Project acronym CAPSAHARA
Project CRITICAL APPROACHES TO POLITICS, SOCIAL ACTIVISM, AND ISLAMIC MILITANCY IN THE WESTERN SAHARAN REGION
Researcher (PI) Francisco Manuel Machado da Rosa da Silva Freire
Host Institution (HI) CENTRO EM REDE DE INVESTIGACAO EM ANTROPOLOGIA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2016-STG
Summary This project proposes an analysis of the reconfigurations established in the socio-political vocabulary of the western Saharan region – southern Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania – from the “post-empire” to the contemporary period. The project should produce an analysis of 1) the social and political structures shared in the region, 2) the local variations of those structures, based on case studies, 3) their specific configurations, based on social markers such as gender, age, and class, 4) the use of those structures in different historical periods. All these will be under theoretical and ethnographic scrutiny in order to achieve its main goal: 5) to understand the recent articulation of the social and political structures of the Western Saharan region, with broader and often exogenous political vocabularies.
The methodology used in this project is based on readings associated with different social sciences, with a particular focus on anthropology, history, and political science. The members of the research team, with experience and linguistic competence in the different geographies involved in this project, are expected to conduct original field enquiries, enabling a significant enhancement of the theoretical and ethnographic knowledge associated with this region.
The project’s main goal is to analyse the types of interplay established between pre-modern socio-political traditions and contemporary political expression and activism, in a particularly sensitive – and academically disregarded – region. Its effort to integrate a context that is usually compartmentalized, as well as to put together a group of researchers generally “isolated” in their particular areas of expertise, geographies, or nations, should also be valued. The project’s results should enable the different contexts under study to be integrated into the wider maps of current scientific research, providing, at the same time a dissemination of its outputs to an extended audience.
Summary
This project proposes an analysis of the reconfigurations established in the socio-political vocabulary of the western Saharan region – southern Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania – from the “post-empire” to the contemporary period. The project should produce an analysis of 1) the social and political structures shared in the region, 2) the local variations of those structures, based on case studies, 3) their specific configurations, based on social markers such as gender, age, and class, 4) the use of those structures in different historical periods. All these will be under theoretical and ethnographic scrutiny in order to achieve its main goal: 5) to understand the recent articulation of the social and political structures of the Western Saharan region, with broader and often exogenous political vocabularies.
The methodology used in this project is based on readings associated with different social sciences, with a particular focus on anthropology, history, and political science. The members of the research team, with experience and linguistic competence in the different geographies involved in this project, are expected to conduct original field enquiries, enabling a significant enhancement of the theoretical and ethnographic knowledge associated with this region.
The project’s main goal is to analyse the types of interplay established between pre-modern socio-political traditions and contemporary political expression and activism, in a particularly sensitive – and academically disregarded – region. Its effort to integrate a context that is usually compartmentalized, as well as to put together a group of researchers generally “isolated” in their particular areas of expertise, geographies, or nations, should also be valued. The project’s results should enable the different contexts under study to be integrated into the wider maps of current scientific research, providing, at the same time a dissemination of its outputs to an extended audience.
Max ERC Funding
1 192 144 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31
Project acronym EXOEARTHS
Project EXtra-solar planets and stellar astrophysics: towards the detection of Other Earths
Researcher (PI) Nuno Miguel Cardoso Santos
Host Institution (HI) CENTRO DE INVESTIGACAO EM ASTRONOMIA E ASTROFISICA DA UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE9, ERC-2009-StG
Summary The detection of more than 300 extrasolar planets orbiting other solar-like stars opened the window to a new field of astrophysics. Many projects to search for Earth-like planets are currently under way, using a huge battery of telescopes and instruments. New instrumentation is also being developed towards this goal for use in both ground- and space-based based facilities. Since planets come as an output of the star formation process, the study of the stars hosting planets is of great importance. The stellar-planet connection is strengthened by the fact that most of the exoplanets were discovered using a Doppler radial-velocity technique, where the gravitational influence of the planet on the star and not the planet itself is actually measured. This project aims at doing frontier research to explore i) in unique detail the stellar limitations of the radial-velocity technique, as well as ways of reducing them, having in mind the detection of Earth-like planets and ii) to develop and apply software packages aiming at the study of the properties of the planet-host stars, having in mind the full characterization of the newfound planets, as well as understanding planet formation processes. These goals will improve our capacity to detect, study, and characterize new very low mass extra-solar planets. EXOEarths further fits into the fact that I am currently Co-PI of the project for a new high-resolution ultra-stable spectrograph for the VLT. The results of this project are crucial to fully exploit this new instrument. They will be also of extreme importance to current state-of-the-art planet-search projects aiming at the discovery of other Earths, in particular those making use of the radial-velocity method.
Summary
The detection of more than 300 extrasolar planets orbiting other solar-like stars opened the window to a new field of astrophysics. Many projects to search for Earth-like planets are currently under way, using a huge battery of telescopes and instruments. New instrumentation is also being developed towards this goal for use in both ground- and space-based based facilities. Since planets come as an output of the star formation process, the study of the stars hosting planets is of great importance. The stellar-planet connection is strengthened by the fact that most of the exoplanets were discovered using a Doppler radial-velocity technique, where the gravitational influence of the planet on the star and not the planet itself is actually measured. This project aims at doing frontier research to explore i) in unique detail the stellar limitations of the radial-velocity technique, as well as ways of reducing them, having in mind the detection of Earth-like planets and ii) to develop and apply software packages aiming at the study of the properties of the planet-host stars, having in mind the full characterization of the newfound planets, as well as understanding planet formation processes. These goals will improve our capacity to detect, study, and characterize new very low mass extra-solar planets. EXOEarths further fits into the fact that I am currently Co-PI of the project for a new high-resolution ultra-stable spectrograph for the VLT. The results of this project are crucial to fully exploit this new instrument. They will be also of extreme importance to current state-of-the-art planet-search projects aiming at the discovery of other Earths, in particular those making use of the radial-velocity method.
Max ERC Funding
928 090 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-10-01, End date: 2014-12-31
