Project acronym B2C
Project Beasts to Craft: BioCodicology as a new approach to the study of parchment manuscripts
Researcher (PI) Matthew COLLINS
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2017-ADG
Summary The intention of Beasts to Craft (B2C) is to document the biological and craft records in parchment in order to reveal the entangled histories of animal improvement and parchment production in Europe from 500-1900 AD.
B2C will lay the foundations for a new approach to the the study of parchment manuscripts —biocodicology— which draws evidence from the overlooked first stages in production, the raising of livestock and the preparation of the skins.
1. Parchment is an extraordinary but overlooked high resolution zooarchaeological record and a molecular archive. Livestock genetics is revealing breed diversity and markers of character traits such as fleece quality. B2C will exploit this new-found knowledge, using progressively older dated archival (sheep) parchments to study the history of improvement 1300 - 1900. Visual examination of the skins will search for direct evidence of disease and fleece quality.
2. Craft skills can be read from parchment and, when combined with chemical data and comparison with modern analogues, will produce the first European wide record of the craft from 500-1900. The size and scope of this the parchment archive means it is one of the largest and most highly resolved records of a specialist medieval craft. We will explore how these skills develop and when and where regional patterns appear and decline.
These two remarkable records requires a large interdisciplinary team. However biocodicology draws from and informs upon a wide and diverse spectrum of existing scholarship in conservation, the arts and sciences. A third strand of the project will (i) furnish manuscript scholars with some of the information available to the scribe at time of production (ii) inform and shape attitudes to parchment conservation (iii) provide high resolution biological data on animal management, movement and health and (iv) explore methods to link datasets and promote data reuse.
Summary
The intention of Beasts to Craft (B2C) is to document the biological and craft records in parchment in order to reveal the entangled histories of animal improvement and parchment production in Europe from 500-1900 AD.
B2C will lay the foundations for a new approach to the the study of parchment manuscripts —biocodicology— which draws evidence from the overlooked first stages in production, the raising of livestock and the preparation of the skins.
1. Parchment is an extraordinary but overlooked high resolution zooarchaeological record and a molecular archive. Livestock genetics is revealing breed diversity and markers of character traits such as fleece quality. B2C will exploit this new-found knowledge, using progressively older dated archival (sheep) parchments to study the history of improvement 1300 - 1900. Visual examination of the skins will search for direct evidence of disease and fleece quality.
2. Craft skills can be read from parchment and, when combined with chemical data and comparison with modern analogues, will produce the first European wide record of the craft from 500-1900. The size and scope of this the parchment archive means it is one of the largest and most highly resolved records of a specialist medieval craft. We will explore how these skills develop and when and where regional patterns appear and decline.
These two remarkable records requires a large interdisciplinary team. However biocodicology draws from and informs upon a wide and diverse spectrum of existing scholarship in conservation, the arts and sciences. A third strand of the project will (i) furnish manuscript scholars with some of the information available to the scribe at time of production (ii) inform and shape attitudes to parchment conservation (iii) provide high resolution biological data on animal management, movement and health and (iv) explore methods to link datasets and promote data reuse.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 462 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-12-01, End date: 2023-11-30
Project acronym BEHAVFRICTIONS
Project Behavioral Implications of Information-Processing Frictions
Researcher (PI) Jakub STEINER
Host Institution (HI) NARODOHOSPODARSKY USTAV AKADEMIE VED CESKE REPUBLIKY VEREJNA VYZKUMNA INSTITUCE
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH1, ERC-2017-COG
Summary BEHAVFRICTIONS will use novel models focussing on information-processing frictions to explain choice patterns described in behavioral economics and psychology. The proposed research will provide microfoundations that are essential for (i) identification of stable preferences, (ii) counterfactual predictions, and (iii) normative conclusions.
(i) Agents who face information-processing costs must trade the precision of choice against information costs. Their behavior thus reflects both their stable preferences and the context-dependent procedures that manage their errors stemming from imperfect information processing. In the absence of micro-founded models, the two drivers of the behavior are difficult to disentangle for outside observers. In some pillars of the proposal, the agents follow choice rules that closely resemble logit rules used in structural estimation. This will allow me to reinterpret the structural estimation fits to choice data and to make a distinction between the stable preferences and frictions.
(ii) Such a distinction is important in counterfactual policy analysis because the second-best decision procedures that manage the errors in choice are affected by the analysed policy. Incorporation of the information-processing frictions into existing empirical methods will improve our ability to predict effects of the policies.
(iii) My preliminary results suggest that when an agent is prone to committing errors, biases--such as overconfidence, confirmatory bias, or perception biases known from prospect theory--arise under second-best strategies. By providing the link between the agent's environment and the second-best distribution of the perception errors, my models will delineate environments in which these biases shield the agents from the most costly mistakes from environments in which the biases turn into maladaptations. The distinction will inform the normative debate on debiasing.
Summary
BEHAVFRICTIONS will use novel models focussing on information-processing frictions to explain choice patterns described in behavioral economics and psychology. The proposed research will provide microfoundations that are essential for (i) identification of stable preferences, (ii) counterfactual predictions, and (iii) normative conclusions.
(i) Agents who face information-processing costs must trade the precision of choice against information costs. Their behavior thus reflects both their stable preferences and the context-dependent procedures that manage their errors stemming from imperfect information processing. In the absence of micro-founded models, the two drivers of the behavior are difficult to disentangle for outside observers. In some pillars of the proposal, the agents follow choice rules that closely resemble logit rules used in structural estimation. This will allow me to reinterpret the structural estimation fits to choice data and to make a distinction between the stable preferences and frictions.
(ii) Such a distinction is important in counterfactual policy analysis because the second-best decision procedures that manage the errors in choice are affected by the analysed policy. Incorporation of the information-processing frictions into existing empirical methods will improve our ability to predict effects of the policies.
(iii) My preliminary results suggest that when an agent is prone to committing errors, biases--such as overconfidence, confirmatory bias, or perception biases known from prospect theory--arise under second-best strategies. By providing the link between the agent's environment and the second-best distribution of the perception errors, my models will delineate environments in which these biases shield the agents from the most costly mistakes from environments in which the biases turn into maladaptations. The distinction will inform the normative debate on debiasing.
Max ERC Funding
1 321 488 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31
Project acronym CLIC
Project Classical Influences and Irish Culture
Researcher (PI) Isabelle Torrance
Host Institution (HI) AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2018-COG
Summary The hypothesis of this project is that Ireland has a unique and hitherto underexplored history of cultural engagement with models from ancient Greece and Rome. Unlike Britain and mainland Europe, Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire. Yet the island has an extraordinarily vibrant tradition of classical learning that dates back to its earliest recorded literature, and is unparalleled in other northern European countries. Research for this project will address why this is the case, by examining sources through nine significant diachronic themes identified by the PI: language; land; travel and exile; Troy; satire; Neoplatonism; female voices; material culture; and global influence. This multi-thematic approach will enable analysis of what is remarkable about classical reception in Ireland. It will also provide a heuristic framework that generates dialogue between normally disparate fields, such as classical reception studies, Irish and British history, English-language literature, Irish-language literature, medieval studies, postcolonial studies, philosophy, material culture, women's studies, and global studies. The project will engage with contemporary preoccupations surrounding the politics and history of the divided island of Ireland, such as the current decade of centenary commemorations for the foundation of an independent Irish state (1912-1922, 2012-2022), and the on-going violence and political divisions in Northern Ireland. These issues will serve as a springboard for opening new avenues of investigation that look far beyond the past 100 years, but are linked to them. The project will thus shed new light on the role of classical culture in shaping literary, social, and political discourse across the island of Ireland, and throughout its history.
Summary
The hypothesis of this project is that Ireland has a unique and hitherto underexplored history of cultural engagement with models from ancient Greece and Rome. Unlike Britain and mainland Europe, Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire. Yet the island has an extraordinarily vibrant tradition of classical learning that dates back to its earliest recorded literature, and is unparalleled in other northern European countries. Research for this project will address why this is the case, by examining sources through nine significant diachronic themes identified by the PI: language; land; travel and exile; Troy; satire; Neoplatonism; female voices; material culture; and global influence. This multi-thematic approach will enable analysis of what is remarkable about classical reception in Ireland. It will also provide a heuristic framework that generates dialogue between normally disparate fields, such as classical reception studies, Irish and British history, English-language literature, Irish-language literature, medieval studies, postcolonial studies, philosophy, material culture, women's studies, and global studies. The project will engage with contemporary preoccupations surrounding the politics and history of the divided island of Ireland, such as the current decade of centenary commemorations for the foundation of an independent Irish state (1912-1922, 2012-2022), and the on-going violence and political divisions in Northern Ireland. These issues will serve as a springboard for opening new avenues of investigation that look far beyond the past 100 years, but are linked to them. The project will thus shed new light on the role of classical culture in shaping literary, social, and political discourse across the island of Ireland, and throughout its history.
Max ERC Funding
1 888 592 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30
Project acronym CLIOARCH
Project Cliodynamic archaeology: Computational approaches to Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic archaeology and climate change
Researcher (PI) Felix RIEDE
Host Institution (HI) AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2018-COG
Summary Late Pleistocene/early Holocene Europe is said to be the ideal laboratory for the investigation of human responses to rapidly changing climates and environments, migration and adaptation. Yet, pinpointing precisely how and why contemporaneous Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic (15,000-11,000 years BP) foragers migrated, and which environmental or other factors they adapted to – or failed to – has remained remarkably elusive. At the core of ClioArch is the radical but, in light of research-historical insights, necessary hypothesis that the current archaeological cultural taxonomy for this iconic period of European prehistory is epistemologically flawed and that operationalisations and interpretations based on this traditional taxonomy – especially those that seek to relate observed changes in material culture and land-use to contemporaneous climatic and environmental changes – are therefore problematic. Hence, novel approaches to crafting the taxonomic building blocks are required, as are novel analyses of human|environment relations in this period. ClioArch’s premier ambition is to provide operational cultural taxonomies for the Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic of Europe and to couple these with interdisciplinary cultural evolutionary, quantitative ecological methods and field archaeological investigations beyond the state-of-the-art, so as to better capture such adaptations – almost certainly with major implications for the standard culture-historical narrative relating to this period. In so doing, the project will pioneer a fully transparent and replicable – and eminently transferable – methodology for the study of the impacts of climate change and extreme environmental events in deep history. In turn, such a quantitative understanding of past adaptive dynamics will position archaeology more centrally in contemporary debates about climate change, environmental catastrophe and their cultural dimensions.
Summary
Late Pleistocene/early Holocene Europe is said to be the ideal laboratory for the investigation of human responses to rapidly changing climates and environments, migration and adaptation. Yet, pinpointing precisely how and why contemporaneous Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic (15,000-11,000 years BP) foragers migrated, and which environmental or other factors they adapted to – or failed to – has remained remarkably elusive. At the core of ClioArch is the radical but, in light of research-historical insights, necessary hypothesis that the current archaeological cultural taxonomy for this iconic period of European prehistory is epistemologically flawed and that operationalisations and interpretations based on this traditional taxonomy – especially those that seek to relate observed changes in material culture and land-use to contemporaneous climatic and environmental changes – are therefore problematic. Hence, novel approaches to crafting the taxonomic building blocks are required, as are novel analyses of human|environment relations in this period. ClioArch’s premier ambition is to provide operational cultural taxonomies for the Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic of Europe and to couple these with interdisciplinary cultural evolutionary, quantitative ecological methods and field archaeological investigations beyond the state-of-the-art, so as to better capture such adaptations – almost certainly with major implications for the standard culture-historical narrative relating to this period. In so doing, the project will pioneer a fully transparent and replicable – and eminently transferable – methodology for the study of the impacts of climate change and extreme environmental events in deep history. In turn, such a quantitative understanding of past adaptive dynamics will position archaeology more centrally in contemporary debates about climate change, environmental catastrophe and their cultural dimensions.
Max ERC Funding
1 907 638 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31
Project acronym CRAACE
Project Continuity and Rupture in Central European Art and Architecture, 1918-1939
Researcher (PI) Matthew RAMPLEY
Host Institution (HI) Masarykova univerzita
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2017-ADG
Summary When new political elites and social structures emerge out of a historical rupture, how are art and architecture affected? In 1918 the political map of central Europe was redrawn as a result of the collapse of Austria-Hungary, marking a new era for the region. Through comparative analysis of the visual arts in 3 states built on the ruins of the Habsburg Empire (Austria, Hungary and [former] Czechoslovakia), this project examines how such political discontinuity affected art and architecture between 1918 and 1939. The project is organised into 4 themes, each resulting in a monograph:
1. Vernacular modernisms, nostalgia and the avant-garde
2. Presenting the state: world fairs and exhibitionary cultures
3. Piety, reaction and renewal
4. Contested histories: monuments, memory and representations of the historical past
It is the first systematic and comprehensive trans-national study of this type, based on the claim that the successor states to Austria-Hungary belonged to a common cultural space informed by the shared memory of the long years of Habsburg society and culture. The project focuses on the contradictory ways that visual arts of artists and architects in central Europe adapted to and tried to shape new socio-political circumstances in the light of the past. The project thus examines the long shadow of the Habsburg Empire over the art and culture of the twentieth century.
The project also considers the impact of the political and ideological imperatives of the three successor states on the visual arts; how did governments treat the past? Did they encourage a sense of historical caesura or look to the past for legitimation? How did artists and architects respond to such new impulses? In answering these questions the project analyses the conflicts between avant-gardes and more conservative artistic movements; the role of the visual arts in interwar memory politics; the place of art in the nexus of religion, national and state identity.
Summary
When new political elites and social structures emerge out of a historical rupture, how are art and architecture affected? In 1918 the political map of central Europe was redrawn as a result of the collapse of Austria-Hungary, marking a new era for the region. Through comparative analysis of the visual arts in 3 states built on the ruins of the Habsburg Empire (Austria, Hungary and [former] Czechoslovakia), this project examines how such political discontinuity affected art and architecture between 1918 and 1939. The project is organised into 4 themes, each resulting in a monograph:
1. Vernacular modernisms, nostalgia and the avant-garde
2. Presenting the state: world fairs and exhibitionary cultures
3. Piety, reaction and renewal
4. Contested histories: monuments, memory and representations of the historical past
It is the first systematic and comprehensive trans-national study of this type, based on the claim that the successor states to Austria-Hungary belonged to a common cultural space informed by the shared memory of the long years of Habsburg society and culture. The project focuses on the contradictory ways that visual arts of artists and architects in central Europe adapted to and tried to shape new socio-political circumstances in the light of the past. The project thus examines the long shadow of the Habsburg Empire over the art and culture of the twentieth century.
The project also considers the impact of the political and ideological imperatives of the three successor states on the visual arts; how did governments treat the past? Did they encourage a sense of historical caesura or look to the past for legitimation? How did artists and architects respond to such new impulses? In answering these questions the project analyses the conflicts between avant-gardes and more conservative artistic movements; the role of the visual arts in interwar memory politics; the place of art in the nexus of religion, national and state identity.
Max ERC Funding
2 468 359 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31
Project acronym DEVOMIND
Project How do infants mentalize? Bringing a neuroimaging approach to the puzzle of early mindreading.
Researcher (PI) Victoria SOUTHGATE
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Human social interaction and learning depends on making the right inferences about other people’s thoughts, a process commonly called mentalizing, or Theory of Mind, a cognitive achievement which several decades of research concluded was reached at around age 4. The last 10 years has radically changed this view, and innovative new paradigms suggest that even preverbal infants can think about others’ minds. This new developmental data has created arguably one of the biggest puzzles in the history of developmental science: How can infants be mentalizing when years of research have shown that a) pre-schoolers fail at mentalizing tasks and b) mentalizing depends on the development of cognitive control, language, and brain maturation? The key issue is whether behaviour that looks like infant mentalizing really is mentalizing, or might infants’ success belie alternative processes? The most powerful strategy for resolving this puzzle is to look to brain activity. By applying the same methods and paradigms across infancy and early childhood, DEVOMIND will investigate whether infants’ success on mentalizing tasks recruits the same network of brain regions, and neural processes, that we know are involved in success in older children and adults. In the second half of the project, we will use our neural indicators of mentalizing to test a completely novel hypothesis in which infants’ success is possible because they have a limited ability to distinguish self from other. Although novel, this hypothesis deserves to be tested because it has the potential to explain both infants’ success and preschoolers’ failures under a single, unified theory. By bringing a neuroimaging approach to the puzzle of early mentalizing, DEVOMIND will allow us to move beyond the current impasse, and to generate a new theory of Theory of Mind.
Summary
Human social interaction and learning depends on making the right inferences about other people’s thoughts, a process commonly called mentalizing, or Theory of Mind, a cognitive achievement which several decades of research concluded was reached at around age 4. The last 10 years has radically changed this view, and innovative new paradigms suggest that even preverbal infants can think about others’ minds. This new developmental data has created arguably one of the biggest puzzles in the history of developmental science: How can infants be mentalizing when years of research have shown that a) pre-schoolers fail at mentalizing tasks and b) mentalizing depends on the development of cognitive control, language, and brain maturation? The key issue is whether behaviour that looks like infant mentalizing really is mentalizing, or might infants’ success belie alternative processes? The most powerful strategy for resolving this puzzle is to look to brain activity. By applying the same methods and paradigms across infancy and early childhood, DEVOMIND will investigate whether infants’ success on mentalizing tasks recruits the same network of brain regions, and neural processes, that we know are involved in success in older children and adults. In the second half of the project, we will use our neural indicators of mentalizing to test a completely novel hypothesis in which infants’ success is possible because they have a limited ability to distinguish self from other. Although novel, this hypothesis deserves to be tested because it has the potential to explain both infants’ success and preschoolers’ failures under a single, unified theory. By bringing a neuroimaging approach to the puzzle of early mentalizing, DEVOMIND will allow us to move beyond the current impasse, and to generate a new theory of Theory of Mind.
Max ERC Funding
1 761 190 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31
Project acronym DIPLOFACE
Project Diplomatic Face-Work - between confidential negotiations and public display
Researcher (PI) Rebecca Adler-Nissen
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2015-STG
Summary The rise of social media, coupled with intensifying demands for more transparency and democracy in world politics, brings new challenges to international diplomacy. State leaders and diplomats continue to react to traditional media, but now also attempt to present themselves proactively through tweets, public diplomacy and nation branding. These efforts often take place simultaneously and sometimes interfere directly with closed-door negotiations and its culture of restraint and secrecy. Yet the relationship between confidential diplomacy and public representation remains understudied.
DIPLOFACE will develop a sociologically and anthropologically informed approach to studying how state leaders and diplomats manage their nation’s ‘faces’ in the information age. The project will explore the relationship and tensions between confidential diplomatic negotiations and publicly displayed interventions in various media, applying the micro-sociological concept of ‘face-work’. DIPLOFACE will analyse the complex interactional dynamics that shape the diplomatic techniques and strategies used to convey a nation’s ‘face’ or ‘image of self’. Such face-work is increasingly important for national leaders and diplomats who perform simultaneously on the ‘back-stage’ and the ‘front-stage’ of international relations. DIPLOFACE will identify, theorize and analyse the repertoire of face-saving, face-honouring and face-threatening practices that are employed in confidential negotiations and in public.
DIPLOFACE advances our theoretical understanding of diplomacy in the 21st century significantly beyond existing International Relations and diplomatic theory. Combining participant observation, interviews and media analysis, DIPLOFACE will generate important new knowledge about the relationship between public and confidential multilateral negotiation, how state leaders and diplomats handle new media, and the role of face-saving and face-threatening strategies in international relations.
Summary
The rise of social media, coupled with intensifying demands for more transparency and democracy in world politics, brings new challenges to international diplomacy. State leaders and diplomats continue to react to traditional media, but now also attempt to present themselves proactively through tweets, public diplomacy and nation branding. These efforts often take place simultaneously and sometimes interfere directly with closed-door negotiations and its culture of restraint and secrecy. Yet the relationship between confidential diplomacy and public representation remains understudied.
DIPLOFACE will develop a sociologically and anthropologically informed approach to studying how state leaders and diplomats manage their nation’s ‘faces’ in the information age. The project will explore the relationship and tensions between confidential diplomatic negotiations and publicly displayed interventions in various media, applying the micro-sociological concept of ‘face-work’. DIPLOFACE will analyse the complex interactional dynamics that shape the diplomatic techniques and strategies used to convey a nation’s ‘face’ or ‘image of self’. Such face-work is increasingly important for national leaders and diplomats who perform simultaneously on the ‘back-stage’ and the ‘front-stage’ of international relations. DIPLOFACE will identify, theorize and analyse the repertoire of face-saving, face-honouring and face-threatening practices that are employed in confidential negotiations and in public.
DIPLOFACE advances our theoretical understanding of diplomacy in the 21st century significantly beyond existing International Relations and diplomatic theory. Combining participant observation, interviews and media analysis, DIPLOFACE will generate important new knowledge about the relationship between public and confidential multilateral negotiation, how state leaders and diplomats handle new media, and the role of face-saving and face-threatening strategies in international relations.
Max ERC Funding
1 493 062 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31
Project acronym eCAPE
Project New energy Consumer roles and smart technologies – Actors, Practices and Equality
Researcher (PI) Kirsten GRAM-HANSSEN
Host Institution (HI) AALBORG UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2017-ADG
Summary The transition to a low-carbon society is vital and requires major changes in everyday life for European households, including new prosumer roles linking renewable energy production and household consumption by use of smart technologies. This implies major alterations in the materiality as well as the social organisation of everyday life. To guide this low-carbon transition, new theory development on the role of technological systems in everyday life is needed. Practice theories represent a strong approach in this; however, they have developed in opposition to understanding actors and structures as mutually interlinked. This means that major drivers, as well as consequences, for sustainable transition are being overlooked. This project will contribute with important new theory development to understand and promote a low-carbon transition as well as to ensure that this transition does not indirectly become a driver of gender and social inequality.
Three theoretical lines within theories of practice will be developed:
1. The importance of gender and social structures when studying household practices, including how these social structures influence formation of practices and how, in turn, social structures are formed by the development of practices.
2. The role of the ethical consumer in developing new practices, including how learning processes, media discourses and institutionalised knowledge influence formation of practices.
3. The inclusion of non-humans as carriers and performers of practices, rather than seeing the material arrangements only as the context for practices, especially when dealing with automated and internet connected technologies.
Quantitative and qualitative empirical research guided by these theoretical approaches will contribute with work on how future low-carbon living can be achieved and the theoretical developments will form an essential foundation for policy development towards a mandatory low-carbon transition.
Summary
The transition to a low-carbon society is vital and requires major changes in everyday life for European households, including new prosumer roles linking renewable energy production and household consumption by use of smart technologies. This implies major alterations in the materiality as well as the social organisation of everyday life. To guide this low-carbon transition, new theory development on the role of technological systems in everyday life is needed. Practice theories represent a strong approach in this; however, they have developed in opposition to understanding actors and structures as mutually interlinked. This means that major drivers, as well as consequences, for sustainable transition are being overlooked. This project will contribute with important new theory development to understand and promote a low-carbon transition as well as to ensure that this transition does not indirectly become a driver of gender and social inequality.
Three theoretical lines within theories of practice will be developed:
1. The importance of gender and social structures when studying household practices, including how these social structures influence formation of practices and how, in turn, social structures are formed by the development of practices.
2. The role of the ethical consumer in developing new practices, including how learning processes, media discourses and institutionalised knowledge influence formation of practices.
3. The inclusion of non-humans as carriers and performers of practices, rather than seeing the material arrangements only as the context for practices, especially when dealing with automated and internet connected technologies.
Quantitative and qualitative empirical research guided by these theoretical approaches will contribute with work on how future low-carbon living can be achieved and the theoretical developments will form an essential foundation for policy development towards a mandatory low-carbon transition.
Max ERC Funding
2 116 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-11-01, End date: 2023-10-31
Project acronym FRICTIONS
Project Financial Frictions
Researcher (PI) Lasse Heje Pedersen
Host Institution (HI) COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary "Financial economics is at a crossroads: Academics are struggling to redefine the theory of finance and practitioners and regulators to restructure the financial industry. The current financial crisis will have significant impact on how we regulate financial markets and how we manage risk in companies and financial institutions. It will continue to inspire an intense discussion and research agenda over the next decade in academics, in industry, and among financial regulators and a central focus will be the role of frictions in financial markets. Nowhere are these issues more pertinent than in Europe right now.
To take up the challenge presented by this crossroad of financial economics, my research project seeks to contribute to the knowledge of financial frictions and what to do about them. FRICTIONS will explore how financial frictions affect asset prices and the economy, and the implications of frictions for financial risk management, the optimal regulation, and the conduct of monetary policy.
Whereas economists have traditionally focused on the assumption of perfect markets, a growing body of evidence is leading to a widespread recognition that markets are plagued by significant financial frictions. FRICTIONS will model key financial frictions such as leverage constraints, margin requirements, transaction costs, liquidity risk, and short sale constraints. The objective is to develop theories of the origins of these frictions, study how these frictions change over time and across markets, and, importantly, how they affect the required return on assets and the economy.
The project will test these theories using data from global equity, bond, and derivative markets. In particular, the project will measure these frictions empirically and study the empirical effect of frictions on asset returns and economic dynamics. The end result is an empirically-validated model of economic behavior subject to financial frictions that yields qualitative and quantitative insights."
Summary
"Financial economics is at a crossroads: Academics are struggling to redefine the theory of finance and practitioners and regulators to restructure the financial industry. The current financial crisis will have significant impact on how we regulate financial markets and how we manage risk in companies and financial institutions. It will continue to inspire an intense discussion and research agenda over the next decade in academics, in industry, and among financial regulators and a central focus will be the role of frictions in financial markets. Nowhere are these issues more pertinent than in Europe right now.
To take up the challenge presented by this crossroad of financial economics, my research project seeks to contribute to the knowledge of financial frictions and what to do about them. FRICTIONS will explore how financial frictions affect asset prices and the economy, and the implications of frictions for financial risk management, the optimal regulation, and the conduct of monetary policy.
Whereas economists have traditionally focused on the assumption of perfect markets, a growing body of evidence is leading to a widespread recognition that markets are plagued by significant financial frictions. FRICTIONS will model key financial frictions such as leverage constraints, margin requirements, transaction costs, liquidity risk, and short sale constraints. The objective is to develop theories of the origins of these frictions, study how these frictions change over time and across markets, and, importantly, how they affect the required return on assets and the economy.
The project will test these theories using data from global equity, bond, and derivative markets. In particular, the project will measure these frictions empirically and study the empirical effect of frictions on asset returns and economic dynamics. The end result is an empirically-validated model of economic behavior subject to financial frictions that yields qualitative and quantitative insights."
Max ERC Funding
1 307 160 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym GEM
Project Generalised Entropy Models for Spatial Choices
Researcher (PI) Mogens FOSGERAU
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2016-ADG
Summary This project will create a new category of models that can be used for describing a wide range of spatial choice problems in the social sciences. Spatial settings often have a very large number of choice alternatives. Discrete choice models are used extensively to make counterfactual predictions based on observations of individual choices. Despite forty years of research, current spatial choice models still have two major generic short-comings that seriously limit their ability to make counterfactual predictions. The new category of models will address these two short-comings.
The first issue is that substitution patterns between choice alternatives are very complex. The new models will allow substitution patterns to be specified in a general and transparent way. The second issue is that so-called endogeneity issues are pervasive, which violates the underlying statistical assumptions of common models and leads to inconsistent results. The new models will enable endogeneity issues to be dealt with in a simple way.
The new models rely on a concept of generalised entropy and are related via duality to classical discrete choice models. A generalised entropy model, or just GEM, will be specified in terms of a transformation from choice probabilities to utilities. This idea is completely new. It is the exact opposite of classical discrete choice models and makes available a whole universe of new models. Early results suggest that GEM will enable the short-comings of the standard models to be overcome.
The project develops GEM in three prototypical spatial contexts: equilibrium sorting of households, travel demand modelling, and network route choice.
Classical discrete choice models are extensively used for policy analysis and planning. Replacing these by GEM will therefore influence a multitude of decisions across a range of sectors of great societal importance with environmental, economic and welfare consequences that reach far into the future.
Summary
This project will create a new category of models that can be used for describing a wide range of spatial choice problems in the social sciences. Spatial settings often have a very large number of choice alternatives. Discrete choice models are used extensively to make counterfactual predictions based on observations of individual choices. Despite forty years of research, current spatial choice models still have two major generic short-comings that seriously limit their ability to make counterfactual predictions. The new category of models will address these two short-comings.
The first issue is that substitution patterns between choice alternatives are very complex. The new models will allow substitution patterns to be specified in a general and transparent way. The second issue is that so-called endogeneity issues are pervasive, which violates the underlying statistical assumptions of common models and leads to inconsistent results. The new models will enable endogeneity issues to be dealt with in a simple way.
The new models rely on a concept of generalised entropy and are related via duality to classical discrete choice models. A generalised entropy model, or just GEM, will be specified in terms of a transformation from choice probabilities to utilities. This idea is completely new. It is the exact opposite of classical discrete choice models and makes available a whole universe of new models. Early results suggest that GEM will enable the short-comings of the standard models to be overcome.
The project develops GEM in three prototypical spatial contexts: equilibrium sorting of households, travel demand modelling, and network route choice.
Classical discrete choice models are extensively used for policy analysis and planning. Replacing these by GEM will therefore influence a multitude of decisions across a range of sectors of great societal importance with environmental, economic and welfare consequences that reach far into the future.
Max ERC Funding
2 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31
Project acronym HHPOLITICS
Project A Household Finance Theory of Political Attitudes and Political Behavior
Researcher (PI) David Dreyer Lassen
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary "How do individuals insure themselves against economic shocks, as consumers and savers on their own, and as voters, through the political process? The recent financial and economic crisis has seen people lose their jobs and their housing equity, partly as a result of insufficient economic buffers in good times. What does this mean for social insurance? We need to understand the connection between household finances and political attitudes to social insurance and redistribution, both in good times and in bad.
I argue that in order to understand the political economy of redistribution and social insruance, we need to allow for imperfect asset markets in the form of liquidity (or credit) constraints and for asset holdings, including housing equity.
The goal of the project is to investigate theoretically and empirically on Danish data (i) how differences in liquidity constraints affect political attitudes and preferences; (ii) where such differences come from and what that means for understanding links between personal traits and personality, socio-economics and political attitudes and behaviour; (iii) how these insights can be used to understand political attitudes towards the new wave of neo-paternalistic policies (including so-called ‘nudging’) inspired by behavioural economic research; and (iv) whether differences in liquidity constraints can help us understand changes in political attitudes and preferences over the long-run.
The central empirical part of the project is to link uniquely detailed individual level high quality data from Danish administrative registers - including current and historical data on all tax-declared income sources, bank deposits, assets and liabilities, as well as detailed demographics, educational and occupational data - to a running, large-scale panel survey of a large random sample of adult Danes, and to extend this survey both in time and in scope, specifically with questions on political attitudes and political preferences."
Summary
"How do individuals insure themselves against economic shocks, as consumers and savers on their own, and as voters, through the political process? The recent financial and economic crisis has seen people lose their jobs and their housing equity, partly as a result of insufficient economic buffers in good times. What does this mean for social insurance? We need to understand the connection between household finances and political attitudes to social insurance and redistribution, both in good times and in bad.
I argue that in order to understand the political economy of redistribution and social insruance, we need to allow for imperfect asset markets in the form of liquidity (or credit) constraints and for asset holdings, including housing equity.
The goal of the project is to investigate theoretically and empirically on Danish data (i) how differences in liquidity constraints affect political attitudes and preferences; (ii) where such differences come from and what that means for understanding links between personal traits and personality, socio-economics and political attitudes and behaviour; (iii) how these insights can be used to understand political attitudes towards the new wave of neo-paternalistic policies (including so-called ‘nudging’) inspired by behavioural economic research; and (iv) whether differences in liquidity constraints can help us understand changes in political attitudes and preferences over the long-run.
The central empirical part of the project is to link uniquely detailed individual level high quality data from Danish administrative registers - including current and historical data on all tax-declared income sources, bank deposits, assets and liabilities, as well as detailed demographics, educational and occupational data - to a running, large-scale panel survey of a large random sample of adult Danes, and to extend this survey both in time and in scope, specifically with questions on political attitudes and political preferences."
Max ERC Funding
1 499 740 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym IMAGINE
Project EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL IMAGINARIES: UTOPIAS, IDEOLOGIES AND THE OTHER
Researcher (PI) Jan KOMAREK
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2018-STG
Summary While scholars have presented and promoted a series of specific theories of EU constitutionalism, no one has yet attempted to analyse their wider intellectual context and the relationship among them – what we call here ‘European constitutional imaginaries’ (ECIs). In addition, IMAGINE does not limit this general analysis to the mainstream thinkers writing for the audience located at the supranational/transnational level. It includes the perspective of thinkers writing in particular EU member states. IMAGINE seeks to uncover whether there are individuals and ideas that have made important, yet often overlooked, contributions to ECIs. Crucially, IMAGINE puts emphasis on post-communist Europe’ experience, hitherto mostly ignored in EU constitutional scholarship.
As a result, IMAGINE will provide the first-ever synthesis and critical evaluation of the core theories of EU constitutionalism, theorizing their mutual relationship and the way in which they have influenced each other.
The overarching objective is to provide a novel account of ECIs: one informed by their intellectual history, which comprises both Old and the post-communist Europe, and which seeks to understand the various problems that lead some people to reject EU constitutionalism and its core values, seeing them as mere utopias or oppressing ideologies.
IMAGINE employs an innovative combination of research methods: empirical surveys, citation network analyses and elite in-depth interviews, together with traditional legal analysis. It will involve experts from particular member states though a number of workshops and a conference organized by the IMAGINE Team.
The PI is uniquely placed to realise IMAGINE: now based as a Professor of EU law at an elite socio-legal research centre iCourts (University of Copenhagen), he has participated in EU constitutional discourse both as a scholar and practitioner in one of the member states of post-communist Europe for more than 10 years.
Summary
While scholars have presented and promoted a series of specific theories of EU constitutionalism, no one has yet attempted to analyse their wider intellectual context and the relationship among them – what we call here ‘European constitutional imaginaries’ (ECIs). In addition, IMAGINE does not limit this general analysis to the mainstream thinkers writing for the audience located at the supranational/transnational level. It includes the perspective of thinkers writing in particular EU member states. IMAGINE seeks to uncover whether there are individuals and ideas that have made important, yet often overlooked, contributions to ECIs. Crucially, IMAGINE puts emphasis on post-communist Europe’ experience, hitherto mostly ignored in EU constitutional scholarship.
As a result, IMAGINE will provide the first-ever synthesis and critical evaluation of the core theories of EU constitutionalism, theorizing their mutual relationship and the way in which they have influenced each other.
The overarching objective is to provide a novel account of ECIs: one informed by their intellectual history, which comprises both Old and the post-communist Europe, and which seeks to understand the various problems that lead some people to reject EU constitutionalism and its core values, seeing them as mere utopias or oppressing ideologies.
IMAGINE employs an innovative combination of research methods: empirical surveys, citation network analyses and elite in-depth interviews, together with traditional legal analysis. It will involve experts from particular member states though a number of workshops and a conference organized by the IMAGINE Team.
The PI is uniquely placed to realise IMAGINE: now based as a Professor of EU law at an elite socio-legal research centre iCourts (University of Copenhagen), he has participated in EU constitutional discourse both as a scholar and practitioner in one of the member states of post-communist Europe for more than 10 years.
Max ERC Funding
1 497 685 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31
Project acronym INATTENTION
Project Behavioral and Policy Implications of Rational Inattention
Researcher (PI) Filip Matejka
Host Institution (HI) NARODOHOSPODARSKY USTAV AKADEMIE VED CESKE REPUBLIKY VEREJNA VYZKUMNA INSTITUCE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2015-STG
Summary This proposal outlines agenda which aims to improve our understanding of policies in environments with cognitively limited agents. It seeks to extend and apply the theory of rational inattention developed in macroeconomics. Citizens are inattentive to details of tax codes, government bureaucrats cannot inspect all data about people in need, and voters are highly uninformed about politicians’ campaign platforms. The agenda is specifically targeted at applications where human inability to digest all available information has strong implications for public policy formation. It falls into three broad parts.
First (macroeconomics), the proposed research will develop a new model of risk-sharing in a typical modern-macro setting with heterogeneous agents. Instead of incentive constraints, the imperfections will be driven by the government’s or citizens’ inability to process all available information. What are the properties of the resulting system of redistribution? Why do taxes often take a simple form? Can minorities be left behind because they attract less of the government’s attention?
Second (behavioral economics), it will extend the rational inattention theory to model how agents simplify multidimensional features of the environment. Among many applications, the theory is likely to provide an alternative explanation for mental accounting, when people have separate budgets for different types of expenditures (critical to consumption decisions, especially of the poor), and for salience of different elements of the tax code.
Third (political economy), it will develop a unified framework to study implications of voters’ rational inattention (selective ignorance) for the outcomes of political processes, such as for popular demand for misguided policies, public good provision, and the complexity of announced platforms. Voters’ information acquisition and fragmented information processing will be studied in a field experiment.
Summary
This proposal outlines agenda which aims to improve our understanding of policies in environments with cognitively limited agents. It seeks to extend and apply the theory of rational inattention developed in macroeconomics. Citizens are inattentive to details of tax codes, government bureaucrats cannot inspect all data about people in need, and voters are highly uninformed about politicians’ campaign platforms. The agenda is specifically targeted at applications where human inability to digest all available information has strong implications for public policy formation. It falls into three broad parts.
First (macroeconomics), the proposed research will develop a new model of risk-sharing in a typical modern-macro setting with heterogeneous agents. Instead of incentive constraints, the imperfections will be driven by the government’s or citizens’ inability to process all available information. What are the properties of the resulting system of redistribution? Why do taxes often take a simple form? Can minorities be left behind because they attract less of the government’s attention?
Second (behavioral economics), it will extend the rational inattention theory to model how agents simplify multidimensional features of the environment. Among many applications, the theory is likely to provide an alternative explanation for mental accounting, when people have separate budgets for different types of expenditures (critical to consumption decisions, especially of the poor), and for salience of different elements of the tax code.
Third (political economy), it will develop a unified framework to study implications of voters’ rational inattention (selective ignorance) for the outcomes of political processes, such as for popular demand for misguided policies, public good provision, and the complexity of announced platforms. Voters’ information acquisition and fragmented information processing will be studied in a field experiment.
Max ERC Funding
950 424 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31
Project acronym ISLHORNAFR
Project Islam in the Horn of Africa: A Comparative Literary Approach
Researcher (PI) Alessandro Gori
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2012-ADG_20120411
Summary "The study of Africa as a region ""peripheral"" to mainstream Islamic studies helps a deeper understanding of the cultural dynamics of Islam. While North African Islam has been subject to extensive research, the Muslim cultures of sub-Saharan Africa have received relatively little attention; most of it paid to West African regions. This project will contribute to both African and Islamic studies by producing for the first time a critical evaluation of textual witnesses of Islamic culture in the Horn of Africa (esp. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somaliland) and therefore considerably contribute to the change in the state-of-the-art in both Islamic and African studies.
The comparative study will be the first to assess simultaneously types and contents of texts, their transmission history, and the role they (as well as the respective authors and copyists) have played in the culture and identity formation in both the Horn of Africa and the “heartland” Islamic countries. Both Arabic texts as well as those written in local languages (using Arabic alphabet: ajami) will be considered, allowing an evaluation of linguistic and cultural influences. A reevaluation of the external Islamic sources dealing with these areas will complete the picture.
Competences in philology, history, manuscript studies, linguistics and computer science will be merged in producing a Digital Research Environment for North-East African Islam. More than a corpus of centrally collected data, it will include images accompanied by searchable descriptive metadata, digital text editions, bibliography as well as an open access database for quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis of text and documentary corpora as well as their linguistic and graphic features will serve as a tool for the project and as a basis for future research.
The research findings will provide a deeper understanding of Muslim thought and proselytism, and the effects Islam has had on society."
Summary
"The study of Africa as a region ""peripheral"" to mainstream Islamic studies helps a deeper understanding of the cultural dynamics of Islam. While North African Islam has been subject to extensive research, the Muslim cultures of sub-Saharan Africa have received relatively little attention; most of it paid to West African regions. This project will contribute to both African and Islamic studies by producing for the first time a critical evaluation of textual witnesses of Islamic culture in the Horn of Africa (esp. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somaliland) and therefore considerably contribute to the change in the state-of-the-art in both Islamic and African studies.
The comparative study will be the first to assess simultaneously types and contents of texts, their transmission history, and the role they (as well as the respective authors and copyists) have played in the culture and identity formation in both the Horn of Africa and the “heartland” Islamic countries. Both Arabic texts as well as those written in local languages (using Arabic alphabet: ajami) will be considered, allowing an evaluation of linguistic and cultural influences. A reevaluation of the external Islamic sources dealing with these areas will complete the picture.
Competences in philology, history, manuscript studies, linguistics and computer science will be merged in producing a Digital Research Environment for North-East African Islam. More than a corpus of centrally collected data, it will include images accompanied by searchable descriptive metadata, digital text editions, bibliography as well as an open access database for quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis of text and documentary corpora as well as their linguistic and graphic features will serve as a tool for the project and as a basis for future research.
The research findings will provide a deeper understanding of Muslim thought and proselytism, and the effects Islam has had on society."
Max ERC Funding
1 550 200 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-07-01, End date: 2018-12-31
Project acronym ITEPE
Project Institutional Transformation in European Political Economy
- A Socio-Legal Approach
Researcher (PI) Poul Fritz Kjær
Host Institution (HI) COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary The objective is to develop a socio-legal theory explaining the institutional transformations from corporatism over neo-corporatism to governance and the role of law and legal instruments within the 3 types of institutions.
The period of investigation covers the period between 1850 and today and is limited to the European setting.
The core hypothesis is that corporatism, neo-corporatism and governance fulfil identical societal functions under altered structural conditions insofar as they simultaneously are oriented towards the internal stabilisation of economic processes and the establishment of compatibility with non-economic segments of society. The successful fulfilment of this dual function is furthermore conditioned upon a reliance on formalised legal frameworks.
In concrete the project wishes to provide an alternative to the a-historical nature of contemporary governance research; counter the lack of a dynamic perspective within the ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach; offset the reductionist stance of political economy studies as reflected in the narrowing of economy and society relations to the binary relationship between economy and politics; develop a theoretical framework capable of connecting a wide range of so far disperse academic discourses such as governance research, political economy and socio-legal studies; provide a central contribution to a new inter-systemic theory of society.
The project contains detailed case studies in relation to the development of institutional stabilisation within the European steel and pharmaceutical sectors.
Summary
The objective is to develop a socio-legal theory explaining the institutional transformations from corporatism over neo-corporatism to governance and the role of law and legal instruments within the 3 types of institutions.
The period of investigation covers the period between 1850 and today and is limited to the European setting.
The core hypothesis is that corporatism, neo-corporatism and governance fulfil identical societal functions under altered structural conditions insofar as they simultaneously are oriented towards the internal stabilisation of economic processes and the establishment of compatibility with non-economic segments of society. The successful fulfilment of this dual function is furthermore conditioned upon a reliance on formalised legal frameworks.
In concrete the project wishes to provide an alternative to the a-historical nature of contemporary governance research; counter the lack of a dynamic perspective within the ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach; offset the reductionist stance of political economy studies as reflected in the narrowing of economy and society relations to the binary relationship between economy and politics; develop a theoretical framework capable of connecting a wide range of so far disperse academic discourses such as governance research, political economy and socio-legal studies; provide a central contribution to a new inter-systemic theory of society.
The project contains detailed case studies in relation to the development of institutional stabilisation within the European steel and pharmaceutical sectors.
Max ERC Funding
1 175 210 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2017-07-31
Project acronym JUDI-ARCH
Project The Rise of Judicial Self-Government: Changing the Architecture of Separation of Powers without an Architect
Researcher (PI) David Kosar
Host Institution (HI) Masarykova univerzita
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2015-STG
Summary Many European states have transferred decision-making powers regarding court administration and the career of a judge from political bodies to special organs in which judges have a major say. Judicial councils and other bodies of judicial self-government (JSG) spread particularly quickly during the European Union (EU) Accession Process. However, the effects of these bodies are not fully understood, as the traditional descriptive and normative scholarship is not able to capture them. JUDI-ARCH will fill this gap and address the implications of this phenomenon for the “new” as well as “old” EU member states.
The central research question of JUDI-ARCH is: how the rise of JSG has changed the concept of separation of powers? More specifically, the JUDI-ARCH proposal consists of three interrelated research aims. The first is to assess the impact of JSG on public confidence in and the independence, accountability, transparency and legitimacy of the domestic judiciaries of 14 European states and the two European supranational courts, both the actual and the perceived. The second aim is to examine what impact the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have had on domestic judicial design and, vice versa, how has domestic judicial design affected the selection of judges of the ECtHR and the CJEU. The third overarching aim is to analyse the impact of JSG on the concept of separation of powers.
A major innovation in our approach will be the integration of comparative legal perspective with sociological and political science approaches. We will conduct in-depth conceptual, qualitative and quantitative case studies on the impact of different models of JSG in both “new” and “old” EU Member States, including longitudinal quantitative analysis of the use of mechanisms of judicial independence and accountability before and after the creation of a JSG body and in-depth elite interviews.
Summary
Many European states have transferred decision-making powers regarding court administration and the career of a judge from political bodies to special organs in which judges have a major say. Judicial councils and other bodies of judicial self-government (JSG) spread particularly quickly during the European Union (EU) Accession Process. However, the effects of these bodies are not fully understood, as the traditional descriptive and normative scholarship is not able to capture them. JUDI-ARCH will fill this gap and address the implications of this phenomenon for the “new” as well as “old” EU member states.
The central research question of JUDI-ARCH is: how the rise of JSG has changed the concept of separation of powers? More specifically, the JUDI-ARCH proposal consists of three interrelated research aims. The first is to assess the impact of JSG on public confidence in and the independence, accountability, transparency and legitimacy of the domestic judiciaries of 14 European states and the two European supranational courts, both the actual and the perceived. The second aim is to examine what impact the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have had on domestic judicial design and, vice versa, how has domestic judicial design affected the selection of judges of the ECtHR and the CJEU. The third overarching aim is to analyse the impact of JSG on the concept of separation of powers.
A major innovation in our approach will be the integration of comparative legal perspective with sociological and political science approaches. We will conduct in-depth conceptual, qualitative and quantitative case studies on the impact of different models of JSG in both “new” and “old” EU Member States, including longitudinal quantitative analysis of the use of mechanisms of judicial independence and accountability before and after the creation of a JSG body and in-depth elite interviews.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 625 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym JustSites
Project The Global Sites of International Criminal Justice
Researcher (PI) Mikkel Jarle CHRISTENSEN
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2018-STG
Summary JustSites studies the multitude of localities in which international criminal justice is produced, received and has impact. Building an innovative scientific vocabulary, the project understands these justice sites to be social topographies in which the political, legal and professional activities that collectively create international criminal justice are developed. The justice sites include locations in which forensic exhumations are carried out, NGO offices in conflict zones, foreign ministries, private law firms, media outlets, academic research centers, and the international criminal courts. These sites are closely related, and all depend on and compete with each other to define the direction of international criminal justice. With its analysis of justice sites, the project moves beyond the conventional focus on courts and their context to investigate instead the balances of authority and power that affect the relations between these topographies and thus drive the development of international criminal justice as a field of law. To investigate the relational topography of justice sites, the multidisciplinary project analyzes how these sites produce international criminal justice ideas and practices, and how such ideas and practices are received and have impact in other sites. By following the impact of ideas and practices as they move from one site to another, the relative and perceived authority and power of these sites will be identified and analyzed. Through their productive and receptive character, the justice sites also communicate the results of international criminal justice to broader audiences, labelling them in the process as a success or a failure. Therefore, contributing the first investigation of the topography of justice sites is not only of significant value as frontier research, but is crucial for understanding the wider societal, legal and political impact of this field of law.
Summary
JustSites studies the multitude of localities in which international criminal justice is produced, received and has impact. Building an innovative scientific vocabulary, the project understands these justice sites to be social topographies in which the political, legal and professional activities that collectively create international criminal justice are developed. The justice sites include locations in which forensic exhumations are carried out, NGO offices in conflict zones, foreign ministries, private law firms, media outlets, academic research centers, and the international criminal courts. These sites are closely related, and all depend on and compete with each other to define the direction of international criminal justice. With its analysis of justice sites, the project moves beyond the conventional focus on courts and their context to investigate instead the balances of authority and power that affect the relations between these topographies and thus drive the development of international criminal justice as a field of law. To investigate the relational topography of justice sites, the multidisciplinary project analyzes how these sites produce international criminal justice ideas and practices, and how such ideas and practices are received and have impact in other sites. By following the impact of ideas and practices as they move from one site to another, the relative and perceived authority and power of these sites will be identified and analyzed. Through their productive and receptive character, the justice sites also communicate the results of international criminal justice to broader audiences, labelling them in the process as a success or a failure. Therefore, contributing the first investigation of the topography of justice sites is not only of significant value as frontier research, but is crucial for understanding the wider societal, legal and political impact of this field of law.
Max ERC Funding
1 497 436 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31
Project acronym Local State
Project State Formation Through the Local Production of Property and Citizenship
Researcher (PI) Christian Lund
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary The key concern of the proposed research is how political power is established and reproduced through the production of the fundamental social contracts of property and citizenship. We will re-define the research on so-called failed and weak states, by examining what political authority is actually exercised rather than measuring how they fall short of theoretical ideals.
In developing countries with legal and institutional pluralism, no single institution exercises the political authority as such. Different institutions compete to define and enforce rights to property and citizenship. This is most visible at the local level, yet it has implications for theorizing the state as such. Hence, investigating the social production of property and citizenship is a way to study state formation. We study local institutions that exercise political authority and govern access to resources, and recognition of these rights. What institution guarantees what claims as rights, and, especially, how, is crucial, as it leads to the recognition of that particular institution as a political authority. We therefore study statutory as well as non-statutory institutions. We are not simply looking for property deeds and passports etc. issued by statutory government as measurements of political authority. Rather, we look for secondary forms of recognition ‘issued’ by non-statutory institutions that represent mutual acknowledgements of claims even without a narrow legal endorsement. Dynamics such as these are fundamental for a concise understanding of developing country state formation processes.
Ten country studies with rural and urban field sites will be conducted. We focus on concrete controversies. We collect data at several levels and from different sources, including resident groups, land users, local civil servants, local politicians and business-owners, as well as large-scale contractors, municipal politicians and administrators.
Summary
The key concern of the proposed research is how political power is established and reproduced through the production of the fundamental social contracts of property and citizenship. We will re-define the research on so-called failed and weak states, by examining what political authority is actually exercised rather than measuring how they fall short of theoretical ideals.
In developing countries with legal and institutional pluralism, no single institution exercises the political authority as such. Different institutions compete to define and enforce rights to property and citizenship. This is most visible at the local level, yet it has implications for theorizing the state as such. Hence, investigating the social production of property and citizenship is a way to study state formation. We study local institutions that exercise political authority and govern access to resources, and recognition of these rights. What institution guarantees what claims as rights, and, especially, how, is crucial, as it leads to the recognition of that particular institution as a political authority. We therefore study statutory as well as non-statutory institutions. We are not simply looking for property deeds and passports etc. issued by statutory government as measurements of political authority. Rather, we look for secondary forms of recognition ‘issued’ by non-statutory institutions that represent mutual acknowledgements of claims even without a narrow legal endorsement. Dynamics such as these are fundamental for a concise understanding of developing country state formation processes.
Ten country studies with rural and urban field sites will be conducted. We focus on concrete controversies. We collect data at several levels and from different sources, including resident groups, land users, local civil servants, local politicians and business-owners, as well as large-scale contractors, municipal politicians and administrators.
Max ERC Funding
2 469 285 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31
Project acronym LOWLANDS
Project Parsing low-resource languages and domains
Researcher (PI) Anders Søgaard
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary "There are noticeable asymmetries in availability of high-quality natural language processing (NLP). We can adequately summarize English newspapers and translate them into Korean, but we cannot translate Korean newspaper articles into English, and summarizing micro-blogs is much more difficult than summarizing newspaper articles. This is a fundamental problem for modern societies, their development and democracy, as well as perhaps the most important research problem in NLP right now.
Most NLP technologies rely on highly accurate syntactic parsing. Reliable parsing models can be induced from large collections of manually annotated data, but such collections are typically limited to sampled newswire in major languages. Highly accurate parsing is therefore not available for other languages and other domains.
The NLP community is well aware of this problem, but unsupervised techniques that do not rely on manually annotated data cannot be used for real-world applications, where highly accurate parsing is needed, and sample bias correction methods that automatically correct the bias in newswire when parsing, say, micro-blogs, do not yet lead to robust improvements across the board.
The objective of this project is to develop new learning methods for parsing natural language for which no unbiased labeled data exists. In order to do so, we need to fundamentally rethink the unsupervised parsing problem, including how we evaluate unsupervised parsers, but we also need to supplement unsupervised learning techniques with robust methods for automatically correcting sample selection biases in related data. Such methods will be applicable to both cross-domain and cross-language syntactic parsing and will pave the way toward robust and scalable NLP. The societal impact of robust and scalable NLP is unforeseeable and comparable to how efficient information retrieval techniques have revolutionized modern societies."
Summary
"There are noticeable asymmetries in availability of high-quality natural language processing (NLP). We can adequately summarize English newspapers and translate them into Korean, but we cannot translate Korean newspaper articles into English, and summarizing micro-blogs is much more difficult than summarizing newspaper articles. This is a fundamental problem for modern societies, their development and democracy, as well as perhaps the most important research problem in NLP right now.
Most NLP technologies rely on highly accurate syntactic parsing. Reliable parsing models can be induced from large collections of manually annotated data, but such collections are typically limited to sampled newswire in major languages. Highly accurate parsing is therefore not available for other languages and other domains.
The NLP community is well aware of this problem, but unsupervised techniques that do not rely on manually annotated data cannot be used for real-world applications, where highly accurate parsing is needed, and sample bias correction methods that automatically correct the bias in newswire when parsing, say, micro-blogs, do not yet lead to robust improvements across the board.
The objective of this project is to develop new learning methods for parsing natural language for which no unbiased labeled data exists. In order to do so, we need to fundamentally rethink the unsupervised parsing problem, including how we evaluate unsupervised parsers, but we also need to supplement unsupervised learning techniques with robust methods for automatically correcting sample selection biases in related data. Such methods will be applicable to both cross-domain and cross-language syntactic parsing and will pave the way toward robust and scalable NLP. The societal impact of robust and scalable NLP is unforeseeable and comparable to how efficient information retrieval techniques have revolutionized modern societies."
Max ERC Funding
1 126 183 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym MINDREHAB
Project Consciousness In basic Science And Neurorehabilitation
Researcher (PI) Morten Overgaard
Host Institution (HI) AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2009-StG
Summary This project studies the topic of human consciousness from a multidisciplinary perspective. Human consciousness can be defined as the inner subjective experience of mental states such as perceptions, judgments, thoughts, intentions to act, feelings or desires. These experiences are to be described from a subjective, phenomenal first-person account. On the other hand, cognitive neurosciences explore the neural correlates with respect to brain topology and brain dynamics from an objective third-person account.
Despite a great interest in consciousness among cognitive neuroscientists, there are yet no general agreement on definitions or models, and no attempts to draw conclusions from the existing body of work to make progress in the treatment of patients. While it is generally the case that research in cognitive neuroscience has a minimal influence on clinical work in neurorehabilitation, this is very much the case in consciousness studies. Here, so far, there is no direct connection to clinical practice
MindRehab will make use of an integrated approach to find new ways to understand cognitive dysfunctions and to actually rehabilitate patients with cognitive problems after brain injury. This integrated approach, using consciousness studies to create progress in a clinical area, is novel and does not exist as an explicit goal for any other research group in the world. The objective of MindRehab is to integrate three aspects: Philosophy and basic research on consciousness, and clinical work in neurorehabilitation. Furthermore, the objective is to realize a number of research projects leading to novel contributions at the frontier of all three domains. However, contrary to all other current research projects in this field, the emphasis is put on the latter the clinical work.
Summary
This project studies the topic of human consciousness from a multidisciplinary perspective. Human consciousness can be defined as the inner subjective experience of mental states such as perceptions, judgments, thoughts, intentions to act, feelings or desires. These experiences are to be described from a subjective, phenomenal first-person account. On the other hand, cognitive neurosciences explore the neural correlates with respect to brain topology and brain dynamics from an objective third-person account.
Despite a great interest in consciousness among cognitive neuroscientists, there are yet no general agreement on definitions or models, and no attempts to draw conclusions from the existing body of work to make progress in the treatment of patients. While it is generally the case that research in cognitive neuroscience has a minimal influence on clinical work in neurorehabilitation, this is very much the case in consciousness studies. Here, so far, there is no direct connection to clinical practice
MindRehab will make use of an integrated approach to find new ways to understand cognitive dysfunctions and to actually rehabilitate patients with cognitive problems after brain injury. This integrated approach, using consciousness studies to create progress in a clinical area, is novel and does not exist as an explicit goal for any other research group in the world. The objective of MindRehab is to integrate three aspects: Philosophy and basic research on consciousness, and clinical work in neurorehabilitation. Furthermore, the objective is to realize a number of research projects leading to novel contributions at the frontier of all three domains. However, contrary to all other current research projects in this field, the emphasis is put on the latter the clinical work.
Max ERC Funding
1 641 232 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-06-01, End date: 2015-05-31