ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Alfonsine astronomy is arguably among the first European scientific achievements. It shaped a scene for actors like Regiomontanus or Copernicus. There is however little detailed historical analysis encompassing its development in its full breadth. ALFA addresses this issue by studying tables, instruments, mathematical and theoretical texts in a methodologically innovative way relying on approaches from the history of manuscript cultures, history of mathematics, and history of astronomy. ALFA integrates these approaches not only to benefit from different perspectives but also to build new questions from their interactions. For instance the analysis of mathematical practices in astral sciences manuscripts induces new ways to analyse the documents and to think about astronomical questions. Relying on these approaches the main objectives of ALFA are thus to: - Retrace the development of the corpus of Alfonsine texts from its origin in the second half of the 13th century to the end of the 15th century by following, on the manuscript level, the milieus fostering it; - Analyse the Alfonsine astronomers’ practices, their relations to mathematics, to the natural world, to proofs and justification, their intellectual context and audiences; - Build a meaningful narrative showing how astronomers in different milieus with diverse practices shaped, also from Arabic materials, an original scientific scene in Europe. ALFA will shed new light on the intellectual history of the late medieval period as a whole and produce a better understanding of its relations to related scientific periods in Europe and beyond. It will also produce methodological breakthroughs impacting the ways history of knowledge is practiced outside the field of ancient and medieval sciences. Efforts will be devoted to bring these results not only to the relevant scholarly communities but also to a wider audience as a resource in the public debates around science, knowledge and culture.

1 871 250 €

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31

Knowledge is an anthropological constant that is indissociable from the birth and interactions of human societies, but is at best a secondary concern for scholars of international relations and globalization. Contemporary global studies are thus unable to account for the co-constitution of knowledge and politics at a macro-scale, and remain especially blind to the historical patterns of epistemic development that operate at the level of the species as a whole and have shaped its global political history in specific, path-dependent ways up to now. ARTEFACT is the first project to pursue a knowledge-centered investigation of global politics. It is uniquely grounded in an anthropological approach that treats globalization and human knowledges beyond their modern manifestations, from the longue-durée perspective of our species’ social history. 'The global as artefact' is more than a metaphor. It reflects the premise that human collectives 'make' the political world not merely through ideas, language, or norms, but primordially through the material infrastructures, solutions, objects, practices, and skills they develop in response to evolving structural challenges. ARTEFACT takes agriculture as an exemplary and especially timely case-study to illuminate the entangled global histories of knowledge and politics, analyzing and comparing four increasingly inclusive 'global political systems' of the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary eras and their associated agrarian socio-epistemic revolutions. ARTEFACT ultimately aims to 1) develop an original theory of the global, 2) launch Global Knowledge Studies as a new cross-disciplinary domain of systematic empirical and theoretical study, and 3) push the respective boundaries of the anthropology of knowledge, global history, and international theory beyond the state-of-the-art and toward a holistic understanding that can illuminate how past trends of socio-epistemic evolution might shape future paths of global life.

1 428 165 €

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2023-02-28

This project focuses on the historical analysis of institutions and their impact on economic development through the investigation of a legal instrument – general average (GA) – which underpins maritime trade by redistributing damages’ costs across all interested parties. This will be pursued through the comparative investigation of GA in those European countries where substantial data exists: Italy, Spain, England, France and the Low Countries (1500-1800). Average and insurance were both created in the Middle Ages to facilitate trade through the redistribution of risk. Insurance has been widely studied, average – the expenses which can befall ships and cargoes from the time of their loading aboard until their unloading (due to accidents, jettison, and unexpected costs) – has been neglected. GA still plays an essential role in the redistribution of transaction costs, and being a form of strictly mutual self-protection, never evolved into a speculative financial instrument as insurance did; it therefore represents an excellent case of long-term effectiveness of a non-market economic phenomenon. Although the principle behind GA was very similar across Europe, in practice there were substantial differences in declaring and adjudicating claims. GA reports provide unparalleled evidence on maritime trade which, analysed quantitatively and quantitatively through a novel interdisciplinary approach, will contribute to the reassessment of the role played by the maritime sector in fostering economic growth during the early modern first globalization, when GA was the object of fierce debates on state jurisdiction and standardization of practice. Today they are regulated by the York-Antwerp Rules (YAR), currently under revision. This timely conjuncture provides plenty of opportunities for active engagement with practitioners, thereby fostering a creative dialogue on GA historical study and its future development to better face the challenges of mature globalization.

1 854 256 €

Start date: 2017-07-01, End date: 2022-12-31

Monoclonal antibodies against the EGF receptor (EGFR) provide substantive benefit to colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. However, no genetic lesions that robustly predict ‘addiction’ to the EGFR pathway have been yet identified. Further, even in tumours that regress after EGFR blockade, subsets of drug-tolerant cells often linger and foster ‘minimal residual disease’ (MRD), which portends tumour relapse. Our preliminary evidence suggests that reliance on EGFR activity, as opposed to MRD persistence, could be assisted by genetically-based variations in transcription factor partnerships and activities, gene expression outputs, and biological fates controlled by the WNT/beta-catenin pathway. On such premises, BEAT (Beta-catenin and EGFR Abrogation Therapy) will elucidate the mechanisms of EGFR dependency, and escape from it, with the goal to identify biomarkers for more efficient clinical management of CRC and develop new therapies for MRD eradication. A multidisciplinary approach will be pursued spanning from integrative gene regulation analyses to functional genomics in vitro, pharmacological experiments in vivo, and clinical investigation, to address whether: (i) specific genetic alterations of the WNT pathway affect anti-EGFR sensitivity; (ii) combined neutralisation of EGFR and WNT signals fuels MRD deterioration; (iii) data from analysis of this synergy can lead to the discovery of clinically meaningful biomarkers with predictive and prognostic significance. This proposal capitalises on a unique proprietary platform for high-content studies based on a large biobank of viable CRC samples, which ensures strong analytical power and unprecedented biological flexibility. By providing fresh insight into the mechanisms whereby WNT/beta-catenin signalling differentially sustains EGFR dependency or drug tolerance, the project is expected to put forward an innovative reinterpretation of CRC molecular bases and advance the rational application of more effective therapies.

1 793 421 €

Start date: 2017-10-01, End date: 2022-09-30