Lisbon social sciences university specializing in societal transitions, cultural heritage, misinformation research, and the human dimensions of sustainability.
Iscte is a Lisbon-based public university with deep strength in social sciences, humanities, and interdisciplinary research on societal challenges. Their H2020 portfolio centers on understanding how people, communities, and institutions navigate change — from gender equality and housing affordability to misinformation, cultural heritage, and labor precariousness. They bring strong qualitative and mixed-methods research capacity, including digital ethnography, narrative inquiry, and participatory action research. Their work consistently bridges academic inquiry with real-world policy relevance across European and global contexts.
Core contributor across ASTRA (sustainability transitions in social work), RE-DWELL (sustainable housing), SAGE (gender equality), ISOTIS (inclusive education), and LABOUR (informal employment in Asia).
Coordinated ICCE (Islamic-Chinese cultural exchange) and ReARQ.IB (modern architectural heritage in Iberia), participated in CHEurope and RESISTANCE on heritage and colonial history.
Coordinated MISTRUST on misinformation correction mechanisms, participated in EUMEPLAT on European media platforms and fake news.
Participated in SCILIFE, SCICITY, SCINAT, and SCICLI — a series of science engagement and outreach projects connecting research to public audiences.
Participated in MISTRAL (social acceptance of renewables) and Smart-BEEjS (energy justice and positive energy districts), contributing social science perspectives to energy research.
Participated in FF-IPM on integrated pest management for invasive fruit flies, contributing to biosecurity and plant health research.
In their early H2020 period (2016–2018), Iscte focused on institutional change, gender equality, responsible research and innovation, and science engagement with everyday publics — largely inward-looking academic reform and public outreach topics. From 2019 onward, their portfolio shifted decisively toward sustainability, precariousness, and global cultural exchange, with coordinated projects on violence in sports culture, misinformation, Islamic-Chinese art history, and Iberian architectural heritage. The evolution shows a move from process-oriented institutional projects toward substantive research on how societies handle disruption — economic, environmental, and cultural.
Iscte is consolidating around the social dimensions of sustainability and cross-cultural heritage research, making them an increasingly strong partner for projects needing social science depth in climate, housing, or global cultural exchange topics.
Iscte operates predominantly as a consortium participant (19 of 26 projects), joining established partnerships rather than building them. However, their 5 coordinated projects — all from 2020 onward — signal growing confidence in leadership, especially in humanities and social science topics. With 259 unique partners across 49 countries, they are a well-connected hub with broad geographic reach, though they tend toward large, multi-partner consortia typical of MSCA and CSA schemes rather than small focused teams.
Iscte has collaborated with 259 distinct organizations across 49 countries, giving them one of the broader partnership networks for a mid-sized Portuguese university. Their reach extends well beyond Europe into Asia, reflecting recent projects on informal labour in Southeast Asia and Silk Road cultural exchange.
Iscte occupies a distinctive niche as a social sciences university that consistently embeds itself in interdisciplinary consortia — bringing societal analysis, qualitative methods, and policy understanding to projects that might otherwise lack human-centered perspectives. Their unusual combination of cultural heritage expertise (from Iberian architecture to Islamic-Chinese art exchange) with contemporary societal challenges (misinformation, labor precariousness, energy justice) makes them versatile across funding calls. For consortium builders, they offer what many technical partners cannot: rigorous social science capacity with multilingual reach across Portuguese, Spanish, and English-speaking research communities.
