The Postgraduate program in Social Anthropology (PPGAS) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte was approved by CAPES on November 2004 and started its activities in 2005 with the creation of the academic masters program. Ten years later, the doctoral degree was created, as a result of a consolidated institutional project which received score of 4 by CAPES, later achieving 5 during the 2013-2016 time frame.

Since its inception, the PPGAS/UFRN has as its guiding project the articulation between deep and rigorous teaching, the development of qualified empirical research and the conduction of systematic extension activities, whose goals envelop social insertion and professional practice of faculty and students of the program in the public sphere.

As for PPGAS’ historical background, it’s worth mentioning the creation of the Anthropology Institute in 1960, tow years after the foundation of UFRN (1958). Spearheaded at the time by ‘potiguar’ folkorists and intelectuals such as Luz da Câmara Cascudo, the Anthropology Institute was directed towards research and teaching through Cultural Anthropology, Physical Anthropology and Paleontology. In 1974, the Anthropology institute was annexed by the Câmara Cascudo Museum, created a year before as a space for preservation and exposure of the collections generated by the Institute. Secondly, it is necessary to redeem the pioneering proposal of UFRN’s master's degree in Anthropology, approved by CAPES and implemented in 1979 as an outcome of the efforts of university anthropologists, some of which had had their professional training at the former Institute of Anthropology. Through the promotion of specialization and extension courses, this group of newly contracted anthropologists gave birth to the second master's degree course in the Northeast region. Due to institutional issues of UFRN, the master's degree program was quickly added to the emerging postgraduate program in Social Sciences, and in 1982 it was transformed into a master's degree in Social Sciences, whose areas of concentration were Sociology and Anthropology. It took 25 years for a new postgraduate program in Social Anthropology to be reestablished at UFRN. The proposal to create an academic master's degree originated from the articulation of professors inserted in the Anthropology Department (DAN), created in 1999.

In 2004, the project of the Social Anthropology graduate program resumed the pioneering initiative of the late 1970s, coupled with acourse and professional expansion movement, both in postgraduate and undergraduate courses, which characterized the area of Anthropology in last fifteen years. The recent hiring of new Professors with both national and international diversified training, reinforced this process.

In its creation and during the first years of operation of PPGAS / UFRN, its activities were centered on two lines of research: 1) "Social Processes, Culture and Identities"; and 2) "Rituals and Symbolism". With the maturation of postgraduate activities, integration with undergraduate education and also the organization of extension projects, there was a redefinition of the lines of research of the program as part of the process of establishing the Doctoral program. The current configuration of PPGAS’ lines of research is as follows:

1) Politics, rights and ethnicity;

2) Gender, sexualities, body and health;

3) Memory, local knowledge, religiosity, rituals;

4) Spaces, images, technologies.

In close harmony with the objectives of the postgraduate program and its lines of research, there is the specific dynamics of groups and research centers, which are formally linked to the Department of Anthropology and therefore guarantee institutional support to research projects of both faculty and students. It will be through the five research groups that currently exist that extension projects and activities geared toward undergraduate education are going to coexist and correlate with postgraduate activities:

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

2) STAGE - Study Group Ethnology, Tradition, Environment and Artisanal Fishing, formed in 2012;

3) GECP - Group of Popular Cultures Studies, created in 2000;

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

5) NAVIS - Nucleus of Visual Anthropology, formed in 2001.

The PPGAS has implemented research, teaching and work agendas and has trained professionals at master's and doctoral level, based on a broad spectrum of thematic and theoretical-methodological issues that corroborate the expansion of teaching and research in Anthropology in the country since the year 2000. Among the various themes that cover these research and teaching agendas, it is important to highlight the continuity of Afro-Brazilian studies, ethnology and ethnicity. Urban and peasant studies, studies on fishing communities as well as those of popular culture, patrimony and memory have been promoted and stimulated since the creation of the program. In the last 10 years, there has been a great deal of interest in research and training in gender, sexuality, health and illness, which is evident in courses and dissertations produced. More recently, teaching courses and research projects on conflict and rights, justice, activism and sociopolitical mobilization have received great attention in the program, inviting possibilities of interdisciplinary dialogues with professionals from other areas. The same is true for teaching, research and cultural production in visual anthropology, new digital technologies and consumer anthropology. This comprehensive set of academic agendas and interests of an anthropological nature is observable both in the research and theoretical and cultural research projects of teachers (printed, audiovisual and digital), as well as in the set of ethnographic themes and theoretical arrangements present in the dissertations already defended. It should be added that PPGAS publishes two regular academic journals, qualified by CAPES (Qualis periodicals):

1) Vivência - Journal of Anthropology (printed and digital; B1 Qualis)

https://periodicos.ufrn.br/vivencia

2) Revista Equatorial (digital edited by PPGAS students with teacher supervision; B5 Qualis Anthropology; B3 Qualis Sociology)

https://www.incubadora.ufrn.br/index.php/equatorial/index

All of these are the marks of PPGAS / UFRN, both regarding the production of its faculty as well as the training, research and professional performance of its students. This characteristic is related to the academic formation of Professors, composed of researchers with teaching and research links in different national and foreign institutions. All this is in addition to the construction of solid research networks in the scope of the development of exchange projects involving PPGAS / UFRN and other postgraduate programs in the area of Anthropology since 2006, especially PROCAD / CAPES. In addition, the internationalization of the program is a current goal, which stems from initiatives previously developed by the program's professors.