Although the topic of "preservation" is part of the curriculum of several graduate programs in different fields, the Graduate Program in Cultural Heritage Sciences (PPGPatri) is the first program at UFPA, and one of the few in Brazil, if not the only one, that covers the entire interdisciplinary breadth of content from different fields of knowledge necessary to train professionals to work in the preservation of cultural heritage, combining scientific knowledge from the humanities (history, museology, architecture and urban planning, anthropology, among others) with that of the natural sciences (exact, biological, and earth sciences) and technology-based sciences (engineering).
Within this context, the integration of research on the preservation, conservation, and/or restoration of cultural heritage provides a differentiated path for the development of higher-level personnel working in the safeguarding of cultural assets. It can attract professionals from diverse backgrounds, such as architects, designers, historians, museologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, engineers, geologists, biologists, and others, thus offering society professionals with a more well-rounded profile to address the current preservation challenges. This is a broad conceptual vision, as Virgolino Ferreira Jorge explains, "which relates to all areas of the modern perception of heritage protection." It is a necessity for humanity, which needs its past, its traditions, its own cultural identity, at different scales (urban, building, object, and practices), related to the space of collective life, with its respective materiality and immateriality, and the social groups for which this heritage makes sense.
The program's proposal is suited to the interdisciplinary field by combining the sciences of CAPES' three colleges (Life Sciences, Humanities and Exact Sciences, Technological Sciences, and Multidisciplinary Sciences). Interdisciplinarity involves a knowledge production model that fosters theoretical and methodological exchanges at varying levels of complexity, generating new concepts and methodologies to address the diverse themes of preserving cultural assets and expressions. These interfaces and dialogues allow for the inclusion of critical theoretical reflections to complement, justify, and support technological investigations, and vice versa. These research lines will be developed in two areas of research under the heading "Analysis and Interpretation of Cultural Heritage: 1) "Heritage and Society," which draws primarily from the humanities; and 2) "Heritage Technologies," which draws on a technology-based approach from the life, exact, technological, and multidisciplinary sciences.