UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DEL MAR DEL PLATA

Their core work

Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata is a large Argentine public research university that has engaged in EU-funded science through MSCA-RISE staff exchange projects. Their H2020 participation spans two distinct research areas: advanced nanomaterials for environmental remediation (specifically arsenic removal from groundwater) and historical-humanistic research on social failure, marginalization, and colonial legacies in Iberian empires and Latin America. As a third-party institution in MSCA-RISE schemes, they function primarily as a host and sending organization for researcher mobility between Argentina and European partners. Their contribution to EU consortia is rooted in Latin American regional expertise and local research infrastructure, rather than project coordination capacity.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (2015-2018) UNMDP contributed to environmental materials science — a natural-science, applied-technology domain with no recorded humanities keywords. Their second project (2019-2024) marks a sharp disciplinary turn into history and social sciences, with keywords such as failure, marginalization, biography, Iberian empires, and Latin America defining the work. This shift likely reflects different research groups within the same university engaging with EU programs independently, rather than a single coherent research agenda evolving over time. The net picture is of a multidisciplinary institution whose individual departments have found distinct entry points into European research collaboration.

UNMDP is consolidating its EU presence in the humanities and social sciences; any future MSCA-RISE collaboration is most likely to come through its history, sociology, or Latin American studies departments rather than through natural sciences.

How they like to work

UNMDP has exclusively participated as a third-party partner in MSCA-RISE projects — it sends and receives researchers rather than designing or managing projects. This is typical of non-European universities in the MSCA-RISE framework, where the consortium leadership sits with EU institutions. With 20 unique partners across 12 countries from only 2 projects, they operate within large, geographically diverse consortia rather than tight bilateral partnerships.

Despite only two projects, UNMDP has connected with 20 distinct partner organizations spread across 12 countries — an unusually broad network for such a small H2020 footprint, entirely attributable to the large consortium structure of MSCA-RISE projects. Their partnerships are centred on an EU-Latin America axis, with UNMDP serving as the Argentine anchor.

What sets them apart

UNMDP is one of the few Argentine universities with a documented track record in both EU environmental science and humanities research programs, making it a credible dual-domain gateway to the Argentine research community. For consortia building MSCA-RISE proposals that require a Latin American partner with institutional stability and a named H2020 history, UNMDP offers proven compliance with EU project requirements. Their location in Mar del Plata also gives direct access to Argentine coastal and water-resource contexts relevant to environmental research proposals.

Highlights from their portfolio

• NANOREMOVAS
  Addresses a concrete public-health problem — arsenic contamination in Argentine groundwater — using cutting-edge nanomaterials, making it one of the more applied and commercially relevant projects in an otherwise research-focused portfolio.
• REVFAIL
  An unusually long five-year MSCA-RISE project (2019-2024) focused on the sociology and history of failure across five centuries, demonstrating UNMDP's capacity for sustained transdisciplinary humanities collaboration with European partners.