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 CHILDCOHAB
Project Nonmarital childbearing in comparative perspective: trends, explanations, and lifecourse trajectories
Researcher (PI) Brienna Perelli-Harris
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Over the past several decades, childbearing within cohabitation has risen sharply throughout most of Europe, Australia, and the U.S. This project aims to study the diffusion of childbearing within cohabitation using a number of analytic levels and methodological perspectives. We will explore the following questions:
1) Trends: How does fertility differ by union status, and how do these differences change over time? Are there differences by parity, age pattern, or timing? How does the decline in marital fertility contribute to the increase in share of nonmarital births?
2) Explanations: What are the underlying reasons for increasing childbearing within cohabitation? What has produced variation across countries? How do policies impact and/or respond to childbearing within cohabitation? How do societal-level perceptions of cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing differ across countries?
3) Lifecourse trajectories: How do the lifecourse trajectories for women who bear children differ by union status? Are women who give birth within cohabitation more likely to experience changes in family structure? Is childbearing within cohabitation associated with future negative social, emotional, or economic outcomes?
To answer these questions, we will use an innovative mixed-methods strategy that 1) analyzes a unique database of harmonized reproductive and union histories, 2) conducts qualitative research into the role of policies and general perspectives on nonmarital childbearing, and 3) examines longitudinal surveys in comparative perspective. Ultimately, we aim to develop a new theoretical framework for understanding the diffusion of family change. This research will provide insights into whether lifecourse trajectories are diverging, potentially exacerbating social inequality.
Summary
Over the past several decades, childbearing within cohabitation has risen sharply throughout most of Europe, Australia, and the U.S. This project aims to study the diffusion of childbearing within cohabitation using a number of analytic levels and methodological perspectives. We will explore the following questions:
1) Trends: How does fertility differ by union status, and how do these differences change over time? Are there differences by parity, age pattern, or timing? How does the decline in marital fertility contribute to the increase in share of nonmarital births?
2) Explanations: What are the underlying reasons for increasing childbearing within cohabitation? What has produced variation across countries? How do policies impact and/or respond to childbearing within cohabitation? How do societal-level perceptions of cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing differ across countries?
3) Lifecourse trajectories: How do the lifecourse trajectories for women who bear children differ by union status? Are women who give birth within cohabitation more likely to experience changes in family structure? Is childbearing within cohabitation associated with future negative social, emotional, or economic outcomes?
To answer these questions, we will use an innovative mixed-methods strategy that 1) analyzes a unique database of harmonized reproductive and union histories, 2) conducts qualitative research into the role of policies and general perspectives on nonmarital childbearing, and 3) examines longitudinal surveys in comparative perspective. Ultimately, we aim to develop a new theoretical framework for understanding the diffusion of family change. This research will provide insights into whether lifecourse trajectories are diverging, potentially exacerbating social inequality.
Max ERC Funding
1 131 600 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-03-01, End date: 2016-05-31
Project acronym CROSSROADS
Project Crossroads of empires: archaeology, material culture and socio-political relationships in West Africa
Researcher (PI) Anne Claire Haour
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Knowledge of the last 1000 years in the West African Sahel comes largely from historical sources, which say that many regions were ruled by vast polities.
The aim of my archaeological project is to seize how, in fact, lhe 'empires' of this region structured the landscape, and the movemenl of peoples, ideas, and
things, with a focus on the period AD 1200-1850. Is 'empire' really a useful term? I will confront historical evidence with archaeological data from one area at
the intersection of several polities: the dallols in Niger. This area is rich in remains, said to result from population movements and processes of religious and
political change, but these remains have been only briefly described so far. As this region is a key area of migrations and cross-influences, it is the ideal
'laboratory' for exploring the materialisation of contacts and boundaries, through a mapping of material culture distributions.
My project will approach these sites holistically, carrying out archaeological regional survey and prospection. Excavation will indicate chronology and cultural
affiliation. At lhe same time, I will take an interdisciplinary approach, using anthropological and oral-historical enquiries to obtain background information to
test hypotheses generated by the archaeological data. Enquiries will assess how material culture can show group belonging and population shifts, and
examine the role of individuals called 'technical specialists'. This will help solve the current impasse in our understanding of vast empires which, though they
are historically known, remain poorly understood.
My project will not just improve our knowledge of an almost-unknown part of the world, but thanks to its geographical location, interdisciplinary nature and
strong thematic framework, open up avenues of thinking about the relalion between archaeological and historical data, the mediation of relations through
artefacts, and the archaeology of empires, all widely-relevant research issues
Summary
Knowledge of the last 1000 years in the West African Sahel comes largely from historical sources, which say that many regions were ruled by vast polities.
The aim of my archaeological project is to seize how, in fact, lhe 'empires' of this region structured the landscape, and the movemenl of peoples, ideas, and
things, with a focus on the period AD 1200-1850. Is 'empire' really a useful term? I will confront historical evidence with archaeological data from one area at
the intersection of several polities: the dallols in Niger. This area is rich in remains, said to result from population movements and processes of religious and
political change, but these remains have been only briefly described so far. As this region is a key area of migrations and cross-influences, it is the ideal
'laboratory' for exploring the materialisation of contacts and boundaries, through a mapping of material culture distributions.
My project will approach these sites holistically, carrying out archaeological regional survey and prospection. Excavation will indicate chronology and cultural
affiliation. At lhe same time, I will take an interdisciplinary approach, using anthropological and oral-historical enquiries to obtain background information to
test hypotheses generated by the archaeological data. Enquiries will assess how material culture can show group belonging and population shifts, and
examine the role of individuals called 'technical specialists'. This will help solve the current impasse in our understanding of vast empires which, though they
are historically known, remain poorly understood.
My project will not just improve our knowledge of an almost-unknown part of the world, but thanks to its geographical location, interdisciplinary nature and
strong thematic framework, open up avenues of thinking about the relalion between archaeological and historical data, the mediation of relations through
artefacts, and the archaeology of empires, all widely-relevant research issues
Max ERC Funding
893 161 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31
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 DIGIPAL
Project Digital Resource and Database of Palaeography, Manuscripts and Diplomatic
Researcher (PI) Peter Anthony Stokes
Host Institution (HI) KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary This project involves developing and applying new methods in palaeography, bringing digital resources to bear in innovative ways. It comprises three components: a web resource, a database, and a monograph. The web resource will allow the study of medieval script in the context of the manuscripts and charters that preserve it. It will focus on discovery and citation, allowing users to retrieve digital images, verbal descriptions, and detailed characterisations of the writing, as well as the larger context including the content and structure of the manuscript or charter. It will incorporate different ways of exploring the material such as images, maps and timelines as well as text-based browse and search. It will provide a flexible, extensible framework to integrate external data-sources and so applies to any period or area of palaeography. It will therefore enable new developments in palaeographical method which have been discussed in theory but not yet achieved in practice.
To demonstrate these methods, content will be provided for handwriting from England in the vernacular, particularly that of AD 990-1100. This period saw rapid change in vernacular script despite relative stability in that of Latin, something that has never been fully explained. This problem will be addressed by integrating existing datasets but also by producing and incorporating an entirely new database of scripts. The result will provide access to the complete corpus of surviving examples of the script for the first time, bringing an unprecedented rigour to palaeographical analysis. A monograph will then draw on this research, demonstrating the new methods in practice and providing the first comprehensive account of English vernacular script from the period. The work will address issues in Digital Humanities (integration, interface design, visualisation and standards), in palaeographical method (quantitative methods, terminology and evidential rigour), and in the history of vernacular script
Summary
This project involves developing and applying new methods in palaeography, bringing digital resources to bear in innovative ways. It comprises three components: a web resource, a database, and a monograph. The web resource will allow the study of medieval script in the context of the manuscripts and charters that preserve it. It will focus on discovery and citation, allowing users to retrieve digital images, verbal descriptions, and detailed characterisations of the writing, as well as the larger context including the content and structure of the manuscript or charter. It will incorporate different ways of exploring the material such as images, maps and timelines as well as text-based browse and search. It will provide a flexible, extensible framework to integrate external data-sources and so applies to any period or area of palaeography. It will therefore enable new developments in palaeographical method which have been discussed in theory but not yet achieved in practice.
To demonstrate these methods, content will be provided for handwriting from England in the vernacular, particularly that of AD 990-1100. This period saw rapid change in vernacular script despite relative stability in that of Latin, something that has never been fully explained. This problem will be addressed by integrating existing datasets but also by producing and incorporating an entirely new database of scripts. The result will provide access to the complete corpus of surviving examples of the script for the first time, bringing an unprecedented rigour to palaeographical analysis. A monograph will then draw on this research, demonstrating the new methods in practice and providing the first comprehensive account of English vernacular script from the period. The work will address issues in Digital Humanities (integration, interface design, visualisation and standards), in palaeographical method (quantitative methods, terminology and evidential rigour), and in the history of vernacular script
Max ERC Funding
995 531 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-10-01, End date: 2014-09-30
Project acronym EARLYPOWERONTOLOGIES
Project Causal Structuralist Ontologies in Antiquity: Powers as the basic building block of the worlds of the ancients
Researcher (PI) Anna Marmodoro
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary The project aims to bring about a paradigm shift in our understanding of how the ancients conceived of the universe and its contents over a period of 9 centuries, 600 BC to 300 AD. The driving research hypothesis is that the sole elementary building blocks of nearly all ancient ontologies are powers, from which all there is in the universe is built. Powers are relational properties which are directed towards an end (e.g. the power to heat); thus a world of powers is structured in a web of causal relations. What is revolutionary about such a world is that there is only structure in it; hence, causal structuralist ontologies underlie object-metaphysics or process-metaphysics, and worlds of being and becoming, supplying structures from which objects and processes are derived. Yet such ontologies have never been investigated about ancient thought.
The project’s topic is new: ancient causal structuralism; the speciality is novel too, requiring targeted training of a team of post-doc researchers which will be provided by the applicant and collaborators. The innovativeness of the methodology consists in training ancient philosophy researchers to discern and identify formal aspects of ontologies at the very roots of human rationality – discerning how the ancients built everything out of power structures.
The paradigm shift will generate new knowledge and understanding about the ancient accounts of the world; provide a heuristic vantage point for redrafting the map of the intellectual influences between ancient thinkers; stimulate fruitful debate; and inspire new insights into ancient thought that are literally unthinkable at present. Cognate disciplines that will be affected by the paradigm shift are such as: history of physics; of mathematics; of theology; ancient anthropology.
Summary
The project aims to bring about a paradigm shift in our understanding of how the ancients conceived of the universe and its contents over a period of 9 centuries, 600 BC to 300 AD. The driving research hypothesis is that the sole elementary building blocks of nearly all ancient ontologies are powers, from which all there is in the universe is built. Powers are relational properties which are directed towards an end (e.g. the power to heat); thus a world of powers is structured in a web of causal relations. What is revolutionary about such a world is that there is only structure in it; hence, causal structuralist ontologies underlie object-metaphysics or process-metaphysics, and worlds of being and becoming, supplying structures from which objects and processes are derived. Yet such ontologies have never been investigated about ancient thought.
The project’s topic is new: ancient causal structuralism; the speciality is novel too, requiring targeted training of a team of post-doc researchers which will be provided by the applicant and collaborators. The innovativeness of the methodology consists in training ancient philosophy researchers to discern and identify formal aspects of ontologies at the very roots of human rationality – discerning how the ancients built everything out of power structures.
The paradigm shift will generate new knowledge and understanding about the ancient accounts of the world; provide a heuristic vantage point for redrafting the map of the intellectual influences between ancient thinkers; stimulate fruitful debate; and inspire new insights into ancient thought that are literally unthinkable at present. Cognate disciplines that will be affected by the paradigm shift are such as: history of physics; of mathematics; of theology; ancient anthropology.
Max ERC Funding
1 228 581 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-03-31
Project acronym FAMMAT
Project Family Matters: Intergenerational Influences on Fertility
Researcher (PI) Rebecca Sear
Host Institution (HI) LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE AND TROPICAL MEDICINE ROYAL CHARTER
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Why do people have children? Why do they have the number of children they do? These questions are of fundamental importance, but we do not yet have satisfactory answers. I propose to bring an interdisciplinary perspective, involving demography, evolutionary biology, anthropology and psychology, to bear on this topic. The aim is to test the hypothesis that intergenerational influences are important determinants of fertility, from fertility intentions to timing of births to number of children. The theoretical rationale derives from a hypothesis emerging from evolutionary biology that humans are cooperative breeders : mothers need help from others to raise children, because human children are too costly for mothers to raise alone. The support of relatives, particularly intergenerational support, is thus vital to women in determining how many children they have. If so, there is a major gap in our understanding of fertility, since such influences have not been systematically studied. This aim will be achieved using rigorous, empirical methods to analyse data from all world regions, and to use novel methods for collecting new data on fertility. The key to this project is its holistic comparative nature. The ultimate goal will be a novel comparative analysis of data from the full gamut of human societies, from small-scale traditional societies through historical populations to contemporary nations surveyed through large-scale surveys. This will allow us to go beyond simply documenting kin influences, and to understand why particular kin matter under which circumstances. Such a comparative approach has not been used before but is vital if we are to fully understand why fertility varies. This will significantly advance understanding of fertility, and promote interdisciplinary research.
Summary
Why do people have children? Why do they have the number of children they do? These questions are of fundamental importance, but we do not yet have satisfactory answers. I propose to bring an interdisciplinary perspective, involving demography, evolutionary biology, anthropology and psychology, to bear on this topic. The aim is to test the hypothesis that intergenerational influences are important determinants of fertility, from fertility intentions to timing of births to number of children. The theoretical rationale derives from a hypothesis emerging from evolutionary biology that humans are cooperative breeders : mothers need help from others to raise children, because human children are too costly for mothers to raise alone. The support of relatives, particularly intergenerational support, is thus vital to women in determining how many children they have. If so, there is a major gap in our understanding of fertility, since such influences have not been systematically studied. This aim will be achieved using rigorous, empirical methods to analyse data from all world regions, and to use novel methods for collecting new data on fertility. The key to this project is its holistic comparative nature. The ultimate goal will be a novel comparative analysis of data from the full gamut of human societies, from small-scale traditional societies through historical populations to contemporary nations surveyed through large-scale surveys. This will allow us to go beyond simply documenting kin influences, and to understand why particular kin matter under which circumstances. Such a comparative approach has not been used before but is vital if we are to fully understand why fertility varies. This will significantly advance understanding of fertility, and promote interdisciplinary research.
Max ERC Funding
799 998 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-03-01, End date: 2015-08-31
Project acronym FASLW
Project FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE: The Space of Law in War
Researcher (PI) Eyal Weizman
Host Institution (HI) GOLDSMITHS' COLLEGE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Although violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and human right (HR) conventions are frequently undertaken in cities and by means that deliberately manipulate the elements that constitute their built fabric, this project contends that organizations of international justice could benefit from a closer engagement with the operational procedures, conceptual assumptions, methodologies, and technologies of urban and architectural analysis. Legal claims of the kind that are brought to international courts and tribunals or made to circulate within the general media often invoke images of destroyed buildings or of menacing new constructions, but these are too often merely treated as self-evident illustrations of atrocity. This project attempts to transform the built environment from an illustration of alleged violations to a source of knowledge about them and as a resource through which controversial events and processes could be reconstructed, analysed and better understood. To be undertaken at the Centre for Research Architecture, a multidisciplinary group of spatial practitioners directed by the PI, the project will employ new technologies and novel forms of spatial analysis in order to query the function of space as evidence within the different forums of international justice. The project is organized around the investigation of several legal controversies, each with a distinct spatial dimension. The project is driven by the introduction of a new operative concept Forensic Architecture (FA) which is proposed as a new field of practice and as an analytical method for probing the political and social histories inscribed in spatial artefacts and in built environments. The project will result with web-based interactive platform, an exhibition accompanied by a large edited catalogue and a symposium, and a monograph by the PI.
Summary
Although violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and human right (HR) conventions are frequently undertaken in cities and by means that deliberately manipulate the elements that constitute their built fabric, this project contends that organizations of international justice could benefit from a closer engagement with the operational procedures, conceptual assumptions, methodologies, and technologies of urban and architectural analysis. Legal claims of the kind that are brought to international courts and tribunals or made to circulate within the general media often invoke images of destroyed buildings or of menacing new constructions, but these are too often merely treated as self-evident illustrations of atrocity. This project attempts to transform the built environment from an illustration of alleged violations to a source of knowledge about them and as a resource through which controversial events and processes could be reconstructed, analysed and better understood. To be undertaken at the Centre for Research Architecture, a multidisciplinary group of spatial practitioners directed by the PI, the project will employ new technologies and novel forms of spatial analysis in order to query the function of space as evidence within the different forums of international justice. The project is organized around the investigation of several legal controversies, each with a distinct spatial dimension. The project is driven by the introduction of a new operative concept Forensic Architecture (FA) which is proposed as a new field of practice and as an analytical method for probing the political and social histories inscribed in spatial artefacts and in built environments. The project will result with web-based interactive platform, an exhibition accompanied by a large edited catalogue and a symposium, and a monograph by the PI.
Max ERC Funding
1 197 704 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-02-01, End date: 2015-01-31
Project acronym GAMSOC
Project Gambling in Europe
Researcher (PI) Rebecca Cassidy
Host Institution (HI) GOLDSMITHS' COLLEGE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary This project uses an innovative anthropological approach to study gambling as a social and cultural activity, and uses these findings to establish a new research paradigm that is technologically astute, internationally focused and aggressively future oriented. Gambling in Europe is worth an estimated E89billion and is a rapidly expanding and changing industry. It is also a source of concern to legislators and consumers. Gambling legislation is not harmonised at the European level. National governments are currently moving at varying speeds
between containment and revenue generation, driven on by operators who use constantly evolving technology to create new markets and exploit loopholes in existing ad hoc and obsolete legislation. Like legislators, the research community has failed to keep pace with these changes and continues to focus on quantifying and categorising gamblers and gambling activities within national boundaries. This project will craft a more critical and powerful alternative. Highly productive and proven anthropological approaches will be applied to four
systematically integrated case studies: the UK remote gambling industry, spread betting among Chinese financial services workers in Europe, land based gaming in Cyprus and gamblers and non-gamblers in the Italo-Slovenian borderlands. The project will establish the value of a systematic ethnographic approach to gambling by conducting research in a number of contrasting settings, across a number of
different scales. It will produce high quality and robust data that will form the basis of a new research paradigm that matches the dynamism and internationalism of the European gambling industry today.
Summary
This project uses an innovative anthropological approach to study gambling as a social and cultural activity, and uses these findings to establish a new research paradigm that is technologically astute, internationally focused and aggressively future oriented. Gambling in Europe is worth an estimated E89billion and is a rapidly expanding and changing industry. It is also a source of concern to legislators and consumers. Gambling legislation is not harmonised at the European level. National governments are currently moving at varying speeds
between containment and revenue generation, driven on by operators who use constantly evolving technology to create new markets and exploit loopholes in existing ad hoc and obsolete legislation. Like legislators, the research community has failed to keep pace with these changes and continues to focus on quantifying and categorising gamblers and gambling activities within national boundaries. This project will craft a more critical and powerful alternative. Highly productive and proven anthropological approaches will be applied to four
systematically integrated case studies: the UK remote gambling industry, spread betting among Chinese financial services workers in Europe, land based gaming in Cyprus and gamblers and non-gamblers in the Italo-Slovenian borderlands. The project will establish the value of a systematic ethnographic approach to gambling by conducting research in a number of contrasting settings, across a number of
different scales. It will produce high quality and robust data that will form the basis of a new research paradigm that matches the dynamism and internationalism of the European gambling industry today.
Max ERC Funding
1 200 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2015-07-31
Project acronym GOV
Project Corporate Governance
Researcher (PI) Ayse Irem Tuna Richardson
Host Institution (HI) LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary The objective of this proposal is to apply for an ERC Starting Grant to support a careful study of the design and implications of corporate governance. Corporate governance is the set of mechanisms that are designed to address the conflicts between the managers and owners of assets when there is a separation of ownership and control. These mechanisms are intended to monitor the person who has control over the assets so that the use of the assets does not conflict with the incentives of the owners of the assets. Boards of directors, institutional shareholders, and the market for corporate control are some examples of corporate governance mechanisms that are expected to mitigate the potential conflicts between owners and the managers. Based on the prior work of others and my own, I am convinced that an attempt to measure the role of the individual style and preferences in corporate decision making and corporate governance will be fruitful. The series of research I conducted so far developed my perspective as a researcher, making me appreciate better the importance of capturing, to the extent possible, the entirety of the construct of interest. Given my current research interests, I propose to undertake the following three categories of research to understand: (1)how the individual style; and (2) inter-group dynamics aspect of corporate governance play a role in corporate decision making and outcomes, and (3) to evaluate (and be able to make future recommendations) about the regulation of corporate governance. The overarching objective of this proposal is to expand our thinking of corporate governance to include the human element in the design of mechanisms and contracts.
Summary
The objective of this proposal is to apply for an ERC Starting Grant to support a careful study of the design and implications of corporate governance. Corporate governance is the set of mechanisms that are designed to address the conflicts between the managers and owners of assets when there is a separation of ownership and control. These mechanisms are intended to monitor the person who has control over the assets so that the use of the assets does not conflict with the incentives of the owners of the assets. Boards of directors, institutional shareholders, and the market for corporate control are some examples of corporate governance mechanisms that are expected to mitigate the potential conflicts between owners and the managers. Based on the prior work of others and my own, I am convinced that an attempt to measure the role of the individual style and preferences in corporate decision making and corporate governance will be fruitful. The series of research I conducted so far developed my perspective as a researcher, making me appreciate better the importance of capturing, to the extent possible, the entirety of the construct of interest. Given my current research interests, I propose to undertake the following three categories of research to understand: (1)how the individual style; and (2) inter-group dynamics aspect of corporate governance play a role in corporate decision making and outcomes, and (3) to evaluate (and be able to make future recommendations) about the regulation of corporate governance. The overarching objective of this proposal is to expand our thinking of corporate governance to include the human element in the design of mechanisms and contracts.
Max ERC Funding
1 110 980 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-02-01, End date: 2016-01-31
