LIBERA UNIVERSITA MARIA SANTISSIMAASSUNTA

Their core work

LUMSA (Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta) is a private Catholic university in Rome whose H2020 research centers on bioethics, gender studies, and social policy. Their documented EU work addresses two intersecting themes: improving informed consent frameworks for vulnerable groups (including age and vaccine contexts) and analysing the legal, political, and feminist dimensions of gestational surrogacy. They contribute both as academic coordinators hosting Marie Curie fellows and as consortium partners in multi-country coordination projects. Their value lies in combining ethical-legal analysis with empirical social research and translating it into policy recommendations.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

With only two projects launched in consecutive years (2017 and 2018), there is no meaningful temporal shift in thematic focus — both address gender, ethics, and social policy simultaneously. The early-period keywords (gender, age, vaccines, vulnerable populations) all derive from I-CONSENT, while WoMoGeS left no tagged keywords in the dataset, making a keyword-based trend analysis unreliable. What can be said is that LUMSA moved from being a participant in a larger multi-partner coordination action to independently coordinating a MSCA Individual Fellowship, suggesting growing confidence in leading EU-funded research.

With only two projects in a narrow two-year window, no clear directional trend is discernible, but their progression from participant to coordinator suggests they are building the capacity to lead future social-science or ethics-focused EU actions.

How they like to work

LUMSA has operated in both roles across their two projects — joining a multi-partner consortium as a participant in I-CONSENT and independently coordinating a MSCA Individual Fellowship in WoMoGeS. Their consortia are small to mid-sized (11 unique partners across 2 projects), reflecting the typical scale of social-science and ethics-focused EU projects rather than large technology consortia. Their willingness to host a Marie Curie fellow also signals openness to incoming researchers and international academic collaboration.

LUMSA has collaborated with 11 distinct partners across 6 countries, a moderate but geographically diverse network for a small-portfolio university. No single country dominates, which is consistent with EU-wide social policy and gender studies consortia.

What sets them apart

LUMSA occupies a rare niche in Italian higher education: a private Catholic university producing EU-funded critical research on reproductive ethics and feminist policy — topics that sit in acknowledged tension with its institutional identity, giving its outputs unusual scholarly weight in debates that usually lack such voices. Their combination of bioethics expertise (informed consent, vulnerable populations) and social-movement analysis (surrogacy, gender policy) makes them a credible interdisciplinary partner for health-ethics and social-policy consortia that need both normative and empirical contributors. For consortium builders, they offer an Italian HES partner with coordinator experience at relatively low cost (average EC contribution under EUR 280K per project).

Highlights from their portfolio

• I-CONSENT
  The largest-funded project (EUR 313,357) and a multi-country coordination action tackling informed consent reform across gender, age, and vaccine contexts — a high-policy-impact topic with direct relevance to health regulators.
• WoMoGeS
  LUMSA's only coordinator role, a MSCA Individual Fellowship examining feminist mobilisation around gestational surrogacy — notable for the institutional courage of a Catholic university leading research on a politically sensitive reproductive rights topic.