Visiting Professor at the universities of Paris-Nanterre, Liège, Buenos Aires, Nacional Autónoma de México, Nacional de Brasília, Nacional de Misiones, Nacional de Córdoba and Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Senior Researcher of the Brazilian Council for Technical and Scientific Development and Full Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
Former Director of the Museu Nacional at Rio de Janeiro. He has dealt regularly with the organization of research ethics review in Brazil, and published extensively about personhood, with ethnographical fieldwork in Brazilian urban society.
His present research focuses on the history and the structure of romantic and vitalist cultural movements, mostly in what concerns the development of social and cultural anthropology.
