ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Massive stars dominate their surroundings during their short lifetimes, while their explosive deaths impact the chemical evolution and spatial cohesion of their hosts. After birth, their evolution is largely dictated by their ability to remove layers of hydrogen from their envelopes. Multiple lines of evidence are pointing to violent, episodic mass-loss events being responsible for removing a large part of the massive stellar envelope, especially in low-metallicity galaxies. Episodic mass loss, however, is not understood theoretically, neither accounted for in state-of-the-art models of stellar evolution, which has far-reaching consequences for many areas of astronomy. We aim to determine whether episodic mass loss is a dominant process in the evolution of the most massive stars by conducting the first extensive, multi-wavelength survey of evolved massive stars in the nearby Universe. The project hinges on the fact that mass-losing stars form dust and are bright in the mid-infrared. We plan to (i) derive physical parameters of a large sample of dusty, evolved targets and estimate the amount of ejected mass, (ii) constrain evolutionary models, (iii) quantify the duration and frequency of episodic mass loss as a function of metallicity. The approach involves applying machine-learning algorithms to existing multi-band and time-series photometry of luminous sources in ~25 nearby galaxies. Dusty, luminous evolved massive stars will thus be automatically classified and follow-up spectroscopy will be obtained for selected targets. Atmospheric and SED modeling will yield parameters and estimates of time-dependent mass loss for ~1000 luminous stars. The emerging trend for the ubiquity of episodic mass loss, if confirmed, will be key to understanding the explosive early Universe and will have profound consequences for low-metallicity stars, reionization, and the chemical evolution of galaxies.

1 128 750 €

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

The EIRENE project’s purpose is to think afresh 20th-century post-war transitions by taking into account a gendered perspective. Namely, the historiographic consideration of gender thoroughly alters the understanding of social dynamics in multi-ethnic areas during the post-war transitions. They will be observed in the North-Eastern Adriatic region, an overlooked European space, marked by border redefinitions, changes of political systems, and high interethnic conflict intensity, but also by genuine cooperation among ethnic groups. The region has all the qualities of a “laboratory environment” for the study of gender positions and interrelations after World Wars I and II and after the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. The project will differ substantially from previous attempts to analyse post-war transitions in these aspects: a) longitudinal approach, comparing three post-war periods in order to detect their specifics and (dis)continuities; b) transnational approach, by overcoming nation-centric frameworks of analysis; c) by combining conceptual political and social sciences with historiography; and finally, d) by examining post-war transitions through the prism of gender. Focusing on four research-fields (politics, political violence, work, family), the project will validate innovative analytical concepts of the “inclusion-exclusion paradox” of women in post-war transitions, and women as “cross-boundary mediators”. Within the category of gender, focal attention will be given to women as they are often invisible in historical accounts and remain neglected in historicizing. By aggregating empirical sources, the project will approach the proposed subject matter by investigating the processes of identification across the lines of ethnic origin, class, generations, marital status, profession/occupation, language of use, migratory processes, etc. The project’s added value is its novel conceptual applicability to other comparable geopolitical areas.

2 266 067 €

Start date: 2017-12-01, End date: 2022-11-30

The European public square has, in the last twenty years and increasingly so, been inundated with controversies around the place of religion in the public sphere. Issues such as freedom of religious expression, freedom of speech v. blasphemy, and the public display of religious symbols loom large in the workplace, in schools, in media coverage etc., at the local, national, and supranational level. The presence of Islam has been a catalyst for many debates on religion in Europe, but these have now grown to encompass much broader assumptions about the nature of religious communities, their relationship to state institutions, and the place of minority religious communities in society. Against this backdrop the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) adds its own voice and significantly influences the terms of the debates. This project examines the domestic impact of the ECtHR religion case law: it explores the mobilisation of local and national level actors in the wake of a number of high-profile ECtHR religious freedom cases in order to determine the nature and extent of European juridical influence on religious pluralism. In light of scholarly debates questioning the direct effects of courts, the project probes developments that take place ‘in the shadow’ of the Court. It engages especially with the extent to which court decisions define the ‘political opportunity structures’ and the discursive frameworks within which citizens act. What is the aftermath of the Court’s religion jurisprudence in terms of its applications at the grassroots level? The question is important because ECtHR case law will shape, to a large extent, both local and national level case law and – less conspicuously but no less importantly – grassroots developments in the promotion of or resistance to religious pluralism. Both the latter will, in turn, influence the future of the ECtHR caseload. The project will thus impart rare insight into directions being taken in religious pluralism in Europe.

1 184 568 €

Start date: 2014-01-01, End date: 2018-12-31

An inflation-probing B-mode signal in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) would be a discovery of utmost importance in physics. While such a signal is aggressively pursued by experiments around the world, recent Planck results have showed that this breakthrough is still out of reach, because of contamination from Galactic dust. To get to the primordial B-modes, we need to subtract polarized emission of magnetized interstellar dust with high accuracy. A critical piece of this puzzle is the 3D structure of the magnetic field threading dust clouds, which cannot be accessed through microwave observations alone, since they record integrated emission along the line of sight. Instead, observations of a large number of stars at known distances in optical polarization, tracing the same CMB-obscuring dust, can map the magnetic field between them. The Gaia mission is measuring distances to a billion stars, providing an opportunity to produce, the first-ever tomographic map of the Galactic magnetic field, using optical polarization of starlight. Such a map would not only boost CMB polarization foreground removal, but it would also have a profound impact in a wide range of astrophysical research, including interstellar medium physics, high-energy astrophysics, and galactic evolution. Taking advantage of our privately-funded, novel-technology, high-accuracy WALOP optopolarimeters currently under construction, we propose an ambitious optopolarimetric program of unprecedented scale that can meet this challenge: a survey of both northern and southern Galactic polar regions targeted by CMB experiments, covering >10,000 square degrees, which will measure linear optical polarization at 0.2% accuracy of over 360 stars per square degree (over 3.5M stars, a 1000-fold increase over the state of the art), combining wide-field-optimized instruments and an extraordinary commitment of observing time by Skinakas Observatory and the South African Astronomical Observatory.

1 887 500 €

Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31