ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Societies in past and present are regularly confronted with major hazards, which sometimes have disastrous effects. Some societies are successful in preventing these effects and buffering threats, or they recover quickly, while others prove highly vulnerable. Why is this? Increasingly it is clear that disasters are not merely natural events, and also that wealth and technology alone are not adequate to prevent them. Rather, hazards and disasters are social occurrences as well, and they form a tough test for the organizational capacities of a society, both in mitigation and recovery. This project targets a main element of this capacity, namely: the way societies have organized the exchange, allocation and use of resources. It aims to explain why some societies do well in preventing or remedying disasters through these institutional arrangements and others not. In order to do so, this project analyses four key variables: the mix of coordination systems available within that society, its degree of autarky, economic equity and political equality. The recent literature on historical and present-day disasters suggests these factors as possible causes of success or failure of institutional arrangements in their confrontation with hazards, but their discussion remains largely descriptive and they have never been systematically analyzed. This research project offers such a systematic investigation, using rural societies in Western Europe in the period 1300-1800 - with their variety of socio-economic characteristics - as a testing ground. The historical perspective enables us to compare widely differing cases, also over the long run, and to test for the variables chosen, in order to isolate the determining factors in the resilience of different societies. By using the opportunities offered by history in this way, we will increase our insight into the relative performance of societies and gain a better understanding of a critical determinant of human wellbeing.

2 227 326 €

Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28

This project has two thrusts of equal importance. Firstly, it aims to develop new graph algorithmic techniques, specifically in the areas of dynamic graph algorithms, online algorithms and approximation algorithms for graph-based optimization problems. Thus, it proposes to solve long-standing, fundamental problems that are central to the field of algorithms. Secondly, it plans to apply these techniques to graph algorithmic problems in different fields of application, specifically in computer-aided verification, computational biology, and web-based advertisement with the goal of significantly advancing the state-of-the-art in these fields. This includes theoretical work as well as experimental evaluation on real-life data sets. Thus, the goal of this project is a comprehensive approach to algorithms research which involves both excellent fundamental algorithms research as well as solving concrete applications.

2 428 258 €

Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-08-31

The aim of REDHIS is to write a new history of the Roman legal culture in Late Antiquity. The project will focus on the elements which display the persistence of a legal culture of high level. Two are the main aspects that will be researched. First, a comprehensive understanding of legal culture has to include the study of the legal texts’ manuscript transmission. Although in Late Antiquity few works were composed anew, the books of the main classical jurists of previous centuries were copied, read and studied in the school and in the courts. A full appreciation of the remains of such copies in papyri and parchment – which has been neglected here so far – will explain how the lawyers of the 4th and 5th centuries AD kept in touch with the achievements of previous jurists. Secondly, Late Antiquity is considered to be the epoch of the emperors’ legislation, in opposition to the previous epoch dominated by private jurists. Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of the motivations of the emperors’ decisions will show the mental proceeding of the lawgivers and, at the same time, will show a deep relationship with the works of the roman jurists. The project will be developed, under the direction of the PI, by three research teams, with a strong cross-disciplinary composition. A wide collection of papyri and parchments will be edited, as a basis for a new interpretation, which will be the second part of the project. REDHIS will organize a series of workshops with the participation of scholars from different European countries. A final international conference on the legal culture in Late Antiquity will disseminate into the scientific community the results of the research. Four publications will be produced: a collection of the jurists' writings that have come down to us in direct tradition, i.e. outside the Digest; a monograph on the history and geography of Late Antique legal literature; a book on Justinian as a lawgiver; the proceedings of the international conference.

1 396 980 €

Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2020-01-31

"This project examines the development of a European security culture as the sum of mutually shared perceptions on “enemies of the states,” “vital interests,” and corresponding practices, between 1815 and 1914. By studying seven distinct instances of supranational security cooperation and their professional agents we will analyze how this European security culture emerged as early as 1815 as an open process of convergence and divergence, and of inclusion and exclusion. The team consists of the PI, 3 PhDs, 1 Post-Doc, and a research assistant. The postulated existence of a shared European security culture in the 19th century may seem counterintuitive. Historians and scholars of international relations generally view the first half of this age through the lenses of “balance of power” and hegemony, and the second half as shaped by bellicose nationalism rather than collective security. European security cooperation and culture is generally situated after 1918, or 1945, as a reaction to the horrors of war and motivated by economic considerations. Nevertheless, after 1815 several concrete transnational security regimes were forged, (partly) designed to deal with “enemies of the states,” such as the Commissions on the Rhine and the Danube (to fight smugglers), the European Commissions on Syria and China (to fight colonial rebels), the Anti-Piracy and Anti-Anarchism Campaigns, and others. These security regimes, dictated by the threats and interests, were highly dynamic, encompassing a growing corpus of professional agents from different branches (police, judicial, military), and evolving from military interventions into police and judicial regimes. They were midwife to a veritable European security culture. This important development has not received the attention it deserves within the framework of the history of international relations and international studies. Our hypothesis is that the development of this culture (threat/interest perceptions and practices) was dependent on four determinants: 1) the quality of the epistemic community (agents), 2) their threat/interest demarcations (subject/object), 3) the level of juridification and the use of military/police force (norms), and 4) innovations in the information, communication, and transportation technologies (technology). These determinants explain variance and change, ranging from inclusion to exclusion of groups and interests, and from juridical convergence between the European states/societies regarding the security practices in some cases to a total dissolution in other cases. This project pioneers a new multidisciplinary approach to the combined history of international relations and internal policy, aiming to “historicize security.” Using new material, we are comparing seven different security regimes where Europe engaged globally, that stretched across the political and commercial domain, affected urban and maritime environments, and reached around the world to the Ottoman Empire and China."

1 973 419 €

Start date: 2014-06-01, End date: 2019-05-31