UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE TRES DE FEBRERO

Their core work

UNTREF is a public Argentine university based in Buenos Aires that has built a strong humanities and social sciences profile, particularly around cultural studies, collective memory, and Latin American history. Their H2020 engagement centers on qualitative research into how societies process crisis, violence, and migration — drawing on archives, literature, film, and arts rather than technical or applied science. They function as the Latin American academic anchor for European memory-studies and cultural-research consortia, contributing regional expertise, field access, and archival knowledge that European partners cannot replicate on their own.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In 2015-2018 UNTREF's H2020 work concentrated on cultural narratives of crisis and the physical traces of political violence in Latin America — broadly historical and anthropological. From 2020 onward their focus shifted toward archives, memory, migration, gender and media-based research, reflecting a move from studying events to studying how those events are recorded, represented and contested. The trajectory is from field-based historical inquiry toward interdisciplinary memory and media studies.

They are moving toward archive-based, interdisciplinary memory research that blends literature, arts and new media, making them a useful partner for humanities consortia working on representation, displacement and contested histories.

How they like to work

UNTREF consistently joins as a partner or third party rather than coordinating, which fits their role as the non-EU regional expert in MSCA staff-exchange and fellowship projects. They have worked with 15 different partners across 11 countries on just 3 projects, indicating broad European reach rather than a tight repeat-partner loyalty pattern. Expect them to contribute regional knowledge, fieldwork access and researcher mobility rather than project management or budget leadership.

They have collaborated with 15 unique partners across 11 countries in just 3 projects, which is an unusually broad network for the project count. The reach is transatlantic, linking European humanities institutions with a Latin American research base.

What sets them apart

UNTREF is one of the few Argentine universities consistently embedded in European Marie Skłodowska-Curie humanities consortia, giving European partners direct, institutional access to Latin American archives, field sites and researchers. Their combined expertise in memory studies and post-violence field research is rare — most memory-studies partners work on European cases, while most Latin America specialists are outside MSCA networks. If you need a credible Southern-hemisphere anchor for a cultural, memory or migration project, there are very few equivalent options.

Highlights from their portfolio

• TRANS.ARCH
  Their most recent and thematically rich project (2020-2025), combining archives, migration, gender and new media — a good showcase of where their research is heading.
• StrategicVillages
  Unusual and high-impact topic — clandestine burial sites and violent settlements in Latin America — where UNTREF's regional access was likely decisive for the consortium.
• CRIC
  Their entry point into H2020 humanities networks, establishing the cultural-narratives-of-crisis angle that shaped their later work.