The Institute and Research
The Institut national du patrimoine is a higher education establishment dedicated to heritage. As such, the Institute’s activities may involve all the scientific disciplines that are relevant to the field of heritage: the academic disciplines needed to analyse heritage (history, art history, archaeology, history of techniques, life and earth sciences), the professional disciplines needed to practise these professions (archival science, museology, conservation-restoration), the experimental sciences involved in advances in conservation and restoration (physics, chemistry, biology), and finally the social sciences involved in the interpretation of heritage related phenomena (sociology, law, economics, ethnology, anthropology).