Project acronym CAPSAHARA
Project CRITICAL APPROACHES TO POLITICS, SOCIAL ACTIVISM, AND ISLAMIC MILITANCY IN THE WESTERN SAHARAN REGION
Researcher (PI) Francisco Manuel Machado da Rosa da Silva Freire
Host Institution (HI) CENTRO EM REDE DE INVESTIGACAO EM ANTROPOLOGIA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2016-STG
Summary This project proposes an analysis of the reconfigurations established in the socio-political vocabulary of the western Saharan region – southern Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania – from the “post-empire” to the contemporary period. The project should produce an analysis of 1) the social and political structures shared in the region, 2) the local variations of those structures, based on case studies, 3) their specific configurations, based on social markers such as gender, age, and class, 4) the use of those structures in different historical periods. All these will be under theoretical and ethnographic scrutiny in order to achieve its main goal: 5) to understand the recent articulation of the social and political structures of the Western Saharan region, with broader and often exogenous political vocabularies.
The methodology used in this project is based on readings associated with different social sciences, with a particular focus on anthropology, history, and political science. The members of the research team, with experience and linguistic competence in the different geographies involved in this project, are expected to conduct original field enquiries, enabling a significant enhancement of the theoretical and ethnographic knowledge associated with this region.
The project’s main goal is to analyse the types of interplay established between pre-modern socio-political traditions and contemporary political expression and activism, in a particularly sensitive – and academically disregarded – region. Its effort to integrate a context that is usually compartmentalized, as well as to put together a group of researchers generally “isolated” in their particular areas of expertise, geographies, or nations, should also be valued. The project’s results should enable the different contexts under study to be integrated into the wider maps of current scientific research, providing, at the same time a dissemination of its outputs to an extended audience.
Summary
This project proposes an analysis of the reconfigurations established in the socio-political vocabulary of the western Saharan region – southern Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania – from the “post-empire” to the contemporary period. The project should produce an analysis of 1) the social and political structures shared in the region, 2) the local variations of those structures, based on case studies, 3) their specific configurations, based on social markers such as gender, age, and class, 4) the use of those structures in different historical periods. All these will be under theoretical and ethnographic scrutiny in order to achieve its main goal: 5) to understand the recent articulation of the social and political structures of the Western Saharan region, with broader and often exogenous political vocabularies.
The methodology used in this project is based on readings associated with different social sciences, with a particular focus on anthropology, history, and political science. The members of the research team, with experience and linguistic competence in the different geographies involved in this project, are expected to conduct original field enquiries, enabling a significant enhancement of the theoretical and ethnographic knowledge associated with this region.
The project’s main goal is to analyse the types of interplay established between pre-modern socio-political traditions and contemporary political expression and activism, in a particularly sensitive – and academically disregarded – region. Its effort to integrate a context that is usually compartmentalized, as well as to put together a group of researchers generally “isolated” in their particular areas of expertise, geographies, or nations, should also be valued. The project’s results should enable the different contexts under study to be integrated into the wider maps of current scientific research, providing, at the same time a dissemination of its outputs to an extended audience.
Max ERC Funding
1 192 144 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31
Project acronym ChemEpigen
Project The chemical understanding of biomolecular recognition in epigenetics
Researcher (PI) Jasmin MECINOVIC
Host Institution (HI) SYDDANSK UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE5, ERC-2016-STG
Summary The ultimate aim of this ERC project is to provide a comprehensive and complete understanding, at the atomic-level of sophistication, of genuinely important biomolecular recognition processes in epigenetics that play key roles in human health and disease. At the biochemical level, epigenetics refers to mechanisms, such as enzymatic modifications of DNA and posttranslational modifications of the associated histone proteins, that regulate the activity of human genes. The proposed work aims to address epigenetics using the physical-organic chemistry approach that enables the elucidation of the elemental processes with unprecedented molecular/atomic detail. The project will experimentally and computationally examine non-covalent interactions between three essential constituents of the epigenetic biomolecular system, namely epigenetic proteins, histones and water, at the level of short histone peptides, intact histone proteins, the nucleosome assembly and nucleosome arrays. Our programme, built on synergistic thermodynamic, structural and computational studies, aims to unravel i) the underlying chemical origin of methyllysine-containing histones in epigenetics, ii) the chemical basis for the recognition of methylarginine-containing histones in epigenetic processes, and iii) the role of unstructured histone tails in biomolecular recognition, which together form the three main structural elements found in the epigenetic framework. Results from this work will be important from both a fundamental molecular perspective as well as from the biomedical perspective, because proteins involved in epigenetic regulation processes are currently regarded as important targets for numerous therapeutic interventions, most notably for cancer treatment.
Summary
The ultimate aim of this ERC project is to provide a comprehensive and complete understanding, at the atomic-level of sophistication, of genuinely important biomolecular recognition processes in epigenetics that play key roles in human health and disease. At the biochemical level, epigenetics refers to mechanisms, such as enzymatic modifications of DNA and posttranslational modifications of the associated histone proteins, that regulate the activity of human genes. The proposed work aims to address epigenetics using the physical-organic chemistry approach that enables the elucidation of the elemental processes with unprecedented molecular/atomic detail. The project will experimentally and computationally examine non-covalent interactions between three essential constituents of the epigenetic biomolecular system, namely epigenetic proteins, histones and water, at the level of short histone peptides, intact histone proteins, the nucleosome assembly and nucleosome arrays. Our programme, built on synergistic thermodynamic, structural and computational studies, aims to unravel i) the underlying chemical origin of methyllysine-containing histones in epigenetics, ii) the chemical basis for the recognition of methylarginine-containing histones in epigenetic processes, and iii) the role of unstructured histone tails in biomolecular recognition, which together form the three main structural elements found in the epigenetic framework. Results from this work will be important from both a fundamental molecular perspective as well as from the biomedical perspective, because proteins involved in epigenetic regulation processes are currently regarded as important targets for numerous therapeutic interventions, most notably for cancer treatment.
Max ERC Funding
1 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31
Project acronym CROME
Project Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence: The Colonial-Liberation Wars in Postcolonial Times
Researcher (PI) Miguel Gonçalo CARDINA
Host Institution (HI) CENTRO DE ESTUDOS SOCIAIS
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2016-STG
Summary Colonial-Liberation Wars generate plural memories, conflicting evocations and persisting amnesias. The project’s main challenge is to produce innovative knowledge about the memories of the wars fought by the Portuguese state and pro-independence African movements between 1961 and 1974/5. The approach chosen is simultaneously diachronic and comparative, inasmuch as it contrasts changes that took place between the end of the conflicts and nowadays, regarding how wars, colonial pasts and anticolonial legacies have been remembered and silenced in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Principe. The key hypothesis is that wars - as pivotal moments that ended the cycle of Empire in Portugal and started the cycle of African independences in the former Portuguese colonies - triggered memorialisation and silencing processes which had their own historicity.
CROME is divided into two strands. The first one, named ‘Colonial Wars, Postcolonial States’, looks at the role played by the states under consideration in mobilising, articulating and recognising the past, but also in actively generating selective representations. ‘Memory as a battlefield’ is the second strand, which will highlight distinct uses of the past and dynamics between social memories and individual memories.
The project intends to demonstrate how wars gave rise to multiple memories and conflicting historical judgements, mostly in Portugal, but also to examine how the specific nature of the (post-)colonial histories of each African country has generated different ways to summon war memories and (anti-)colonial legacies. CROME will, thus, put forward a ground-breaking perspective in terms of colonial-liberation war studies, and will be instrumental in dealing with such traumatic experience, for its comparative approach might help overcoming everlasting constraints still at play today, caused by the historical burden European colonialism left behind.
Summary
Colonial-Liberation Wars generate plural memories, conflicting evocations and persisting amnesias. The project’s main challenge is to produce innovative knowledge about the memories of the wars fought by the Portuguese state and pro-independence African movements between 1961 and 1974/5. The approach chosen is simultaneously diachronic and comparative, inasmuch as it contrasts changes that took place between the end of the conflicts and nowadays, regarding how wars, colonial pasts and anticolonial legacies have been remembered and silenced in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Principe. The key hypothesis is that wars - as pivotal moments that ended the cycle of Empire in Portugal and started the cycle of African independences in the former Portuguese colonies - triggered memorialisation and silencing processes which had their own historicity.
CROME is divided into two strands. The first one, named ‘Colonial Wars, Postcolonial States’, looks at the role played by the states under consideration in mobilising, articulating and recognising the past, but also in actively generating selective representations. ‘Memory as a battlefield’ is the second strand, which will highlight distinct uses of the past and dynamics between social memories and individual memories.
The project intends to demonstrate how wars gave rise to multiple memories and conflicting historical judgements, mostly in Portugal, but also to examine how the specific nature of the (post-)colonial histories of each African country has generated different ways to summon war memories and (anti-)colonial legacies. CROME will, thus, put forward a ground-breaking perspective in terms of colonial-liberation war studies, and will be instrumental in dealing with such traumatic experience, for its comparative approach might help overcoming everlasting constraints still at play today, caused by the historical burden European colonialism left behind.
Max ERC Funding
1 478 249 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31
Project acronym MEDEA-CHART
Project The Medieval and Early Modern Nautical Chart: Birth, Evolution and Use
Researcher (PI) Joaquim Filipe FIGUEIREDO ALVES GASPAR
Host Institution (HI) FCIENCIAS.ID - ASSOCIACAO PARA A INVESTIGACAO E DESENVOLVIMENTO DE CIENCIAS
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2016-STG
Summary Of all the technical and scientific developments that made possible the early modern maritime expansion, the nautical chart is perhaps the least studied and understood. This fact is very surprising as it was through those charts that the newly discovered world was first shown to the amazed eyes of the European nations. Although the History of Cartography is a well-established academic discipline and old charts have been examined for many years, their detailed technical study is still in its infancy. What is the origin of the pre-Mercator nautical chart, how charts evolved technically over time and how they were used at sea are all critical questions that remain to be answered. I intend to approach these challenges in a truly interdisciplinary way, by using innovative and powerful tools as a complement to the traditional methods of historical research: analytical cartometric methods, numerical modelling and the examination of the manuscripts through special lighting. By applying these tools to a large sample of charts of various periods and origins, I aim to unveil hidden graphic content related to their construction and use, to characterize their main geometric features, to establish meaningful connections with contemporary navigational methods and exploration missions, and to numerically simulate their construction by taking into account the explanations given in the textual sources. The effectiveness of those techniques has already been demonstrated in my previous studies, such as in the solution of an historical enigma which had been alive for more than a century: the construction of the Mercator projection, in 1569. Now, I propose to handle a broader and more complex set of questions, which has eluded the historians of cartography for even a longer period. The clarification of these issues will have a ground-breaking impact, not only in the strict field of the History of Cartography, but also in the context of the intellectual history at large.
Summary
Of all the technical and scientific developments that made possible the early modern maritime expansion, the nautical chart is perhaps the least studied and understood. This fact is very surprising as it was through those charts that the newly discovered world was first shown to the amazed eyes of the European nations. Although the History of Cartography is a well-established academic discipline and old charts have been examined for many years, their detailed technical study is still in its infancy. What is the origin of the pre-Mercator nautical chart, how charts evolved technically over time and how they were used at sea are all critical questions that remain to be answered. I intend to approach these challenges in a truly interdisciplinary way, by using innovative and powerful tools as a complement to the traditional methods of historical research: analytical cartometric methods, numerical modelling and the examination of the manuscripts through special lighting. By applying these tools to a large sample of charts of various periods and origins, I aim to unveil hidden graphic content related to their construction and use, to characterize their main geometric features, to establish meaningful connections with contemporary navigational methods and exploration missions, and to numerically simulate their construction by taking into account the explanations given in the textual sources. The effectiveness of those techniques has already been demonstrated in my previous studies, such as in the solution of an historical enigma which had been alive for more than a century: the construction of the Mercator projection, in 1569. Now, I propose to handle a broader and more complex set of questions, which has eluded the historians of cartography for even a longer period. The clarification of these issues will have a ground-breaking impact, not only in the strict field of the History of Cartography, but also in the context of the intellectual history at large.
Max ERC Funding
1 231 319 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2022-05-31
