Carlos Kessel is a historian and a career diplomat who studied architecture at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and earned a Master's and a Ph.D. in Social History from the same institution. He worked as a researcher at the Villa-Lobos Museum and the National Historical Museum, both in Rio de Janeiro, and taught at the Rio Branco Institute of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro and at Cândido Mendes University. His main research areas are: Luso-Brazilian Relations, Cultural Heritage, History of Rio de Janeiro, Urban History and Architectural History. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs he worked in the Cultural Affairs Department and at the Brazilian embassies in Cape Verde, Chile and Portugal.