Project acronym ALORS
Project Advanced Lagrangian Optimization, Receptivity and Sensitivity analysis applied to industrial situations
Researcher (PI) Matthew Pudan Juniper
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE8, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary In the last ten years there has been a surge of interest in non-modal analysis applied to canonical problems in fundamental fluid mechanics. Even in simple flows, the stability behaviour predicted by non-modal analysis can be completely different from and far more accurate than that predicted by conventional eigenvalue analysis.
As well as being more accurate, the tools of non-modal analysis, such as Lagrangian optimization, are very versatile. Furthermore, the outputs, such as receptivity and sensitivity maps of a flow, provide powerful insight for engineers. They describe where a flow is most receptive to forcing or where the flow is most sensitive to modification.
The application of non-modal analysis to canonical problems has set the scene for step changes in engineering practice in fluid mechanics and thermoacoustics. The technical objectives of this proposal are to apply non-modal analysis to high Reynolds number flows, reacting flows and thermoacoustic systems, to compare theoretical predictions with experimental measurements and to embed these techniques within an industrial design tool that has already been developed by the group.
This research group s vision is that future generations of engineering CFD tools will contain modules that can perform non-modal analysis. The generalized approach proposed here, combined with challenging scientific and engineering examples that are backed up by experimental evidence, will make this possible and demonstrate it to a wider engineering community.
Summary
In the last ten years there has been a surge of interest in non-modal analysis applied to canonical problems in fundamental fluid mechanics. Even in simple flows, the stability behaviour predicted by non-modal analysis can be completely different from and far more accurate than that predicted by conventional eigenvalue analysis.
As well as being more accurate, the tools of non-modal analysis, such as Lagrangian optimization, are very versatile. Furthermore, the outputs, such as receptivity and sensitivity maps of a flow, provide powerful insight for engineers. They describe where a flow is most receptive to forcing or where the flow is most sensitive to modification.
The application of non-modal analysis to canonical problems has set the scene for step changes in engineering practice in fluid mechanics and thermoacoustics. The technical objectives of this proposal are to apply non-modal analysis to high Reynolds number flows, reacting flows and thermoacoustic systems, to compare theoretical predictions with experimental measurements and to embed these techniques within an industrial design tool that has already been developed by the group.
This research group s vision is that future generations of engineering CFD tools will contain modules that can perform non-modal analysis. The generalized approach proposed here, combined with challenging scientific and engineering examples that are backed up by experimental evidence, will make this possible and demonstrate it to a wider engineering community.
Max ERC Funding
1 301 196 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-12-01, End date: 2016-06-30
Project acronym BIOPROPERTY
Project Biomedical Research and the Future of Property Rights
Researcher (PI) Javier Lezaun Barreras
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary This research project investigates the dynamics of private and public property in contemporary biomedical research. It will develop an analytical framework combining insights from science and technology studies, economic sociology, and legal and political philosophy, and pursues a social scientific investigation of the evolution of intellectual property rights in three fields of bioscientific research: 1) the use of transgenic research mice; 2) the legal status of totipotent and pluripotent stem cell lines; and 3) modes of collaboration for research and development on neglected diseases. These three domains, and their attendant modes of appropriation, will be compared across three general research themes: a) the production of public scientific goods; b) categories of appropriation; and c) the moral economy of research. The project rests on close observation of research practices in these three domains. The BioProperty research programme will track the trajectories of property rights and property objects in each of the three fields of biomedical research.
Summary
This research project investigates the dynamics of private and public property in contemporary biomedical research. It will develop an analytical framework combining insights from science and technology studies, economic sociology, and legal and political philosophy, and pursues a social scientific investigation of the evolution of intellectual property rights in three fields of bioscientific research: 1) the use of transgenic research mice; 2) the legal status of totipotent and pluripotent stem cell lines; and 3) modes of collaboration for research and development on neglected diseases. These three domains, and their attendant modes of appropriation, will be compared across three general research themes: a) the production of public scientific goods; b) categories of appropriation; and c) the moral economy of research. The project rests on close observation of research practices in these three domains. The BioProperty research programme will track the trajectories of property rights and property objects in each of the three fields of biomedical research.
Max ERC Funding
887 602 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-03-01, End date: 2014-12-31
Project acronym BROKEX
Project Brokering China’s Extraversion: An Ethnographic Analysis of Transnational Arbitration
Researcher (PI) Heidi Østbø HAUGEN
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2018-STG
Summary Chinese global engagements are deepening across sectors and geographic regions. The objective of BROKEX is to fill specific gaps in knowledge about how China’s extraversion advances. The project takes an original approach by examining brokers who mediate in transnational fields. It opens the “black box” of China’s global integration by moving beyond descriptions of input and output characteristics to elucidate underlying dynamics. The objective will be achieved in two phases. First, the PI and two postdoctoral researchers will carry out ethnographic case studies in the Pearl River Delta, South China, that yield complementary information on the common challenge of brokering across geographic scales: * Connecting low-cost Chinese manufacturing with African markets; * Integrating Chinese academic research with global scientific communities; * Transnational architecture production. The diverse cases offer insights into the mechanisms of brokerage across distinctive sectors. In the second step, we build on the empirical findings and literature to develop brokerage theory. Social scientific research on brokerage commonly uses the morphology of social networks as its starting point, and focuses on how actors positioned at the intersection between groups operate. BROKEX adopts an innovative approach by examining how actors strategically seek to shape network morphologies in order to bridge gaps between groups. By directing theoretical attention towards relationship formation that precedes acts of brokerage, this line of inquiry advances understandings of how and why brokered connections emerge. Ethnographic case studies combined with critical theorization will generate new knowledge about the processes beneath the “rise of China” ─ one of the most consequential socioeconomic developments of our times.
Summary
Chinese global engagements are deepening across sectors and geographic regions. The objective of BROKEX is to fill specific gaps in knowledge about how China’s extraversion advances. The project takes an original approach by examining brokers who mediate in transnational fields. It opens the “black box” of China’s global integration by moving beyond descriptions of input and output characteristics to elucidate underlying dynamics. The objective will be achieved in two phases. First, the PI and two postdoctoral researchers will carry out ethnographic case studies in the Pearl River Delta, South China, that yield complementary information on the common challenge of brokering across geographic scales: * Connecting low-cost Chinese manufacturing with African markets; * Integrating Chinese academic research with global scientific communities; * Transnational architecture production. The diverse cases offer insights into the mechanisms of brokerage across distinctive sectors. In the second step, we build on the empirical findings and literature to develop brokerage theory. Social scientific research on brokerage commonly uses the morphology of social networks as its starting point, and focuses on how actors positioned at the intersection between groups operate. BROKEX adopts an innovative approach by examining how actors strategically seek to shape network morphologies in order to bridge gaps between groups. By directing theoretical attention towards relationship formation that precedes acts of brokerage, this line of inquiry advances understandings of how and why brokered connections emerge. Ethnographic case studies combined with critical theorization will generate new knowledge about the processes beneath the “rise of China” ─ one of the most consequential socioeconomic developments of our times.
Max ERC Funding
1 490 773 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31
Project acronym CALENDARS
Project Co-production of seasonal representations for adaptive institutions
Researcher (PI) Scott Ronald BREMER
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2018-STG
Summary Climate change may be undermining the stock of seasonal representations that society draws on to understand and live according to the weather. The CALENDARS project studies how modern society represents seasons, and how these representations shape institutions and help people live with seasonal change. The project opens an important emerging field in climate adaptation research by examining the representations of ‘normal’ seasons underlying key institutions, assesses their quality for successful adaptation to rapid climate change, and analyses facilitators and barriers to adopting representations more flexibly to new climates. It contributes a novel perspective on how to transform our institutions – from schools to farmer cooperatives – from the foundational culture and representations up, to better fit the changing seasonal cycles we are experiencing.
CALENDARS empirically explores the relationship between different institutions’ ideas of seasons and their successful adaptation through an in-depth comparative study of a set of institutions in two local communities, in Norway and New Zealand. It is steered by an overall objective to: ‘Advance knowledge and understanding of how seasonal representations shape and are shaped by institutions, and critically appraise the quality of these representations for contributing to successful adaptation to seasonal change’.
Conceptually, CALENDARS looks at representations as continuously ‘co-produced’ at the boundary of nature and society, and society and institutions. It tests a novel reconceptualisation of co-production as a prism; with each of the project’s three phases looking at the complex processes by which representations emerge through different ‘lenses’ of co-production. Methodologically, the project tests the feasibility of a novel basket of bespoke methods spanning narrative interviews, calendar boundary objects and collaborative sustainability science.
Summary
Climate change may be undermining the stock of seasonal representations that society draws on to understand and live according to the weather. The CALENDARS project studies how modern society represents seasons, and how these representations shape institutions and help people live with seasonal change. The project opens an important emerging field in climate adaptation research by examining the representations of ‘normal’ seasons underlying key institutions, assesses their quality for successful adaptation to rapid climate change, and analyses facilitators and barriers to adopting representations more flexibly to new climates. It contributes a novel perspective on how to transform our institutions – from schools to farmer cooperatives – from the foundational culture and representations up, to better fit the changing seasonal cycles we are experiencing.
CALENDARS empirically explores the relationship between different institutions’ ideas of seasons and their successful adaptation through an in-depth comparative study of a set of institutions in two local communities, in Norway and New Zealand. It is steered by an overall objective to: ‘Advance knowledge and understanding of how seasonal representations shape and are shaped by institutions, and critically appraise the quality of these representations for contributing to successful adaptation to seasonal change’.
Conceptually, CALENDARS looks at representations as continuously ‘co-produced’ at the boundary of nature and society, and society and institutions. It tests a novel reconceptualisation of co-production as a prism; with each of the project’s three phases looking at the complex processes by which representations emerge through different ‘lenses’ of co-production. Methodologically, the project tests the feasibility of a novel basket of bespoke methods spanning narrative interviews, calendar boundary objects and collaborative sustainability science.
Max ERC Funding
1 489 426 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31
Project acronym CLD
Project China, Law, and Development
Researcher (PI) Matthew ERIE
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2018-STG
Summary The world is in the midst of a sea change in approaches to development. The rise of nationalist politics in the U.S., U.K. and Europe have questioned commitments to global governance at the same time that China has emerged as a champion of globalization, a turn of geo-political events that would have been unfathomable ten years ago. Through its own multi-lateral institutions, China is setting a new agenda for development from Europe to Oceania. China’s approach differs from Anglo/Euro/American approaches to “law and development” (LD). Whereas LD orthodoxy has sought to improve legal institutions in poor states, Chinese do not foster rule of law abroad. Instead, Chinese view law as one set of rules, among others, to facilitate economic transactions and not to foster democratization. This distinction has sparked a global debate about the so-called “China model” as an alternative to LD. Yet there is little empirical data with which to assess the means and ends of China’s expanded footprint, a question with long-term implications for much of the developing world. This project addresses that problem by proposing that even if Chinese cross-border development does not operate through transparent rules, it nonetheless has its own notion of order. The project adopts a multi-sited, mixed method, and interdisciplinary approach—at the intersection of comparative law, developmental studies, and legal anthropology—to understand the nature of China’s order. The project has two objectives:
1. To establish the conceptual bases for the study of China’s approach to law and development by developing the first systematic study of the impacts of Chinese investment on the legal systems of developing economies.
2. To experiment with a comparative research design to theorize how China’s approach suggests a type of order that extends through a conjuncture of regional and local processes and manifests itself differently in diverse contexts.
Summary
The world is in the midst of a sea change in approaches to development. The rise of nationalist politics in the U.S., U.K. and Europe have questioned commitments to global governance at the same time that China has emerged as a champion of globalization, a turn of geo-political events that would have been unfathomable ten years ago. Through its own multi-lateral institutions, China is setting a new agenda for development from Europe to Oceania. China’s approach differs from Anglo/Euro/American approaches to “law and development” (LD). Whereas LD orthodoxy has sought to improve legal institutions in poor states, Chinese do not foster rule of law abroad. Instead, Chinese view law as one set of rules, among others, to facilitate economic transactions and not to foster democratization. This distinction has sparked a global debate about the so-called “China model” as an alternative to LD. Yet there is little empirical data with which to assess the means and ends of China’s expanded footprint, a question with long-term implications for much of the developing world. This project addresses that problem by proposing that even if Chinese cross-border development does not operate through transparent rules, it nonetheless has its own notion of order. The project adopts a multi-sited, mixed method, and interdisciplinary approach—at the intersection of comparative law, developmental studies, and legal anthropology—to understand the nature of China’s order. The project has two objectives:
1. To establish the conceptual bases for the study of China’s approach to law and development by developing the first systematic study of the impacts of Chinese investment on the legal systems of developing economies.
2. To experiment with a comparative research design to theorize how China’s approach suggests a type of order that extends through a conjuncture of regional and local processes and manifests itself differently in diverse contexts.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 381 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31
Project acronym CONSULTATIONEFFECTS
Project Effects of stakeholder consultations on inputs, processes and outcomes of executive policymaking
Researcher (PI) Adriana BUNEA
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2018-STG
Summary Consultations with stakeholders (citizens and interest organizations) are frequently used by executive bureaucracies to design policies and formulate legislation. National ministries, regulatory agencies and the European Commission employ a variety of consultation designs that combine different practices - public consultations, public hearings, workshops, expert groups, advisory committees. Consultations are key to European economic growth strategies such as the Lisbon Agenda and Europe 2020. Despite their near ubiquitous use and legitimising rhetoric, there is currently no systematic analysis assessing empirically the assumption that stakeholders’ participation in policymaking via consultations improves policymaking and results in better outcomes and more legitimate governance. This project aims to address this gap and to systematically investigate and explain the effects of stakeholder consultation designs on policy inputs, processes and outcomes of executive policymaking in 29 political systems: all 28 EU Member States and the EU polity. The project pioneers a path-breaking conceptualisation of consultation designs as representative institutions similar to electoral systems. They play a key instrumental role in the institutional balance of power and constitute a new source of bureaucratic reputation, autonomy and power. The project elaborates an original theory explaining consultation effects on policymaking that accounts for the intrinsic challenges of democratising twenty-first century bureaucracies, and the inherent trade-offs of democratic and technocratic policymaking. Empirically, the project breaks new ground by designing an ambitious data collection strategy aimed to construct an unprecedented, cross-national, comparative dataset on stakeholder consultation designs and characteristics of inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes observed at policy proposal level, across policy areas and political systems.
Summary
Consultations with stakeholders (citizens and interest organizations) are frequently used by executive bureaucracies to design policies and formulate legislation. National ministries, regulatory agencies and the European Commission employ a variety of consultation designs that combine different practices - public consultations, public hearings, workshops, expert groups, advisory committees. Consultations are key to European economic growth strategies such as the Lisbon Agenda and Europe 2020. Despite their near ubiquitous use and legitimising rhetoric, there is currently no systematic analysis assessing empirically the assumption that stakeholders’ participation in policymaking via consultations improves policymaking and results in better outcomes and more legitimate governance. This project aims to address this gap and to systematically investigate and explain the effects of stakeholder consultation designs on policy inputs, processes and outcomes of executive policymaking in 29 political systems: all 28 EU Member States and the EU polity. The project pioneers a path-breaking conceptualisation of consultation designs as representative institutions similar to electoral systems. They play a key instrumental role in the institutional balance of power and constitute a new source of bureaucratic reputation, autonomy and power. The project elaborates an original theory explaining consultation effects on policymaking that accounts for the intrinsic challenges of democratising twenty-first century bureaucracies, and the inherent trade-offs of democratic and technocratic policymaking. Empirically, the project breaks new ground by designing an ambitious data collection strategy aimed to construct an unprecedented, cross-national, comparative dataset on stakeholder consultation designs and characteristics of inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes observed at policy proposal level, across policy areas and political systems.
Max ERC Funding
1 424 856 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-04-01, End date: 2024-03-31
Project acronym CRIMMIGRATION
Project 'Crimmigration': Crime Control in the Borderlands of Europe
Researcher (PI) Katja Franko Aas
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Control of migration is becoming an increasingly important task of contemporary policing and criminal justice agencies. The purpose of this project is to map the progressive intertwining and merging of crime control and migration control practices in Europe and to examine their implications.
The project is guided by three sets of research questions: 1) How do contemporary police and criminal justice institutions deal with unwanted mobility and the influx of „aliens‟ (i.e. non-citizens) to their territories? 2) What is the relevance of citizenship for European penal systems? and 3) How do contemporary crime control practices support and perform the task of (cultural and territorial) border control?
The project aims to analyse the impact of the growing emphasis on migration control on criminal justice agencies such as the police, prisons and detention facilities. The basic hypothesis of the project is that migration control objectives are contributing to the development of novel forms of punishment and new rationalities of social control termed „crimmigration‟. The project aims to describe these novel hybrid forms of control since they constitute important conceptual challenges for criminal justice scholarship and require new theoretical perspectives. A question will be asked: what kind of break from traditional criminal justice practices and principles do they represent? Is the focus on punishment and reintegration of offenders gradually being replaced by a focus on diversion, immobilisation and deportation? Moreover what kind of legal, organisational and normative responses do they require?
Summary
Control of migration is becoming an increasingly important task of contemporary policing and criminal justice agencies. The purpose of this project is to map the progressive intertwining and merging of crime control and migration control practices in Europe and to examine their implications.
The project is guided by three sets of research questions: 1) How do contemporary police and criminal justice institutions deal with unwanted mobility and the influx of „aliens‟ (i.e. non-citizens) to their territories? 2) What is the relevance of citizenship for European penal systems? and 3) How do contemporary crime control practices support and perform the task of (cultural and territorial) border control?
The project aims to analyse the impact of the growing emphasis on migration control on criminal justice agencies such as the police, prisons and detention facilities. The basic hypothesis of the project is that migration control objectives are contributing to the development of novel forms of punishment and new rationalities of social control termed „crimmigration‟. The project aims to describe these novel hybrid forms of control since they constitute important conceptual challenges for criminal justice scholarship and require new theoretical perspectives. A question will be asked: what kind of break from traditional criminal justice practices and principles do they represent? Is the focus on punishment and reintegration of offenders gradually being replaced by a focus on diversion, immobilisation and deportation? Moreover what kind of legal, organisational and normative responses do they require?
Max ERC Funding
1 309 800 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-03-31
Project acronym DEBIDEM
Project Defining Belief and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean:
The Role of Interreligious Debate and Interaction
Researcher (PI) Ioannis Papadogiannakis
Host Institution (HI) KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary This project seeks to recover the processes by which religious beliefs and identities were defined through interreligious interaction and debate in the religious culture of a broader social base in the eastern Mediterranean (6-8th centuries AD) through examination of a neglected, unconventional corpus of medieval Greek, Syriac and Arabic literature of debate and disputation (consisting of collections of questions and answers, dialogues among others), treating authors such as Ps. Kaisarios, Anastasios of Sinai, and Ps. Athanasios. These sources help us to understand the kinds of perplexities that were being raised in Christian communities of the eastern Mediterranean as they negotiated a lively and contentious religious and social landscape, and they highlight the multifarious issues which Christian leaders had to be prepared to deal with in their pastoral, pedagogical, and apologetic work. At the same time these collections must be seen as an attempt by Christian authors to work out how Christianity was to define its position with regard to other religions (Hellenism, Judaism and Islam) in a period still characterized by considerable fluidity and change.
As well as writing those doubts, challenges, objections, concerns, issues and anxieties back into the religious history of the eastern Mediterranean, when completed this full-length study of these texts will provide scholars not only with a detailed knowledge of the ways in which religious belief, practice and communities were defined in contrast to other religious systems, and a fuller sense of the religious, social and intellectual history of the eastern Mediterranean but also with a nuanced picture of their self-definition, one which will be more sensitive to the processes that led to its formation.
Summary
This project seeks to recover the processes by which religious beliefs and identities were defined through interreligious interaction and debate in the religious culture of a broader social base in the eastern Mediterranean (6-8th centuries AD) through examination of a neglected, unconventional corpus of medieval Greek, Syriac and Arabic literature of debate and disputation (consisting of collections of questions and answers, dialogues among others), treating authors such as Ps. Kaisarios, Anastasios of Sinai, and Ps. Athanasios. These sources help us to understand the kinds of perplexities that were being raised in Christian communities of the eastern Mediterranean as they negotiated a lively and contentious religious and social landscape, and they highlight the multifarious issues which Christian leaders had to be prepared to deal with in their pastoral, pedagogical, and apologetic work. At the same time these collections must be seen as an attempt by Christian authors to work out how Christianity was to define its position with regard to other religions (Hellenism, Judaism and Islam) in a period still characterized by considerable fluidity and change.
As well as writing those doubts, challenges, objections, concerns, issues and anxieties back into the religious history of the eastern Mediterranean, when completed this full-length study of these texts will provide scholars not only with a detailed knowledge of the ways in which religious belief, practice and communities were defined in contrast to other religious systems, and a fuller sense of the religious, social and intellectual history of the eastern Mediterranean but also with a nuanced picture of their self-definition, one which will be more sensitive to the processes that led to its formation.
Max ERC Funding
1 483 119 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2016-12-31
Project acronym DEFTPORE
Project Deformation control on flow and transport in soft porous media
Researcher (PI) Christopher MacMinn
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE8, ERC-2018-STG
Summary Fluid flows through soft porous media are ubiquitous across nature and industry, from methane bubbles rising through lakebed and seabed sediments to nutrient transport in living cells and tissues to the manufacturing of paper products and many composites. Despite their ubiquity, flow and transport in these systems remain at the frontier of our ability to measure and model. A defining feature of soft porous media is that they can experience deformations that transform the pore structure. This has profound implications for the transport and mixing of solutes and the simultaneous flow of multiple fluid phases, both of which are strongly coupled to the pore structure. The goal of this project is to shed new light on flow and transport in soft porous media by studying a series of three canonical flow problems (tracer transport, miscible viscous fingering, and two-phase flow) across soft adaptations of three classical model systems (a soft-walled Hele Shaw cell, a quasi-2D packing of soft beads, and a cylindrical 3D “core” of soft beads). These flow problems and model systems have been thoroughly studied in the context of stiff porous media, allowing us to leverage decades of previous work and focus exclusively on the new behaviour introduced by “softness”. We will collect an extensive set of new, high-resolution experimental observations in each of these model systems, and we will reconcile these observations with mathematical models based on the traditional approach of upscaled constitutive functions. By updating this traditional approach to account for deformation, we will provide a new, pragmatic class of continuum models that capture the leading-order features of flow and transport in soft porous media. Our results will jumpstart the field of flow and transport in soft porous media, breaking open a vast new realm of research questions and applications around understanding, predicting, and controlling these complex systems.
Summary
Fluid flows through soft porous media are ubiquitous across nature and industry, from methane bubbles rising through lakebed and seabed sediments to nutrient transport in living cells and tissues to the manufacturing of paper products and many composites. Despite their ubiquity, flow and transport in these systems remain at the frontier of our ability to measure and model. A defining feature of soft porous media is that they can experience deformations that transform the pore structure. This has profound implications for the transport and mixing of solutes and the simultaneous flow of multiple fluid phases, both of which are strongly coupled to the pore structure. The goal of this project is to shed new light on flow and transport in soft porous media by studying a series of three canonical flow problems (tracer transport, miscible viscous fingering, and two-phase flow) across soft adaptations of three classical model systems (a soft-walled Hele Shaw cell, a quasi-2D packing of soft beads, and a cylindrical 3D “core” of soft beads). These flow problems and model systems have been thoroughly studied in the context of stiff porous media, allowing us to leverage decades of previous work and focus exclusively on the new behaviour introduced by “softness”. We will collect an extensive set of new, high-resolution experimental observations in each of these model systems, and we will reconcile these observations with mathematical models based on the traditional approach of upscaled constitutive functions. By updating this traditional approach to account for deformation, we will provide a new, pragmatic class of continuum models that capture the leading-order features of flow and transport in soft porous media. Our results will jumpstart the field of flow and transport in soft porous media, breaking open a vast new realm of research questions and applications around understanding, predicting, and controlling these complex systems.
Max ERC Funding
1 482 862 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31
Project acronym FIDELIO
Project Forecasting social Impacts of bioDiversity consErvation poLicies In EurOpe
Researcher (PI) Nikoleta JONES
Host Institution (HI) ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY HIGHER EDUCATION CORPORATION
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2018-STG
Summary Designating Protected Areas (PAs) is the most important policy tool for biodiversity conservation. Over 100 new PAs have been established in the past 36 months in European Union territory. However, effective management of PAs is often obstructed by conflicts mainly associated with the social impacts (SIs) imposed on local communities by their establishment. Despite the importance of these SIs there are certain aspects in this field that remain significantly under-researched. There is now an increasing need to incorporate SI assessments in decision making processes by providing a clear framework explaining how perceptions of these impacts are created and predicting their change in the future. This will support the achievement of international goals for biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change as well as better accounting for social justice issues for communities dependent on protected natural resources. The aim of FIDELIO is to develop for the first time a new paradigm in order to understand how perceptions of SIs are formulated taking into consideration the dimensions of space and time. FIDELIO will assist in increasing public engagement and the incorporation of local opinions in decision-making. It will also facilitate the process of policy development and a reduction in conflicts between different stakeholders in PAs. FIDELIO will last 5 years and its research objectives will be explored through the application of a mixed-methods approach including the implementation of two rounds of social surveys in 4 PAs across Europe and the testing of the framework in 15 additional PAs. This is an extremely timely project considering the steady increase of new PAs and the re-designation of current ones. FIDELIO will contribute to the better understanding of SIs and facilitate predictions for their change in the future, while assisting in maximizing social benefits for local communities arising from the designation of a PA.
Summary
Designating Protected Areas (PAs) is the most important policy tool for biodiversity conservation. Over 100 new PAs have been established in the past 36 months in European Union territory. However, effective management of PAs is often obstructed by conflicts mainly associated with the social impacts (SIs) imposed on local communities by their establishment. Despite the importance of these SIs there are certain aspects in this field that remain significantly under-researched. There is now an increasing need to incorporate SI assessments in decision making processes by providing a clear framework explaining how perceptions of these impacts are created and predicting their change in the future. This will support the achievement of international goals for biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change as well as better accounting for social justice issues for communities dependent on protected natural resources. The aim of FIDELIO is to develop for the first time a new paradigm in order to understand how perceptions of SIs are formulated taking into consideration the dimensions of space and time. FIDELIO will assist in increasing public engagement and the incorporation of local opinions in decision-making. It will also facilitate the process of policy development and a reduction in conflicts between different stakeholders in PAs. FIDELIO will last 5 years and its research objectives will be explored through the application of a mixed-methods approach including the implementation of two rounds of social surveys in 4 PAs across Europe and the testing of the framework in 15 additional PAs. This is an extremely timely project considering the steady increase of new PAs and the re-designation of current ones. FIDELIO will contribute to the better understanding of SIs and facilitate predictions for their change in the future, while assisting in maximizing social benefits for local communities arising from the designation of a PA.
Max ERC Funding
1 495 786 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31
