History of Documentation'.