CIAS — Research Centre for Anthropology and Health
CIAS is an international research center in the field of anthropology and the human sciences that explores a wide range of topics in the study of past and present human societies. CIAS brings together researchers from various disciplinary fields such as biological anthropology, social-cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, sociology and cul
tural studies, and environmental humanities, promoting the cross-fertilization of research perspectives and enabling the articulation of person and community-centered approaches with broader theoretical formulations. Researchers at CIAS are concerned with questions of human sociality, issues of human health and well being, and human-environment relations, covering a wide range of contexts and combining the insights of evolutionary perspectives with the critical analysis of historical and contemporary developments. The center supports a diverse set of research projects drawing on multiple research methodologies and theoretical traditions, emphasizing the need to approach people, through and through, as biosocial beings living in particular cultural, historical, and material environments. This broad holistic approach leads to a more in-depth understanding of the human condition, while generating new perspectives on some of the big questions facing the world today: from the sustainability of global food systems to the health challenges posed by changing global diets, from shifting patterns of disease to the history of contemporary models of epidemic governance, from the societal costs of digital automation and artificial intelligence to the impacts of environmental degradation and climate change on the future of human life on the planet. Located in a university with seven hundred years of history, CIAS is one of the most vibrant, internationally oriented, anthropological research centers in Europe. While CIAS was established in 1994, its roots go back to 1885 when the first anthropology institute in Portugal was founded at the University of Coimbra. CIAS was significantly reconfigured in 2007 and obtained very high rankings in all subsequent international evaluations. As a highly international research center, CIAS is committed to the development of a transnational anthropological research community, and the center is actively involved in several international research projects, networks, and programs. CIAS researchers are developing fieldwork-based projects in different parts of the world and have direct access to biological field stations in Africa and South America. In addition to promoting research activities, the center offers training courses, hosts graduate students and promotes public events like research seminars, workshops, and scientific meetings. The center is also actively involved in facilitating the publication of anthropological research at the highest level. The center’s journal, Antropologia Portuguesa, is the oldest anthropology journal in Portugal and its international quality is recognized in major databases like Scopus, Web of Knowledge, and Capes Qualis. Today CIAS includes four major multidisciplinary research clusters: (1) Genes, Populations, and Diseases, (2) Human Biology, Health, and Society, (3) Past Cultures and Populations, (4) Technoscience, Society, and Environment. Each of these research clusters has its own individualized team of researchers but there are significant overlaps between clusters and they often cooperate with one another in particular projects, subjects and contexts of research. RESEARCH CLUSTERS
1) Genes, Populations and Diseases
2) Human Biology, Health and Society
3) Past Cultures and Populations
4) Technoscience, Society, and Environment
