This session explore new approaches, themes and objects recently developed by the historiography of human biological diversity, especially that focused on the context of the 20th century. The proposal is to bring together original analysis concerning empirical, epistemological, historiographic and methodological issues to discuss the history of human biological diversity. The session encompasses works dealing with permanencies and changes on the scientific concept of race in anthropology, genetics and biomedicine after World War 2 ; and discussions on the scientific investigations to distinguish and compare the biological traits and identities of the several human groups, such as people from extreme environments, indigenous populations in Mexico and Portuguese colonies. The session also considers the difference in the national contexts and the transit of knowledge and practices North-South and South-South Hemisphere. The present case studies traces historical singularities on the definition and scientific categorizations of human diversity: such as taxonomies and notions of race, ideal of miscegenation, human evolution, history and ancestry, concepts of population, primitivism, etc.