For its first few months, it operated from temporary premises before purchasing land to build a new campus southwest of the city centre.

[1] By 2005, most of the main campus buildings were established, and several hundred students were attending classes taught by returning expatriates and local Timorese.

Most of the student body were participants in the struggle for Timorese independence, including ex-Falintil guerrillas, who had been denied a university education during the conflict before 1999.

The founding and former rector was Prof. Lucas da Costa (d. 2019), a Timorese economist, who also served as a member of parliament for the Partidu Demokratiku (PD).

The university sector in the country was totally destroyed by violence in the late 1990s and is not yet fully rebuilt, meaning a lack of tertiary education resources and trained personnel.