Project acronym PerformEast
Project Performance-Art in Eastern Europe (1950-1990): History and Theory
Researcher (PI) Sylvia Monika Sasse
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary The aim of this project is to provide, for the very first time, an overview of the historical and transnational development of performance art (performances, actions, happenings) in Eastern Europe during the dictatorship period. Performance art shall not only be presented as an object of study, but also as a central art genre implicitly and explicitly involved both in the investigation of cultural practices and in the creation of alternative ways of action. The project focuses, for one, on the artistic exploration of totalitarian or real-socialist practices, rituals, and gestures, but also on artistic ways of action developed in the course of underground activity. Eastern European performance art came to life under conditions in which it was from the very start considered as dubious both aesthetically and contentwise. However, tolerance, hindrance, and sometimes even prohibition led to a heightened degree of self-reflection, minimalism, abstraction, and analysis; in other words, to characteristics representative of the specificity of East European performance art between 1950 and 1990.
At the same time, the proposed project is to be understood as an archaeological one, for it sets out to reconstruct correlations and interactions between unofficial artistic production and official cultural practice. Moreover, it aims to make available to a broader public artistic endeavours that until now could not be centred on in research fields like art history, theatre-, and cultural studies in an Eastern European context.
The project will concentrate on the following four research areas:
1. Territorial interrelationships (between the Eastern European countries, between East and West)
2. Specificity of practice in Eastern European performance art (subversive affirmation, minimalism, abstraction)
3. Interrelationships between artistic action and political activism in the underground
4. Self-reflection in Eastern European performance art (self-archivisation, self-commentary)
Summary
The aim of this project is to provide, for the very first time, an overview of the historical and transnational development of performance art (performances, actions, happenings) in Eastern Europe during the dictatorship period. Performance art shall not only be presented as an object of study, but also as a central art genre implicitly and explicitly involved both in the investigation of cultural practices and in the creation of alternative ways of action. The project focuses, for one, on the artistic exploration of totalitarian or real-socialist practices, rituals, and gestures, but also on artistic ways of action developed in the course of underground activity. Eastern European performance art came to life under conditions in which it was from the very start considered as dubious both aesthetically and contentwise. However, tolerance, hindrance, and sometimes even prohibition led to a heightened degree of self-reflection, minimalism, abstraction, and analysis; in other words, to characteristics representative of the specificity of East European performance art between 1950 and 1990.
At the same time, the proposed project is to be understood as an archaeological one, for it sets out to reconstruct correlations and interactions between unofficial artistic production and official cultural practice. Moreover, it aims to make available to a broader public artistic endeavours that until now could not be centred on in research fields like art history, theatre-, and cultural studies in an Eastern European context.
The project will concentrate on the following four research areas:
1. Territorial interrelationships (between the Eastern European countries, between East and West)
2. Specificity of practice in Eastern European performance art (subversive affirmation, minimalism, abstraction)
3. Interrelationships between artistic action and political activism in the underground
4. Self-reflection in Eastern European performance art (self-archivisation, self-commentary)
Max ERC Funding
1 998 302 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-10-01, End date: 2019-09-30
Project acronym PHYLOCANCER
Project Phylogeography and somatic evolution of cancer tumor cells
Researcher (PI) David Posada Gonzalez
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSIDAD DE VIGO
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), LS8, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "By far, most evolutionary research has focused on the changes that occur in the germline of individuals across generations, within and between species. For different reasons, much less attention has been given to the process of change within the somatic line of a multicellular individual. The formation of cancer tumors due to uncontrolled cell proliferation is one of the most prominent forms of somatic evolution. The evolution of cancer tumors in a body can be likened with the evolution of populations in more or less fragmented habitats. The tumor is usually a expanding population of clonal cells, which may differentiate to a bigger or lesser extent (population structure) and disperse to contiguous (range expansion) or more distant tissues (long distance colonization). During tumor progression, this population of cells is subject to distinct somatic evolutionary processes like mutation, drift, selection or migration, which can act at different points in time and geographical space. Very recently, the discovery of extensive intratumor heterogeneity, together with the rise of single cell genomics, has created an unique opportunity to study the phylogeography of cancer tumor cells. So far evolutionary inferences drawn from cancer genomes have been mostly qualitative. Here we propose to study a thousand single cell genomes from different regions in primary tumors and matched metastases. We will develop and apply state-of-the-art statistical and computational techniques from phylogenetics, phylogeography and population genomics to understand the tempo and mode of evolution of cell lineages within and between cancer tumors. By doing so we aim to construct a robust theoretical and methodological evolutionary framework that can contribute to a better understanding of the process of somatic evolution and shed light into the biology of cancer."
Summary
"By far, most evolutionary research has focused on the changes that occur in the germline of individuals across generations, within and between species. For different reasons, much less attention has been given to the process of change within the somatic line of a multicellular individual. The formation of cancer tumors due to uncontrolled cell proliferation is one of the most prominent forms of somatic evolution. The evolution of cancer tumors in a body can be likened with the evolution of populations in more or less fragmented habitats. The tumor is usually a expanding population of clonal cells, which may differentiate to a bigger or lesser extent (population structure) and disperse to contiguous (range expansion) or more distant tissues (long distance colonization). During tumor progression, this population of cells is subject to distinct somatic evolutionary processes like mutation, drift, selection or migration, which can act at different points in time and geographical space. Very recently, the discovery of extensive intratumor heterogeneity, together with the rise of single cell genomics, has created an unique opportunity to study the phylogeography of cancer tumor cells. So far evolutionary inferences drawn from cancer genomes have been mostly qualitative. Here we propose to study a thousand single cell genomes from different regions in primary tumors and matched metastases. We will develop and apply state-of-the-art statistical and computational techniques from phylogenetics, phylogeography and population genomics to understand the tempo and mode of evolution of cell lineages within and between cancer tumors. By doing so we aim to construct a robust theoretical and methodological evolutionary framework that can contribute to a better understanding of the process of somatic evolution and shed light into the biology of cancer."
Max ERC Funding
1 999 900 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-10-01, End date: 2019-09-30
Project acronym PhyMo
Project Structure function relationships of the phyllosphere microbiota
Researcher (PI) Julia Vorholt
Host Institution (HI) EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS8, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary Understanding processes in microbial communities is a crucial task given the impact of microbial communities on environmental systems, including plants and animals. There is a rapidly increasing number of microbial communities whose collective genomes have been determined; however, it is important to uncover their collective function and to understand how community properties emerge from the properties of individual microbial types and their interactions. One habitat that has been gaining growing interest is the phyllosphere, or the aerial parts of plants, which carry out the majority of terrestrial carbon dioxide fixation. There is a urgent need to better understand the microorganisms living in the phyllosphere and an increasing awareness of the importance of indigenous microbiota and their role in microbe-microbe and host-microbe interactions for both plant growth and protection. This project aims to uncover the molecular basis shaping microbial communities in the phyllosphere in order to improve our functional understanding of microbial interaction in the context of the plant host and to unravel the principles of the formation of community pattern and function in situ. To reach these objectives, a reductionist approach will be used to generate and test new hypotheses regarding microbial interactions in phyllosphere communities. Synthetic, tractable microbial communities will be formulated and analyzed under gnotobiotic conditions. In situ community approaches will be developed and applied, while community genetics and experimental evolution will provide complementary perspectives on the community structure and function. These approaches will be mirrored by manipulating interactions on the host side through the use of plant mutants and ecotypes. Taken together, using multifaceted perspectives on microbial interactions in situ will allow unprecedented insights into the biology of bacteria living in the phyllosphere and their individual and collective function.
Summary
Understanding processes in microbial communities is a crucial task given the impact of microbial communities on environmental systems, including plants and animals. There is a rapidly increasing number of microbial communities whose collective genomes have been determined; however, it is important to uncover their collective function and to understand how community properties emerge from the properties of individual microbial types and their interactions. One habitat that has been gaining growing interest is the phyllosphere, or the aerial parts of plants, which carry out the majority of terrestrial carbon dioxide fixation. There is a urgent need to better understand the microorganisms living in the phyllosphere and an increasing awareness of the importance of indigenous microbiota and their role in microbe-microbe and host-microbe interactions for both plant growth and protection. This project aims to uncover the molecular basis shaping microbial communities in the phyllosphere in order to improve our functional understanding of microbial interaction in the context of the plant host and to unravel the principles of the formation of community pattern and function in situ. To reach these objectives, a reductionist approach will be used to generate and test new hypotheses regarding microbial interactions in phyllosphere communities. Synthetic, tractable microbial communities will be formulated and analyzed under gnotobiotic conditions. In situ community approaches will be developed and applied, while community genetics and experimental evolution will provide complementary perspectives on the community structure and function. These approaches will be mirrored by manipulating interactions on the host side through the use of plant mutants and ecotypes. Taken together, using multifaceted perspectives on microbial interactions in situ will allow unprecedented insights into the biology of bacteria living in the phyllosphere and their individual and collective function.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 980 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym PhyPD
Project New phylogenetic methods for inferring complex population dynamics
Researcher (PI) Tanja Stadler
Host Institution (HI) EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), LS8, ERC-2013-StG
Summary The field of phylogenetics is undergoing an important change over recent time. For a long time phylogenetics focussed on describing the species tree as accurate as possible. More recently there is a shift towards a functional inference of the evolutionary process itself, i.e. researchers attempt to infer what processes are most likely responsible for the particular pattern of branching observed in a given phylogeny.
Phylogenetics has traditionally been developed for macroevolution. Recently, it has been recognized that the phylogenetic concept is also crucial for improving our understanding of epidemiological processes. In an epidemiological phylogeny, tips of the tree are corresponding to infected hosts (instead of extant species), and branching events correspond to transmission events (instead of speciation events).
In the first part of the project, I propose to develop novel phylogenetic methodology that will allow us to characterize fundamental evolutionary processes based on species phylogenies. I will aim at identifying key factors (such as environment, competition between species, or microevolutionary processes) determining macroevolutionary dynamics. Insight into these dynamics will allow us to address fundamental evolutionary questions such as the advantages of recombination as well as to revisit current debates about the impact of climate change on diversity.
In the second part of the proposed project, I will develop tools identifying the main drivers responsible for the spread of an epidemic, which may help informing public health intervention strategies. Furthermore, I aim at characterizing bottlenecks at transmission, which may become important for early treatment strategies or vaccine design.
Completion of the projects will deepen our understanding of macroevolutionary and epidemiological dynamics, as well as lead to novel phylogenetic tools allowing us to analyse the growing amount of available data, such as next-generation sequence data.
Summary
The field of phylogenetics is undergoing an important change over recent time. For a long time phylogenetics focussed on describing the species tree as accurate as possible. More recently there is a shift towards a functional inference of the evolutionary process itself, i.e. researchers attempt to infer what processes are most likely responsible for the particular pattern of branching observed in a given phylogeny.
Phylogenetics has traditionally been developed for macroevolution. Recently, it has been recognized that the phylogenetic concept is also crucial for improving our understanding of epidemiological processes. In an epidemiological phylogeny, tips of the tree are corresponding to infected hosts (instead of extant species), and branching events correspond to transmission events (instead of speciation events).
In the first part of the project, I propose to develop novel phylogenetic methodology that will allow us to characterize fundamental evolutionary processes based on species phylogenies. I will aim at identifying key factors (such as environment, competition between species, or microevolutionary processes) determining macroevolutionary dynamics. Insight into these dynamics will allow us to address fundamental evolutionary questions such as the advantages of recombination as well as to revisit current debates about the impact of climate change on diversity.
In the second part of the proposed project, I will develop tools identifying the main drivers responsible for the spread of an epidemic, which may help informing public health intervention strategies. Furthermore, I aim at characterizing bottlenecks at transmission, which may become important for early treatment strategies or vaccine design.
Completion of the projects will deepen our understanding of macroevolutionary and epidemiological dynamics, as well as lead to novel phylogenetic tools allowing us to analyse the growing amount of available data, such as next-generation sequence data.
Max ERC Funding
1 471 582 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-01-01, End date: 2018-12-31
Project acronym PLASREVOLUTION
Project Understanding the evolution of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance in real life scenarios
Researcher (PI) Alvaro SAN MILLAN
Host Institution (HI) SERVICIO MADRILENO DE SALUD
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), LS8, ERC-2017-STG
Summary Antibiotics are essential tools in modern medicine and are indispensable not only for the treatment of infectious diseases but also to support other key interventions such as surgery and cancer chemotherapy. However, the extensive and inappropriate use of antibiotics has fuelled the spread of resistance mechanisms in pathogenic bacteria, leading to the dawn of a post-antibiotic era. Plasmids play a pivotal role in the evolution of antibiotic resistance (AR) because they drive the horizontal transfer of resistance genes between pathogenic bacteria by conjugation. Some of these plasmid-bacterium associations become particularly successful, creating superbugs that spread uncontrollably in clinical settings. The rise of these clones is mainly constricted because plasmids entail a fitness cost when they arrive in a new bacterial host. This cost can be subsequently alleviated through compensatory adaptation during plasmid-bacterium coevolution. Despite the importance of this cost-compensation dynamic in the evolution of plasmid-mediated AR, it remains completely unexplored in clinical contexts. In this project I plan to bridge this gap by exploring the genetic basis underlying the evolution of plasmid-mediated AR in clinically relevant scenarios. We will study, for the first time, the intra-patient transmission, fitness cost and adaptation of AR plasmids in the gut microbiome of hospitalized patients (obj. 1). We will analyse the molecular mechanisms that determine the success of AR plasmids and bacterial clone associations (obj. 2). Finally, we will develop new technology to test how antibiotic treatments affect AR plasmids dynamics in the gut microbiome at an unprecedentedly high-resolution (obj. 3). This ground-breaking project will allow a new understanding of the evolution of plasmid-mediated AR in real life, opening new research avenues and providing a major step towards meeting one of the central challenges facing our society: controlling the spread of AR.
Summary
Antibiotics are essential tools in modern medicine and are indispensable not only for the treatment of infectious diseases but also to support other key interventions such as surgery and cancer chemotherapy. However, the extensive and inappropriate use of antibiotics has fuelled the spread of resistance mechanisms in pathogenic bacteria, leading to the dawn of a post-antibiotic era. Plasmids play a pivotal role in the evolution of antibiotic resistance (AR) because they drive the horizontal transfer of resistance genes between pathogenic bacteria by conjugation. Some of these plasmid-bacterium associations become particularly successful, creating superbugs that spread uncontrollably in clinical settings. The rise of these clones is mainly constricted because plasmids entail a fitness cost when they arrive in a new bacterial host. This cost can be subsequently alleviated through compensatory adaptation during plasmid-bacterium coevolution. Despite the importance of this cost-compensation dynamic in the evolution of plasmid-mediated AR, it remains completely unexplored in clinical contexts. In this project I plan to bridge this gap by exploring the genetic basis underlying the evolution of plasmid-mediated AR in clinically relevant scenarios. We will study, for the first time, the intra-patient transmission, fitness cost and adaptation of AR plasmids in the gut microbiome of hospitalized patients (obj. 1). We will analyse the molecular mechanisms that determine the success of AR plasmids and bacterial clone associations (obj. 2). Finally, we will develop new technology to test how antibiotic treatments affect AR plasmids dynamics in the gut microbiome at an unprecedentedly high-resolution (obj. 3). This ground-breaking project will allow a new understanding of the evolution of plasmid-mediated AR in real life, opening new research avenues and providing a major step towards meeting one of the central challenges facing our society: controlling the spread of AR.
Max ERC Funding
1 497 314 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31
Project acronym POSEC
Project Postsecular Conflicts and the role of Russian Orthodoxy in the transnational alliances of moral conservative traditionalists
Researcher (PI) Kristina Stoeckl
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2015-STG
Summary The POSEC project proposes the study of a hitherto under-researched phenomenon in the field of religion and politics: the rise of traditionalists, i.e. religious actors who rely on the conservative religious and political establishment in their respective home-countries, co-opt political and civil society actors, and forge transnational alliances, thereby inaugurating a new kind of religious politics which has not yet been studied and theorized in depth. The project will explore the agenda and transnational networks of traditionalist moral conservative actors from the perspective of the Russian Orthodox Church and its connections with the Russian political establishment on the grounds that it is necessary to understand the role and the resources of Russian politics and Orthodox religion in order to assess correctly the scope of this “moralist international” and the challenge it poses to liberal democracy. The research will analyse traditionalist actors and their ideas with regard to the three main areas where religious-moral conflicts emerge – religious symbols & free speech, sexuality & gender, and bioethics & biotechnology – and across four international institutional settings – the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, and forums of inter-religious dialogue like the World Council of Churches. Adopting a contextualized political theory approach, the project will develop on the basis of the empirical and theoretical insights drawn from this case-study a reflexive political pluralist model of moral conflicts. This model offers an innovative extension to political liberalism inasmuch as it assesses within the political liberal framework the new reality of majoritarian, transnational traditionalist politics.
Summary
The POSEC project proposes the study of a hitherto under-researched phenomenon in the field of religion and politics: the rise of traditionalists, i.e. religious actors who rely on the conservative religious and political establishment in their respective home-countries, co-opt political and civil society actors, and forge transnational alliances, thereby inaugurating a new kind of religious politics which has not yet been studied and theorized in depth. The project will explore the agenda and transnational networks of traditionalist moral conservative actors from the perspective of the Russian Orthodox Church and its connections with the Russian political establishment on the grounds that it is necessary to understand the role and the resources of Russian politics and Orthodox religion in order to assess correctly the scope of this “moralist international” and the challenge it poses to liberal democracy. The research will analyse traditionalist actors and their ideas with regard to the three main areas where religious-moral conflicts emerge – religious symbols & free speech, sexuality & gender, and bioethics & biotechnology – and across four international institutional settings – the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, and forums of inter-religious dialogue like the World Council of Churches. Adopting a contextualized political theory approach, the project will develop on the basis of the empirical and theoretical insights drawn from this case-study a reflexive political pluralist model of moral conflicts. This model offers an innovative extension to political liberalism inasmuch as it assesses within the political liberal framework the new reality of majoritarian, transnational traditionalist politics.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 260 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-05-01, End date: 2021-04-30
Project acronym POSTDATA
Project Poetry Standardization and Linked Open Data
Researcher (PI) Elena Gonzalez-Blanco Garcia
Host Institution (HI) INDRA SISTEMAS SA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2015-STG
Summary This project aims at bridging the digital gap among traditional cultural assets and the growing world of data. It is focused on poetry analysis, classification and publication, applying Digital Humanities methods of academic analysis -such as XML-TEI encoding- in order to look for standardization. Interoperability problems between the different poetry collections are solved by using semantic web technologies to link and publish literary datasets in a structured way in the linked data cloud. The advantages of making poetry available online as machine-readable linked data are threefold: first, the academic community will have an accessible digital platform to work with poetic corpora and to contribute to its enrichment with their own texts; second, this way of encoding and standardizing poetic information will be a guarantee of preservation for poems published only in old books or even transmitted orally, as texts will be digitized and stored as XML files; third: datasets and corpora will be available and open access to be used by the community for other purposes, such as education, cultural diffusion or entertainment. To accomplish such a ground-breaking approach, I have a hybrid profile, combining a strong philological background, specialized in poetry and metrics, with a deep knowledge of Digital Humanities proven by my leadership and experience in interdisciplinary projects. Since 2011, I am the Principal Investigator of the first Digital Repertoire of Medieval Spanish Poetry (ReMetCa), an innovative project that combines traditional metrical analysis with digital text encoding, and since 2014 I am the Academic Director of LINHD, The Digital Humanities Innovation Lab created at UNED as a research interdisciplinary centre.
Summary
This project aims at bridging the digital gap among traditional cultural assets and the growing world of data. It is focused on poetry analysis, classification and publication, applying Digital Humanities methods of academic analysis -such as XML-TEI encoding- in order to look for standardization. Interoperability problems between the different poetry collections are solved by using semantic web technologies to link and publish literary datasets in a structured way in the linked data cloud. The advantages of making poetry available online as machine-readable linked data are threefold: first, the academic community will have an accessible digital platform to work with poetic corpora and to contribute to its enrichment with their own texts; second, this way of encoding and standardizing poetic information will be a guarantee of preservation for poems published only in old books or even transmitted orally, as texts will be digitized and stored as XML files; third: datasets and corpora will be available and open access to be used by the community for other purposes, such as education, cultural diffusion or entertainment. To accomplish such a ground-breaking approach, I have a hybrid profile, combining a strong philological background, specialized in poetry and metrics, with a deep knowledge of Digital Humanities proven by my leadership and experience in interdisciplinary projects. Since 2011, I am the Principal Investigator of the first Digital Repertoire of Medieval Spanish Poetry (ReMetCa), an innovative project that combines traditional metrical analysis with digital text encoding, and since 2014 I am the Academic Director of LINHD, The Digital Humanities Innovation Lab created at UNED as a research interdisciplinary centre.
Max ERC Funding
1 131 413 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-05-01, End date: 2021-04-30
Project acronym PREMETAZOANEVOLUTION
Project Unravelling the unicellular prehistory of metazoans with functional analyses and single-cell genomics
Researcher (PI) Iñaki Ruiz Trillo
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), LS8, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "How multicellular animals (metazoans) emerged from their single-celled ancestor remains a long-standing evolutionary question. Recent genome data has shown that the unicellular ancestor of metazoans already had a complex gene repertoire for genes involved in cell adhesion, cell signaling and transcriptional regulation, including integrins, cadherins, T-box genes, and protein tyrosine kinases. Thus, besides a few metazoan-specific genes, gene co-option and, probably, an increase in gene regulation played important roles into the origin of Metazoa. However, the lack of genetic tools among metazoan’s closest relatives has so far precluded further investigations at the molecular level. Our recent establishment, for the first time, of transgenesis methodologies in two close unicellular relatives of metazoans (both the ichthyosporean Creolimax fragrantissima and the filasterean Capsaspora owczarzaki), allow us to approach these questions in ways that were not previously possible. Thus, we aim to push forward these two model systems and infer, by cell biology and functional genomics, the ancestral function of those genes key to multicellularity in order to understand how they were co-opted for new multicellular functions. In addition, we will analyze the regulation of the different cell stages and the colony formation (syncitial and aggregative multicellularity) in these two organism by functional genomics and identify when and how the metazoan histone code (an important regulatory layer of gene expression) evolved by analyzing the histone code in these taxa. Finally, to understand the ecology, distribution and adaptation of these unicellular taxa we will obtain the complete genome sequence of uncultured lineages by using single-cell genomics. This research will not only markedly improve our understanding of a major biological question (the origin of metazoan multicellularity) but will also generate new data relevant to a broad range of researchers."
Summary
"How multicellular animals (metazoans) emerged from their single-celled ancestor remains a long-standing evolutionary question. Recent genome data has shown that the unicellular ancestor of metazoans already had a complex gene repertoire for genes involved in cell adhesion, cell signaling and transcriptional regulation, including integrins, cadherins, T-box genes, and protein tyrosine kinases. Thus, besides a few metazoan-specific genes, gene co-option and, probably, an increase in gene regulation played important roles into the origin of Metazoa. However, the lack of genetic tools among metazoan’s closest relatives has so far precluded further investigations at the molecular level. Our recent establishment, for the first time, of transgenesis methodologies in two close unicellular relatives of metazoans (both the ichthyosporean Creolimax fragrantissima and the filasterean Capsaspora owczarzaki), allow us to approach these questions in ways that were not previously possible. Thus, we aim to push forward these two model systems and infer, by cell biology and functional genomics, the ancestral function of those genes key to multicellularity in order to understand how they were co-opted for new multicellular functions. In addition, we will analyze the regulation of the different cell stages and the colony formation (syncitial and aggregative multicellularity) in these two organism by functional genomics and identify when and how the metazoan histone code (an important regulatory layer of gene expression) evolved by analyzing the histone code in these taxa. Finally, to understand the ecology, distribution and adaptation of these unicellular taxa we will obtain the complete genome sequence of uncultured lineages by using single-cell genomics. This research will not only markedly improve our understanding of a major biological question (the origin of metazoan multicellularity) but will also generate new data relevant to a broad range of researchers."
Max ERC Funding
1 967 535 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30
Project acronym PRODUCTION OF WORK
Project The production of work. Welfare, labour-market and the disputed boundaries of labour (1880-1938)
Researcher (PI) Sigrid Wadauer
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2007-StG
Summary Since the late 19th century modern social welfare policy has established social insurances in certain formalized cases of non-work: in case of old age, illness, invalidity, and unemployment. Doing so, it gained importance to control the entitlement to social welfare, national affiliation, willingness or (in-)ability to work. These new regulations of work and non-work also manifested new concepts of work and vocation. Simultaneously and with reference to the new social status of labour and to the new social rights debates on vagrancy, begging and the work-shy relived a new boom. Who should receive help? Who is a threat to the greater public good by refusing labour? Not every way to find income was equally acknowledged as work. There was a variety of activities changeable between work, hunting for a job, non-work, begging and vagrancy. These activities were suspected of being a cover of work-shyness and negative work. Through that they belonged to a disputed sphere at the margins of welfare, labour market and criminality. Within this context unskilled, occasional, seasonal labour were further marginalized and subject of re-definition. The project analyses these disputed boundaries of work. It will focus on Austria 1918-1938, but it aims at an international comparison and will consider relevant developments since the late 19th century, too. The project will study precarious forms of waged labour and non-work within the context of the organisations of labour market, search for employment and job placement. Therefore it is of fundamental importance to include marginal perspectives and practices into the analysis. How did concepts of vocational work and their binding character vary according to age, gender and ethnicity? In which ways were work and non-work defined? How were the distinctions and hierarchies practically implemented? Of particular interest is the tramping of the unemployed and forms of integration, support and control of ramblers being related to it.
Summary
Since the late 19th century modern social welfare policy has established social insurances in certain formalized cases of non-work: in case of old age, illness, invalidity, and unemployment. Doing so, it gained importance to control the entitlement to social welfare, national affiliation, willingness or (in-)ability to work. These new regulations of work and non-work also manifested new concepts of work and vocation. Simultaneously and with reference to the new social status of labour and to the new social rights debates on vagrancy, begging and the work-shy relived a new boom. Who should receive help? Who is a threat to the greater public good by refusing labour? Not every way to find income was equally acknowledged as work. There was a variety of activities changeable between work, hunting for a job, non-work, begging and vagrancy. These activities were suspected of being a cover of work-shyness and negative work. Through that they belonged to a disputed sphere at the margins of welfare, labour market and criminality. Within this context unskilled, occasional, seasonal labour were further marginalized and subject of re-definition. The project analyses these disputed boundaries of work. It will focus on Austria 1918-1938, but it aims at an international comparison and will consider relevant developments since the late 19th century, too. The project will study precarious forms of waged labour and non-work within the context of the organisations of labour market, search for employment and job placement. Therefore it is of fundamental importance to include marginal perspectives and practices into the analysis. How did concepts of vocational work and their binding character vary according to age, gender and ethnicity? In which ways were work and non-work defined? How were the distinctions and hierarchies practically implemented? Of particular interest is the tramping of the unemployed and forms of integration, support and control of ramblers being related to it.
Max ERC Funding
1 372 760 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-10-01, End date: 2013-09-30
Project acronym PROTEUS
Project Paradoxes and Metaphors of Time in Early Universe(s)
Researcher (PI) Silvia DE BIANCHI
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2017-STG
Summary PROTEUS studies main strategies devised by Western philosophy in representing time in cosmology. It aims at modifying current metaphysics and its relationship with cosmology in the light of recent scientific debates in quantum gravity and quantum cosmology, thereby boosting a new research field in history and philosophy of cosmology. The project is based on two hypotheses: 1) the history of philosophy reveals a guideline that can be traced back to Plato and that characterizes physical and metaphysical approaches to the question of the beginning of the universe in terms of a tension between fundamentality and non-fundamentality of time; 2) there is a conceptual problematic assumption in Western culture and it consists in shaping the problem of the origin of the world as a problem of thinking about the very same conditions of possibility of the origin of a process that is not in time. The project spells out the conceptual roots of current representations of time in quantum gravity and quantum cosmology and highlights the conceptual break that they provide with respect to philosophical concepts of time portrayed in previous systems. PROTEUS explores in detail the notions of time and the paradoxes emerging in the philosophy and cosmology of Plato and Kant and identifies the fundamental characters of emergent time in current quantum gravity theories. In identifying these fundamental features, PROTEUS produces conceptual innovation in metaphysics in such a way that philosophical investigation is complementary to the development of current theories. PROTEUS elaborates alternative argument(s) to anthropic principle, as well as new categories accounting for the notion of ‘contingent necessity’ of the world. The research team includes members from different backgrounds (philosophy, mathematics and physics) and will promote the application of a new methodology emphasizing the relevance of the history of philosophy and the actual interaction between philosophers and scientists.
Summary
PROTEUS studies main strategies devised by Western philosophy in representing time in cosmology. It aims at modifying current metaphysics and its relationship with cosmology in the light of recent scientific debates in quantum gravity and quantum cosmology, thereby boosting a new research field in history and philosophy of cosmology. The project is based on two hypotheses: 1) the history of philosophy reveals a guideline that can be traced back to Plato and that characterizes physical and metaphysical approaches to the question of the beginning of the universe in terms of a tension between fundamentality and non-fundamentality of time; 2) there is a conceptual problematic assumption in Western culture and it consists in shaping the problem of the origin of the world as a problem of thinking about the very same conditions of possibility of the origin of a process that is not in time. The project spells out the conceptual roots of current representations of time in quantum gravity and quantum cosmology and highlights the conceptual break that they provide with respect to philosophical concepts of time portrayed in previous systems. PROTEUS explores in detail the notions of time and the paradoxes emerging in the philosophy and cosmology of Plato and Kant and identifies the fundamental characters of emergent time in current quantum gravity theories. In identifying these fundamental features, PROTEUS produces conceptual innovation in metaphysics in such a way that philosophical investigation is complementary to the development of current theories. PROTEUS elaborates alternative argument(s) to anthropic principle, as well as new categories accounting for the notion of ‘contingent necessity’ of the world. The research team includes members from different backgrounds (philosophy, mathematics and physics) and will promote the application of a new methodology emphasizing the relevance of the history of philosophy and the actual interaction between philosophers and scientists.
Max ERC Funding
1 418 869 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31
