ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

This project is a comparative anthropology of conscience, ethics and human rights. Numerous international human rights documents formally declare their commitment to protect freedom of conscience. But, what is conscience and how do we know it when we see it? How do we distinguish it from self-interest or fanaticism? And what happens when the concept, often associated with a distinct Christian or liberal history, travels across cultural boundaries? The project will examine the cultural conditions under which claims to conscience are made possible, and the types of claims that are most persuasive when doing so. The project addresses these issues through the comparative analysis of three case studies: British pacifists, Sri Lankan activists, and Soviet dissidents. These case studies have been carefully chosen to provide globally significant, but contrasting examples of contests over the implications of claims to conscience. If claims of conscience are often associated with a specifically liberal and Christian tradition, mid-twentieth century Britain can be said to stand at the centre of that tradition. Sri Lanka represents a particularly fraught post-colonial South Asian counterpoint, wracked by nationalist violence, and influenced by ethical traditions associated with forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Soviet Russia represents a further contrast, a totalitarian regime, where atheism was the dominant ethical language. Finally, the project will return specifically to international human rights institutions, examining the history of the category of conscience in the UN human rights system. This project will be ground breaking, employing novel methods and analytical insights, in order to producing the first comparative analysis of the cultural and political salience of claims of conscience. In doing so, the research aims to transform our understandings of the limits and potentials of attempts to protect freedom of conscience.

1 457 869 €

Start date: 2015-08-01, End date: 2020-07-31

Cognitive control regulates our thoughts and actions, helping us avoid impulsive behaviours that are inappropriate, costly or dangerous. In recent years, evidence has emerged that training in behavioural tasks that promote response inhibition or avoidance of specific stimuli can enhance cognitive control, reducing overeating and alcohol consumption. Despite the promising nature of cognitive control training (CCT), we know little about which CCT methods are most effective, how individual differences determine training outcomes, whether CCT produces benefits for real-life behaviour, and how CCT alters – and is determined by – the structure and function of the brain. My aim is to discover what works in CCT and how the effects of training relate to neurophysiology. Subproject 1 will be the largest ever trial on the effectiveness of different CCT methods for achieving weight loss, recruiting 36,000 participants worldwide to complete an internet-based training programme via the Guardian. This study will reveal, with high statistical power, which CCT methods are the most effective and which individual differences are most important for producing real-life benefits. Subproject 2 will investigate how CCT influences neurobiology, and how individual differences in neurobiology influence CCT outcomes. In Subproject 2a, I will focus on theoretically predicted changes to GABAergic systems in prefrontal and motor cortex, and I will test the effect of GABAergic brain stimulation on training outcomes. In Subproject 2b, I will use concurrent brain stimulation (TMS) and brain imaging (fMRI) to test how CCT alters top-down coupling between prefrontal cortex and remote regions that mediate reward and emotion. I will also study how CCT alters, and is altered by, white matter microstructure. This project promises to advance understanding of the causal determinants and moderators of CCT, with implications for its suitability as a clinical adjunct in addiction therapy and behaviour change.

1 998 305 €

Start date: 2015-11-01, End date: 2020-10-31

Episodic memory refers to the fascinating human ability to remember past events in a highly associative and information rich way. But how are these memories coded in human brains? Any mechanism accounting for episodic memory must accomplish at least two functions: to build novel associations, and to represent the information constituting the memory. Neural oscillations, regulating the synchrony of neural assemblies, are ideally suited to accomplish these two functions, but in opposing ways. On the one hand, neurophysiological work suggests that increased synchrony strengthens synaptic connections and thus forms the basis for associative memory. Neurocomputational work, on the other hand, suggests that decreased synchrony is necessary to flexibly express information rich patterns in a neural assembly. Therefore, a conundrum exists as to how oscillations code episodic memory. The aim of this project is to propose and test a new framework that has the potential to reconcile this conflict. The central idea is that synchronization and desynchronization cooperatively code episodic memories, with synchronized activity in the hippocampus in the theta (~4 Hz) and gamma (~ 40-60 Hz) frequency range mediating the building of associations, and neocortical desynchronization in the alpha (~10 Hz) and beta (~15 Hz) frequency range mediating the representation of mnemonic information. Importantly the two modules, with their respective synchronous/asynchronous behaviours, must interact during the formation and retrieval of episodic memories, but how and whether this is the case remains untested to date. I will test these fundamental questions using a multidisciplinary and multi-method approach, including human single cell recordings, neuroimaging, brain stimulation, and computational modelling. The results from these experiments have the potential to reveal the neural code that human episodic memory is based on, which is still one of the biggest mysteries of the human mind.

1 897 751 €

Start date: 2015-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30

Recent years have seen renewed interest in the political economy of punishment, yet almost no attention has been given to the factors that translate socio-political arrangements into penal practices or the specific nature of imprisonment in different political-economic systems. Based on research in England & Wales and one Nordic nation, the project goals are to expose the dynamics of the penal state and the nature of penality in countries that are considered ‘exclusionary’ and ‘inclusionary’ respectively in their socio-economic and penal practices. These goals will be achieved through four comparative sub-projects: first, a study of penal policymaking and the ‘penal field’ (the players and processes that shape penal policy and practice); second, an exploration of the texture of imprisonment for women and sex offenders, groups presumed to experience inclusionary and exclusionary penal practices in distinctive ways; third, a study of how these prisoners experience entry into and exit from the system; fourth, a study of the ‘deep end’ imprisonment in both countries. A central aim is to interrogate widespread assumptions about the relative mildness/severity of penal practices in inclusionary and exclusionary nations. The research will employ an emerging framework that conceptualises the prison experience through notions of ‘depth’, ‘weight’, ‘tightness’ and ‘breadth’. It will foreground the roles of shame and guilt in shaping prisoners’ orientations, concepts that feature in theories of offending and reintegration, but are absent from the sociology of imprisonment. Through the concept of ‘penal consciousness’, the project will also explore the interaction between the punitive intentions of the state and prisoners’ perceptions of the purposes and legitimacy of their punishment. The research will be groundbreaking in several ways, reshaping the field of comparative penology, and linking macro issues of the penal state with the lived realities of the prison landings.

1 964 948 €

Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31