Bolivia's largest public university, providing Andean field access in air quality research and Latin American urban social science.
UMSA is Bolivia's largest public university, based in La Paz, contributing two distinct research domains to European consortia: atmospheric and environmental science (air quality modelling, pollution forecasting) and critical social science focused on Latin American urban dynamics (displacement, extractivism, post-colonial urbanism). In both cases, UMSA's primary value is grounding European-led research in real Andean and Bolivian context — providing local field access, data, and regional academic networks that European institutions cannot replicate. Participation occurred through MSCA-RISE staff-exchange schemes, meaning researchers from UMSA and partner institutions exchanged knowledge across institutions rather than UMSA leading independent work packages.
PAPILA (2018–2023) focused on predicting air pollution across Latin America, with UMSA contributing local data and expertise on chemical weather, particulate matter, ozone, and emission sources.
CONTESTED_TERRITORY (2020–2025) examined displacement, extractivism, and social movements in Latin American urban contexts, with UMSA positioned as a key regional academic anchor.
Both projects explicitly required Latin American on-the-ground presence; UMSA's location in La Paz and its regional academic networks made it a necessary third-party contributor in both consortia.
CONTESTED_TERRITORY brought UMSA into debates about post-colonialism, urbanisation, and alternatives to extractivist development models — a social science orientation distinct from the environmental work.
UMSA's H2020 engagement began in 2018 with hard environmental science — atmospheric chemistry, air pollution forecasting, and public health impacts from pollution — reflecting a quantitative, policy-relevant research direction. By 2020, the university's second project shifted entirely into critical social sciences: urban geography, social movements, displacement, and post-colonial critiques of development. This is a significant thematic pivot, likely reflecting different faculties or research groups within the same large institution rather than an institutional strategy change. The trend points toward UMSA being a broad, multi-faculty university where project participation depends on which research group is active at any given time, rather than a focused specialist organisation.
UMSA's trajectory suggests growing engagement with critical social science and Latin American political economy, making it more likely to appear in future projects around just transitions, resource governance, or urban inequality than in purely technical environmental projects.
UMSA has not coordinated any H2020 project — in both cases it entered as a third party, a step below full partner, typically contributing researchers for exchange visits and providing local field infrastructure rather than managing work packages or budgets. Despite this limited formal role, the university is connected to 38 distinct consortium partners across 19 countries, reflecting the MSCA-RISE format where large researcher mobility networks are standard. Anyone working with UMSA should expect a supportive, field-access role rather than a project-driving one; the value proposition is access to Bolivia and Andean Latin America, not independent research leadership.
UMSA has touched 38 unique consortium partners across 19 countries, an unusually wide reach for an institution with only 2 projects — a direct consequence of the large multinational consortia typical in MSCA-RISE mobility schemes. The network is almost certainly Europe-to-Latin-America in structure, with UMSA serving as the Bolivian anchor while European universities form the bulk of the consortium.
UMSA is one of the very few Bolivian institutions with any H2020 track record, and its location in La Paz — one of the world's highest-altitude capital cities, in the heart of the Andean region — gives it irreplaceable geographic and cultural positioning for research requiring Latin American field sites. For projects on air pollution at altitude, highland urban dynamics, extractivism in the Andes, or social movements in Bolivia, UMSA is essentially the only credible local academic partner with a demonstrated European collaboration history. Its main limitation is the third-party role in both projects, suggesting the institution has not yet built the administrative capacity for full EU project partnership.
