This study examines the scientific cooperation between Brazil and Germany in Amazonian ecological research from 1952 to 1989. The research emphasized the intricate interplay among the region's waterscapes, soils, and forests, privileging the Amazon's water bodies as central to understanding its ecology. The German limnologist Harald Sioli played a pivotal role in establishing and sustaining this network since his earlier studies in the 1940s on the Amazon's rivers. By the late 1960s, the West German and Brazilian governments formalized the partnership through cooperation agreements between the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA, founded in 1952) and the Max Planck Institute for Limnology.
This German-Brazilian partnership in tropical ecology reflected broader transnational epistemic networks that, particularly after World War II and into the 1970s, transformed the Amazon into an object of global scientific and environmental concern. These networks significantly contributed to the rise of ecosystem science and conservation biology, reframing the Amazon's identity. The region came to be recognized as a critical site for global biodiversity conservation and climate regulation.
By the 1970s, the scientists involved in this network actively denounced the rapid deforestation and unprecedented ecological disruptions caused by large-scale infrastructure and colonization projects under Brazil's military dictatorship (1964–1985). Consequently, the Amazon emerged as a powerful symbol in global environmental discourse.
Analyzing the engagements of actors within this German-Brazilian scientific network reveals how the Amazon functioned as a microcosm of the Anthropocene. Serving as a crossroads of material and epistemic connections, the Amazon provides critical insights into the Anthropocene's emergence.

It is now widely accepted that the construction of laboratories and other science venues often embodies the scientific project that preceded their construction. In short, buildings are the material petrification of a scientific discourse. Nevertheless, in Africa many places of science, especially those built during the colonial period, are abandoned or falling into decay. These ruined places are given to the researcher from afar as accessible, able to give him privileged access to this type of material. However, such a vision in the field test is quickly proven wrong. Access to this type of corpus is made difficult by the bureaucratic, scientific and human presence in the ruins. For example, it becomes difficult to take pictures. Due to the need to negotiate with authorities to obtain permits to move on sites, or to persuade populations through different means to take photos. This paper examines how this visible body of science is dissipated for the researcher, in light of an experimental cocoa station built during the French colonial period in Cameroon. The Nkoemvone station, now in ruins, is a concrete example to explore: it was designed to produce improved cocoa beans and built on many hectares of both research laboratories and workers' housing. By mobilizing a history of the architecture of science places, this work raises the question of access to these places of science in ruins, and how it is possible to overcome this pitfall in a context of the global South.

In the late 19th century, the development of geology in Mexico was framed in an institutional process that promoted the creation of chairs, scientific societies, libraries, institutes and museums specialized in this field. Within this framework, the Geological Institute of Mexico was created by federal decree in 1888 and had among its substantive functions: to build geological cartography, prepare reports and form and preserve a Geological and Paleontological Museum of the Nation, currently the Museum of the Institute of Geology of the UNAM. It is a precinct that from its origins remains faithful to its vocation: the permanent exhibition of collections in its cabinets and serve as a center for dissemination and research in Earth Sciences. In this paper we propose to suggest some of the origins of the paleontological heritage of the Museum of Geology, composed of specimens of historical and taxonomic importance of organisms that millions of years ago populated the Earth and that constitute the record for the study of catastrophes and extinctions that occurred in deep time, the museum's collection is based on historical sources to offer a sketch of the winding history of Mexican scientific collections characterized by the lack of historical evidence on the scientific practice of museums linked to the purchase, donation, collection, classification and exchange of objects and specimens.

This paper examines women's engagement with the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) in the twentieth century. From the first women to be granted membership in 1926 until the first time the executive board employed a woman in 1991, the study approaches the particularities of women’s presence in the Academy, situating the trajectories of Brazilian women scientists within the broader framework of Brazil's social, political, and educational transformations.
The women studied possessed significant qualifications and garnered substantial peer recognition, establishing themselves as valued experts in representative and leading roles within prominent institutions, on national and international level. Nevertheless, cultural traditions continued to inform – and hinder - women’s access to and participation in certain spaces, such as the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. The ABC lagged behind other institutions in including women in its decision-making spaces.
The scarcity of historical sources about women scientists – long acknowledged by gender scholars – is aggravated in Latin America by poorly structured archives, to which Brazil is no exception. This intersection intensifies the “invisibilisation” of women’s contributions to knowledge production and poses significant methodological challenges. To address these gaps, this study employs a multifaceted approach, analysing photographs, personal archives of (male) scientists, ABC publications, and scattered files from the ABC archives. While these latter documents currently remain unorganised, a recently established collaboration between the ABC and the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences (MAST) in Rio de Janeiro has initiated their proper cataloging.