ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Labour law as a scholarly discipline is widely believed to be in crisis. Since the time of its birth, both the nature of working relationships and the context within which they are formed and regulated have changed significantly. The difficulty for scholars is that old concepts don’t perform the function anymore of making sense of the field. Old arguments about the need to protect workers’ interests are met with counterarguments, informed by neoclassical economics, that protective measures inhibit economic growth and increase unemployment. The WorkOD project aspires to nothing less than a fundamental transformation of the discipline of labour law across the whole of Europe and beyond. Understanding the crisis to have at its heart a crisis of methodology, it aims to develop a new methodology for the study of the key legal concept of the contract for work. It aims to explain trends in the field of work organisation and working relationships and to assess the significance of particular labour market institutions to the achievement of policy goals in a way that is useful to scholars and policy-makers. And it aims to pave the way for future contributions by scholars to policy debates, so that they may influence in positive ways the identification of new economically and socially sustainable solutions to the problem of the division of responsibilities and risks between workers and those for whom they work. In a marked departure from the state of the art, the project defines contracting for work as an instance of economic, social and legal behaviour, influenced in a variety of ways by the institutional context within which it proceeds. Rejecting the reframing of labour law according to a full blown market paradigm, it argues instead for the utility of sociological methods. Its development of a new methodology begins from a combination of micro and macro perspectives, and a synthesis of approaches drawn from economic sociology, political economy and the sociology of law.

1 422 818 €

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

The overarching aim of this proposal is to develop the conceptual and analytical instruments to establish a formal linkage between macro and micro level perspectives in demographic research, with an application to the study of worldwide patterns of family formation. Using census and survey microdata, we will conduct worldwide multilevel analyses that will allow us to investigate demographic trends at three levels of disaggregation: national, regional and individual. We will study the relationship between societal changes and three interrelated aspects of family formation: union formation, assortative mating, and intergenerational co-residence from the young cohort perspective. The societal effects will include phenomena such as educational expansion, women s economic activity, urbanization, as well as individual socio-economic characteristics. Analysis will be based on data from a vast new archive of international census microdata made available by the Integrated Public Use of Microdata Series international project (IPUMSi), with complementary use of Fertility and Family Surveys (FFS), Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) and Gender and Generations Surveys (GGS). The full dataset will amount to 124 countries, more than 1,400 regions and 305 million person records, statistically representing roughly 90% of the world population. This research raises complex theoretical and methodological questions. We do not contend that this project will be able to establish causality; rather, we will identify and illustrate differences between and within countries based on a rigorous and comprehensive set of variables exploiting microdata to develop systematic measures at different levels. Methodologically, the project will confront the challenges of combining datasets, providing meaningful measures of family formation, creating contextual variables, optimizing computational requirements, framing models that encompass different levels, time spans and regions.

1 088 904 €

Start date: 2010-01-01, End date: 2015-06-30

Xenes denote two-dimensional (2D) monoelemental (X) crystals beyond graphene with a honeycomb lattice. Unlike graphene, Xenes do not exist in Nature, but they become stable via epitaxy on substrates. So far experimental evidences of Xene epitaxy have been reported for X=Si, Ge, Sn, B, P, and Sb (named silicene, germanene, stanene, borophene, phosphorene, and antimonene, respectively). Xene single layers also serve as a background for the synthesis of new Xene-related materials (XRMs) such as Xene heterostructures and functionalized Xenes. Xenes can appear as metals, semimetals, semiconductors, and topological insulators thus allowing for a broad range of applications in nanotechnology. However only silicene has been integrated into transistors operating at room temperature albeit fast degradation. Nonetheless, a viable Xene-based nanotechnology is currently missing due to the lack of reliable standards for the Xene production and implementation. For this purpose, the proposal aims at developing viable schemes for high-quality crystal growth, environmental stabilization, and device integration of Xenes and XRMs frameworks. At first the effort will be focused on the high-quality synthesis of selected Xenes and XRMs by means of molecular beam epitaxy, and on their stabilization in encapsulated structures enabling subsequent processing into Xene-based device platforms. Validation of the Xene properties, quality, and performances will be carried out by means of advanced in situ and ex situ characterization of the atomic and electronic structure. Secondly, prototypical electronic device (e.g. field effect transistors or vertical diodes) incorporating stabilized Xene frameworks as active elements will be used to assess the Xene electrical behaviour and performances so as to establish a reliable Xene-based nanotechnology.

1 998 785 €

Start date: 2018-04-01, End date: 2023-03-31

"The present project intends to introduce new uses of the level set representation of surfaces in order to develop simulation methods able to solve problem currently unsatisfactorily addressed. Three main applications are targeted: localisation phenomena and very complex cracking patterns, precise determination of stresses around contact zones and, finally, introduction in reasonably coarse meshes of the mechanical influence of geometrically small but vitally important reinforcement for the structure safety (weld points, cables, fillets, …). We plan to address them with a unified technology, parts of which are already being incorporated in codes worldwide because of the contribution of the PI and colleagues in the past ten years. The PI is a specialist in the field of computational mechanics and has been the founder and among the major promoters of the eXtended Finite Element Method (X-FEM), now widely used for crack growth and material interfaces modelling. With the X-FEM, internal or external mechanical boundaries do not need to be explicitly meshed and may conveniently be stored as level sets. The project proposes new algorithm based an original and extended use of the level set concept in conjunction with the X-FEM : *Thick Level Set (TLS): We consider that the mechanical variable responsible for the localization of deformation in a softening behaviour (say damage for instance) is not local but tied to the movement of a degradation front located by a level set. *Inequality Level Set (ILS): We rephrase variational inequality formulation (such as contact) as shape optimization. The shape of the active contact zone is sought and represented by a level set. For any given level set location, a variational equality is solved and a sensitivity analysis is performed to update the level set location. *Subgrid Level Set (SLS): The structural features (cables, fillets, …) are represented on a subgrid different from the mesh used to perform the computation."

1 957 909 €

Start date: 2012-04-01, End date: 2017-03-31

This project aims at developing four-dimensional printing of new adaptive systems, namely printing of complex, three-dimensional polymer objects embedding functional compounds and able to change or adapt their physical properties responding to environmental stimuli. Additive manufacturing of three-dimensional objects relies on depositing or curing materials in a layer-by-layer fashion, starting from computer assisted design. These technologies have rapidly evolved from laboratory research to commercially available desktop systems, with costs decreasing continuously. Notwithstanding such astonishing progress, the potentialities of three-dimensional printing are still poorly exploited in terms of both materials and process resolution. This project will shed new light on the fundamental aspects of three-dimensional polymerization, thus establishing new process design rules and predictive tools for printing resolution. It will also specifically engineer additive manufacturing for printing materials embedding active compounds, thus leading to real four-dimensional objects, namely structures that have three-dimensional features and time-changing physical properties at the same time. An integrated approach will be pursued to this aim, where modeling and process engineering will be complemented by process monitoring, in order to establish well defined and reproducible methods for four-dimensional printing of photonic structures. The operation of the adaptive components, for optical computing and data storage, will be based on their nonlinear response to optical inputs. Leading to a new and pioneering laboratory on four-dimensional printing technologies, this project will critically consolidate scientific independence.

1 993 908 €

Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31

Dramatic migrations in the third millennium BC re-shaped Europe, modifying its economy, society, ethnicity and ideological structure for ever. The best incentive proxy are populations that moved from the steppes of Russia, spreading as far west as Hungary, implanting a pastoral economy with widespread innovations. These dynamic people covered thousands of kilometres within a few centuries, and organised direct physical relations over the steppes for the first time. This synchronism is promoted by a society organised to fit to this lifestyle, with new herding techniques, likely use of wagons and domesticated horses, and a protein-rich diet, whose adaptive advantages are evident from the physical record in human skeletons and territorial extensions. This is the Yamnaya complex, whose impact remains visible today in the European gene pool and apparently the propagation of Indo-European languages. This international and interdisciplinary project examines the data from 320 excavated burial mounds and c.1350 burials to calibrate these changes, also against a control sample of supposedly local and neighbouring populations. The archaeological, biological and environmental information allows large, new datasets to be built, whose systematic interrogation and modelling should reveal the formative processes behind these changes. Assessing funeral archaeology, material culture, and exchange pattern defines their culture and impact. Scientific analyses of skeletons expose relations of origin, degrees of consanguinity, diet, and histories of individual mobility over single lifetimes with new precision and replicability. They should also act as proxy datasets for environmental changes using further analytical techniques in a context of landscape evolution. Diachronic patterns within these sets should link with aspects of the internal social dynamics, such as the creation of new status positions, visible later in the Pan-European Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups.

2 494 209 €

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Human survival and success is substantially determined by the ability to move across the landscape and adapt. Consequently, ‘mobility’ is a crucial topic in historical and archaeological research. To overcome the seasonal scarcity of food and the related over-grazing of pastures, it is essential for animal husbandry to move across territories. However, the decision to allow or deny rights of way to mobile people and livestock depends on political judgements. How might these shape animal husbandry production, and society? The period between the Late Bronze Age and Late Antiquity in the Western Mediterranean witnessed the development of complex societies with a high territorial component, the Roman conquest, and the decline of the Western Roman Empire. Animal husbandry reflects human decisions regarding the management of resources, and the study of livestock rearing in specific geographical locations is possible through the isotopic analysis of ancient animal teeth. Consequently, we can analyse whether the nucleation of power occurring during the Bronze and Iron Ages, the centralization in Roman times and the later re-fragmentation in Late Antiquity transformed animal husbandry production. Crucially, we can then understand how political systems and decisions shaped human mobility through investigating animal production. ZooMWest brings together isotopic chemistry, ancient DNA, zooarchaeology and geospatial analysis through four related work packages. Other than elucidating long term debates in archaeology –did transhumance exist in prehistoric Europe?–, this multidisciplinary and innovative project will create an open-access database of strontium and oxygen stable isotopes of the Iberian Peninsula and Italy. This database will enable us to refine geographic provenance to any discipline assessing the origin of matter, including geology, forensic studies, and the alimentary industry, as strontium and oxygen are present in many molecules, including organic tissues.

1 199 319 €

Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31