It studies the processes of collecting, classifying, collecting, categorizing and interpreting heritage through the lens of the circulation of things and ideas, knowledge and associated values. It analyses the mechanisms of accumulation and transmission of objects, beings and things, and the ethical and political, but also epistemological, issues that arise from them.

In particular, the links between the logic of cultural heritage and natural heritage and the convergence of their institutions in the globalized contemporary social context are explored; the specific problems raised by the patrimonialization of living and intangible heritage; the power relations sedimented in heritage complexes and their traces in the post-colonial world.

Attention is paid to the material dimensions of the phenomena studied: physicalities of life, history of materials, socio-technical environments, body and self techniques, effects of digitization. The methodological conditions for interdisciplinarity between the human and social sciences and the life sciences are also worked on.