IN2PAST.BR, the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) for research into Natural History, Cultural Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory, created in 2024 in Brazil, is inspired by the Portuguese IN2PAST and even bears the name and visual identity of the Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory.

It was presented on 16 May in Lisbon, in the Auditorium of the National Library of Portugal, by its deputy director, Luiz Souza (School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Minas Gerais – UGMG), at a meeting entitled ‘Cultural Heritage, History and the Arts in Brazil and Portugal’, which also served to showcase projects with and about Brazil that have been developed, from Portugal, in the seven research units that make up the IN2PAST consortium.

IN2PAST.BR also works in the field of natural heritage, which distinguishes it from the Portuguese associate laboratory and other institutions in the Brazilian scientific and technological system. The extensive collaboration with the Brazilian Federal Police in the field of forensic sciences is another specificity of the NIST.

Coordinated by the Institute of Biological Sciences (ICB) and the School of Fine Arts at UFMG in Belo Horizonte, IN2PAST.BR is already present in seven other Brazilian states. The Portuguese associate laboratory and the Brazilian national institute have independent existences, with the common name indicating the desire for collaboration between scientists and universities on both sides of the Atlantic.

‘IN2PAST.BR will develop its activity with total autonomy, but it is an extraordinary institutional opportunity for our own internationalisation,’ explains António Candeias (HERCULES – University of Évora / IN2PAST), president of the IN2PAST Board.

Like IN2PAST, IN2PAST.BR brings together researchers from different scientific disciplines, differentiating itself by covering areas such as biodiversity protection, fighting wildlife trafficking, indigenous forensic anthropology or forensic genetics, said Luiz Souza in Lisbon, noting that ‘the work of crossing all these borders is not easy, but the main beneficiary is society’. The deputy director of IN2PAST.BR also thanked the president of IN2PAST for making it possible and easy to use the name of the Portuguese institution.

The connections between Portugal and Brazil in the context of IN2PAST are not new. Cooperation between HERCULES and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), for example, began in 2017, when a chance visit by António Candeias to the Mourisco Pavilion, or Fiocruz Castle, in Rio de Janeiro, triggered a series of training workshops organised by the Cultural Heritage, Studies and Safeguarding Laboratory for technicians from various Brazilian institutions working in the field of heritage valorisation.

Mélanie Toulhoat (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST) presented her research on graphic humour under the brazilian military regime (1964-1985) and Manuel Pedro Ferreira (CESEM – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST, and member of the Board) the CESEM project Thematic History of Music in Portugal and Brazil.

The American art historian Robert C. Smith and the art of Brazil in the 17th and 18th centuries was the theme brought up by IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST researcher Sílvia Ferreira, while Celso Mangucci (CHAIA – University of Évora / IN2PAST) addressed the role of literati in the production of the visual arts in Portugal and Brazil in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Rodrigo Lacerda (CRIA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST) described the IN2PAST exploratory project he is currently coordinating, InDigit, on the indigenous peoples of the South American Lowlands and the digital transition in European museums, whose team includes two representatives of the Kamayurá people, who have joined as co-researchers and have already been in Lisbon for a collaborative museology workshop.