The Postgraduate Programme in Social Anthropology (PPGAS) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte was approved by CAPES in November 2004, when the M. Sc course was created, and subsequently, in March 2005, the academic activities began. Ten years later, as a result of a consolidated institutional project, highlighted by the evaluation of the programme by CAPES (Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) with a ranking of 4, the Ph.D. course was created. At the end of the 2013-2016 period of academic assessment by Capes, our Social Anthropology postgraduate programme was ranked Level 5 in Anthropology/Archaeology.

Since its inception, the PPGAS/UFRN's academic guiding project has been (1) rigorous and in-depth teaching, (2) the development of qualified empirical research, and (3) the systematic implementation of public activities, whose aims include the social articulation between the programme's academic staff and students with civil society. All three axes have guided the relationships established between the programme and local contexts, positively qualifying concrete research proposals and sustaining broad and topical theoretical and methodological issues. This is an institutional and academic project of a disciplinary nature, which has been forged in a long historical process. It has clearly manifested itself in the different moments of autonomy of anthropology as a scientific field within the UFRN.

As a historical antecedent of the PPGAS, we can recall the creation of the Institute of Anthropology in 1960, after the foundation of the UFRN (1958). Led by folklorists and intellectuals from the state of Rio Grande do Norte, such as Luiz da Câmara Cascudo, the Institute of Anthropology focused on research and teaching in the fields of cultural anthropology, physical anthropology and palaeontology. In 1974, the Institute of Anthropology was incorporated into the Câmara Cascudo Museum (MCC), which had been created the previous year as a space for the conservation and exhibition of the Institute's collections. Secondly, it is necessary to rescue the pioneering proposal of the M.Sc./Master's degree in Anthropology at the UFRN, approved by CAPES and implemented in 1979 through the efforts of anthropologists at the University. Some of them began their professional training at the former Institute of Anthropology, such as the anthropologists Nássaro Nasser and Elizabeth Mafra Nasser. After promoting specialisation and training courses, this group of newly recruited anthropologists began the second M.Sc./Master's programme in the Northeast region of Brazil. For institutional reasons at the UFRN, the Master's in Anthropology was soon incorporated into the emerging Postgraduate Programme in Social Sciences and, in 1982, it was transformed into the Master's in Social Sciences, with a specialisation in Sociology and Anthropology. It took 25 years before a postgraduate programme in social anthropology was reinstated at the UFRN. The proposal to create an academic Master's degree came from the collaboration of the lecturers of the Department of Anthropology (DAN), created in 1999.

In 2004, the postgraduate programme in Social Anthropology was reinstated, resuming the pioneering initiative of the late 1970s, combined with the disciplinary and professional expansion of the academic field in Brazil in the last twenty years, both at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The creation of academic positions in the Department of Anthropology at the UFRN and the recruitment of new teachers with diverse national and international backgrounds reinforced this process of disciplinary and professional expansion.

With the creation of the PPGAS/UFRN and the first years of the M.Sc. course, its activities were focused on two lines of research: 1) "Social Processes, Culture and Identities" and 2) "Rituals and Symbolism". With the development of postgraduate activities, integration with undergraduate teaching and also the organisation of extension projects, the programme's research lines have been redefined as part of the process of establishing the Doctorate (Ph.D) in Anthropology. The current configuration of the research lines is as follows:

1) Politics, Rights and Ethnicity;

2) Gender, Sexualities, Body and Health;

3) Memory, local knowledges, religiosity, rituals;

4) Spaces, Images, Technologies.

In accordance with the objectives of the postgraduate programme and its research lines, we have the specific academic dynamics of the research groups and nuclei that are formally linked to the Department of Anthropology, thus guaranteeing institutional support for faculty and student research projects. Through the five current research groups, it has been possible to ensure that extension projects and undergraduate teaching activities coexist and correlate with postgraduate activities:

1) CIRS - Culture, Identity and Symbolic Representations, created in 1993;

2) ETAPA - Study Group 'Ethnology, Tradition, Environment and Artisanal Fishing', created in 2012;

3) GECP - Study Group on Popular Cultures, created in 2000;

4) GCS - Gender, Body and Sexuality, created in 2006;

5) NAVIS - Visual Anthropology Nucleus, founded in 2001.

PPGAS has implemented research, teaching and work agendas, and has trained professionals at the Master's and Doctoral levels, based on a wide range of topics and theoretical-methodological issues that confirm the expansion of teaching and research in anthropology in Brazil since the 2000s. Among the different themes that cover these research and teaching agendas, Afro-Brazilian Studies, Ethnology and Ethnicity should be highlighted. Urban, peasant and fishing communities studies, as well as popular culture, heritage and memory studies have been promoted and stimulated since the programme's inception. Over the last 10 years, there has been a clear interest in research and specialised training in gender, sexuality, health and illness, which is reflected in the courses taught and dissertations presented. More recently, teaching courses and research projects on conflict and rights, justice, social activism and political mobilisation have received significant attention in the programme, creating opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue with professionals from other fields. The same applies to teaching, research and cultural production in visual anthropology, new digital technologies and the anthropology of consumption. This wide range of academic agendas and interests of an anthropological nature can be noted both in the research projects and in the theoretical and cultural production (printed, audiovisual and digital) of the faculty, as also in the range of ethnographic themes and theoretical arrangements present in the dissertations already defended.

Concerning the selection procedures for admission to the PPGAS/UFRN, they started by offering six positions, which were gradually expanded due to the demand for people trained in anthropology. In 2015, based on a policy of differentiated calculation, the main selection process for the admission of M.Sc. students included instructions for the admittance of black and mixed-race people, as well as a vacancy for people with disabilities. In the same year, a specific selection process was developed for the admission of Master's students, with a number of vacancies for indigenous people. In 2017/2018 we added a vacancy for quilombolas, in 2020/2021 a vacancy for gypsies and finally in 2022/2023 another vacancy for the transexual/travesti community. At the doctoral level, the first specific selection took place in 2020/2021 for indigenous people, quilombolas, gypsies and the transexual/travesti community.

In addition, PPGAS is the publisher of two regular academic journals that are qualified by CAPES (Qualis journals):  

1) Vivência - Revista de Antropologia da UFRN (digital six-monthly periodical; Qualis A2 concept).

https://periodicos.ufrn.br/vivencia

2) Revista Equatorial (digital; six-monthly periodical, edited by PPGAS students supervised by a lecturer from the faculty; Qualis A4 concept).

https://periodicos.ufrn.br/equatorial

These are the qualities that characterise the PPGAS/UFRN, both in terms of the production of its faculty and the training, research and professional performance of its students. These characteristics are linked to the academic training of the faculty, which is composed of researchers with teaching and research connections in different national and foreign institutions. All of this contributes to the creation of solid research networks based on projects that have involved the PPGAS/UFRN and other postgraduate programmes in Anthropology since 2006, such as PROCAD/CAPES and PROCAD/CNPq. Furthermore, the internationalisation of the programme is a current objective, which is the result of initiatives previously developed by the faculty of the programme.