Portuguese psychology faculty with third-party roles in European university alliance strategy and biodiversity data infrastructure projects.
The Faculty of Psychology at the University of Lisbon is the primary psychology teaching and research institution in Portugal, grounded in behavioural science, cognitive psychology, and applied psychological research. In H2020, the faculty appeared exclusively as a third-party contributor — meaning its institutional affiliation and resources were lent to larger consortium projects rather than it operating as a funded project partner. Its two participations sit in quite different spaces: biodiversity data infrastructure and European university network strategy, suggesting the faculty contributed disciplinary expertise in human behaviour, science communication, or educational psychology rather than leading either technical workstream. The limited project footprint makes it difficult to characterise their research profile from EU data alone.
UNITE.H2020 (2021–2023) focused on planning research and innovation futures within the UNITE! European University Alliance, covering ERA, SDG, STEM, and open science dimensions.
Both DiSSCo Prepare (natural science collections data infrastructure) and UNITE.H2020 (open science, infrastructures) touch on making scientific knowledge more accessible and interconnected.
DiSSCo Prepare (2020–2023) addressed data infrastructure for biological and geological diversity collections across European institutions, with the faculty serving as a third-party contributor.
Their two projects span only 2020–2021 start dates, so the timeline is short, but a clear thematic shift is visible. Early involvement centred on very specific data infrastructure for natural science collections — biological and geological diversity, physical specimen digitisation. The more recent project moved toward high-level university network strategy: R&I planning, ERA alignment, SDGs, STEM policy, and open science governance. This suggests a progression from contributing technical or disciplinary support in a domain-specific infrastructure project toward institutional engagement in European higher education policy and alliance-building.
The faculty appears to be moving toward European university network participation and higher-education policy engagement, likely through its membership in the UNITE! alliance, rather than building a distinct research-project identity in H2020.
This faculty has never served as coordinator or active funded partner in H2020 — both participations are as a third party, the most peripheral role in a consortium. They joined large consortia (45 unique partners across 21 countries from just two projects), which reflects the nature of CSA projects rather than any hub-building behaviour on their part. Working with them likely means engaging through the broader University of Lisbon or the UNITE! alliance structure rather than approaching the faculty directly as a project lead.
Despite minimal direct project involvement, the faculty is formally connected to 45 consortium partners across 21 countries — a reflection of the large, pan-European consortia typical of CSA infrastructure and alliance projects. There is no evidence of a focused geographic network; reach appears broad but structurally inherited from the consortia they joined.
As a psychology faculty, FP UL brings a behavioural and human-science perspective that is rare in technically-oriented infrastructure or university governance consortia. Its connection to the UNITE! European University Alliance gives it an institutional channel into cross-border higher education collaboration that pure research institutes lack. However, with only two third-party participations and no direct EC funding, its differentiated value in EU project consortia is not yet well established from public data.
