ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

"The twin concepts of sustainability and conservation that are so pivotal within current debates regarding economic development and biodiversity protection both contain an inherent temporal dimension, since both refer to the need to balance short-term gains with long-term resource maintenance. Proponents of resilience theory and of development based on ‘indigenous knowledge’ have thus argued for the necessity of including archaeological, historical and palaeoenvironmental components within development project design. Indeed, some have argued that archaeology should lead these interdisciplinary projects on the grounds that it provides the necessary time depth and bridges the social and natural sciences. The project proposed here accepts this logic and endorses this renewed contemporary relevance of archaeological research. However, it also needs to be admitted that moving beyond critiques of the misuse of historical data presents significant hurdles. When presenting results outside the discipline, for example, archaeological projects tend to downplay the poor archaeological visibility of certain agricultural practices, and computer models designed to test sustainability struggle to adequately account for local cultural preferences. This field will therefore not progress unless there is a frank appraisal of archaeology’s strengths and weaknesses. This project will provide this assessment by employing a range of established and groundbreaking archaeological and modelling techniques to examine the development of two east Africa agricultural systems: one at the abandoned site of Engaruka in Tanzania, commonly seen as an example of resource mismanagement and ecological collapse; and another at the current agricultural landscape in Konso, Ethiopia, described by the UN FAO as one of a select few African “lessons from the past”. The project thus aims to assess the sustainability of these systems, but will also assess the role archaeology can play in such debates worldwide."

1 196 701 €

Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2018-01-31

One of the most exciting research questions within archaeology is that of the peopling of Australasia by at least c.50,000 years ago. This represents some of the earliest evidence of modern human colonization outside Africa, yet, even at the greatest sea-level lowstand, this migration would have involved seafaring. It is the maritime nature of this dispersal which makes it so important to questions of technological, cognitive and social human development. These issues have traditionally been the preserve of archaeologists, but with a multidisciplinary approach that embraces cutting-edge marine geophysical, hydrodynamic and archaeogenetic analyses, we now have the opportunity to examine the When, Where, Who and How of the earliest seafaring in world history. The voyage from Sunda (South East Asia) to Sahul (Australasia) provides evidence for the earliest ‘open water’ crossing in the world. A combination of the sparse number of early archaeological finds and the significant changes in the palaeolandscape and submergence of the broad north western Australian continental shelf, mean that little is known about the routes taken and what these crossings may have entailed. This project will combine research of the submerged palaeolandscape of the continental shelf to refine our knowledge of the onshore/offshore environment, identify potential submerged prehistoric sites and enhance our understanding of the palaeoshoreline and tidal regime. This will be combined with archaeogenetic research targeting mtDNA and Y-chromosome data to resolve questions of demography and dating. For the first time this project takes a truly multidisciplinary approach to address the colonization of Sahul, providing an unique opportunity to tackle some of the most important questions about human origins, the relationship between humans and the changing environment, population dynamics and migration, seafaring technology, social organisation and cognition.

1 134 928 €

Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31

"Since 1960, the television industry has undergone successive waves of technological change. Both the methods of programme making and the programmes themselves have changed substantially. The current opening of TV’s vast archives to public and academic use has emphasised the need to explain old programming to new users. Why particular programmes are like they are is not obvious to the contemporary viewer: the prevailing technologies imposed limits and enabled forms that have fallen into disuse. The project will examine the processes of change which gave rise to the particular dominant configurations of technologies for sound and image capture and processing, and some idea of the national and regional variants that existed. It will emphasise the capabilities of the machines in use rather than the process of their invention. The project therefore studies how the technologies of film and tape were implemented; how both broadcasters and individual filmers coped with the conflicting demands of the different machines at their disposal; how new ‘standard ways of doing things’ gradually emerged; and how all of this enabled desired changes in the resultant programmes. The project will produce an overall written account of the principal changes in the technologies in use in broadcast TV since 1960 to the near present. It will offer a theory of technological innovation, and a major case study in the adoption of digital workflow management in production for broadcasting: the so-called ‘tapeless environment’ which is currently being implemented in major organisations. It will offer two historical case studies: a longditudinal study of the evolution of tape-based sound recording and one of the rapid change from 16mm film cutting to digital editing, a process that took less than five years. Reconstructions of the process of working with particular technological arrays will be filmed and will be made available as explanatory material for any online archive of TV material ."

1 680 121 €

Start date: 2013-08-01, End date: 2018-07-31

Relative to other species, humans are characterised by considerable biological diversity despite genetic homogeneity. This diversity is reflected in skeletal variation, but we lack sufficient understanding of the underlying mechanisms to adequately interpret the archaeological record. The proposed research will address problems in our current understanding of the origins of human variation in the past by: 1) documenting and interpreting the pattern of global hunter-gatherer variation relative to genetic phylogenies and climatic variation; 2) testing the relationship between environmental and skeletal variation among genetically related hunter-gatherers from different environments; 3) examining the adaptability of living humans to different environments, through the study of energetic expenditure and life history trade-offs associated with locomotion; and 4) investigating the relationship between muscle and skeletal variation associated with locomotion in diverse environments. This will be achieved by linking: a) detailed study of the global pattern of hunter-gatherer variation in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene with; b) ground-breaking experimental research which tests the relationship between energetic stress, muscle function, and bone variation in living humans. The first component tests the correspondence between skeletal variation and both genetic and climatic history, to infer mechanisms driving variation. The second component integrates this skeletal variation with experimental studies of living humans to, for the first time, directly test adaptive implications of skeletal variation observed in the past. ADaPt will provide the first links between prehistoric hunter-gatherer variation and the evolutionary parameters of life history and energetics that may have shaped our success as a species. It will lead to breakthroughs necessary to interpret variation in the archaeological record, relative to human dispersals and adaptation in the past.

1 911 485 €

Start date: 2014-07-01, End date: 2019-06-30

AFRIGOS investigates the process of 'respacing' Africa, a political drive towards regional and continental integration, on the one hand, and the re-casting of Africa's engagement with the global economy, on the other. This is reflected in unprecedented levels of investment in physical and communications infrastructure, and the outsourcing of key functions of Customs, Immigration and security agencies. AFRIGOS poses the question of how far respacing is genuinely forging institutions that are facilitating or obstructing the movement of people and goods; that are enabling or preventing urban and border spaces from being more effectively and responsively governed; and that take into account the needs of African populations whose livelihoods are rooted in mobility and informality. The principal research questions are approached through a comparative study of port cities, border towns and other strategic nodes situated along the busiest transport corridors in East, Central, West and Southern Africa. These represent sites of remarkable dynamism and cosmopolitanism, which reflects their role in connecting African urban centres to each other and to other global cities. AFRIGOS considers how governance 'assemblages' are forged at different scales and is explicitly comparative. It works through 5 connected Streams that address specific questions: 1. AGENDA-SETTING is concerned with policy (re-)formulation. 2. PERIPHERAL URBANISM examines governance in border towns and port cities. 3. BORDER WORKERS addresses everyday governance emerging through the interaction of officials and others who make their livelihoods from the border. 4. CONNECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE looks as the transformative effects of new technologies. 5. PEOPLE & GOODS IN MOTION traces the passage of people and goods and the regimes of regulation to which they are subjected. AFRIGOS contributes to interdisciplinary research on borderland studies, multi-level governance and the everyday state.

2 491 364 €

Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31

This research will create a new theoretical vision of the importance of marriage as an agent of transformation in human sociality. Marriage globally is undergoing profound change, provoking intense debate and anxiety. These concerns refract wider instabilities in political, economic, and familial institutions. They signal the critical role of marriage in bringing together - and separating - intimate, personal, and familial life with wider state institutions. But we have little up to date comparative research or general theory of how marriage changes or the long-term significance of such change. Paradoxically, social scientific and public discourse emphasise the conservative and normative aspects of marriage. This underlines the need for a new theoretical frame that takes account of cultural and historical specificity to grasp the importance of marriage as both vehicle of and engine for transformation. AGATM overturns conventional understandings by viewing marriage as inherently transformative, indeed at the heart of social and cultural change. The research will investigate current transformations of marriage in two distinct senses. First, it will undertake an ethnographic investigation of new forms of marriage in selected sites in Europe, N. America, Asia, and Africa. Second, it will subject ‘marriage’ to a rigorous theoretical critique that will denaturalise marriage and reintegrate it into the new anthropology of kinship. Research on five complementary and contrastive sub-projects examining emerging forms of marriage in different locations will be structured through the themes of care, property, and ritual forms. The overarching analytic of temporality will frame the theoretical vision of the research and connect the themes. The resulting six monographs, journal articles, and exhibition will together revitalise the study of kinship by placing the moral, practical, political, and imaginative significance of marriage over time at its centre.

2 297 584 €

Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31

"AIME is an inquiry to make more precise what is lumped together into the confusing word ""modernization"". The work done in the field of science studies (STS) on the progress and practice of science and technology has had the consequence of deeply modifying the definition of ""modernity"", resulting into the provocative idea that ""we (meaning the Europeans) have never been modern"". This is, however only a negative definition. To obtain a positive rendering of the European current situation, it is necessary to start an inquiry in the complex and conflicting set of values that have been invented. This inquiry is possible only if there is a clear and shareable way to judge the differences in the set of truth-conditions that make up those conflicting sets of values. AIME offers a grammar of those differences based on the key notion of modes of existence. Then it builds a procedure and an instrument to test this grammar into a selected set of situations where the definitions of the differing modes of existence is redefined and renegotiated. The result is a set of shareable definitions of what modernization has been in practice. This is important just at the moment when Europe has lost its privileged status and needs to be able to present itself in a new ways to the other cultures and civilizations which are making up the world of globalization with very different views on what it is to modernize themselves."

1 334 720 €

Start date: 2011-09-01, End date: 2015-06-30

The epidemiology of alcohol use and related health consequences plays a vital role by monitoring populations’ alcohol consumption patterns and problems associated with drinking. Such studies seek to explain mechanisms linking consumption to harm and ultimately to reduce the health burden. Research needs to consider changes in drinking behaviour over the life-course. The current evidence base lacks the consideration of the complexity of lifetime consumption patterns, the predictors of change and subsequent health risks. Aims of the study 1. To describe age-related trajectories of drinking in different settings and to determine the extent to which individual and social contextual factors, including socioeconomic position, social networks and life events influence drinking pattern trajectories. 2. To estimate the impact of drinking trajectories on physical functioning and disease and to disentangle the exposure-outcome associations in terms of a) timing, i.e. health effect of drinking patterns in early, mid and late life; and b) duration, i.e. whether the impact of drinking accumulates over time. 3. To test the bidirectional associations between health and changes in consumption over the life-course in order to estimate the relative importance of these effects and to determine the dominant temporal direction. 4. To explore mechanisms and pathways through which drinking trajectories affect health and functioning in later life and to examine the role played by potential effect modifiers of the association between drinking and poor health. Several large, longitudinal cohort studies from European countries with repeated measures of alcohol consumption will be combined and analysed to address the aims. A new team will be formed consisting of the PI, a Research Associate and two PhD students. Dissemination will be through journals, conferences, and culminating in a one-day workshop for academics, practitioners and policy makers in the alcohol field.

1 032 815 €

Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31

This four-year interdisciplinary project addresses the question what has been learned through the use of better regulation ? Better regulation is a flagship policy on the Lisbon agenda for growth and jobs. Its aims are to provide new governance architectures for law-making, to increase the competitiveness of the regulatory environment, and to secure wide social legitimacy for multi-level systems of rules. Whilst most of the research has looked at how better regulation is changing, this project will produce findings on what has changed because of better regulation. Theoretically, the project will use (and significantly improve on) theories of policy learning. Empirically, it will cover Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK and the EU including multi-level analysis and analysis by sector of regulation. Methodologically, the project will draw on comparative analysis of types of learning, experiments with regulatory policy-makers in six countries and the European Commission, large-n analysis of impact assessments, backward-mapping of legislation (to appraise the role played by better regulation in the formulation or laws in the UK and the EU), meta-analysis of case-studies and co-production of knowledge with better regulation officers. Dissemination will target both stakeholders (i.e., policy officers, civil society organizations, and business federations) and academic conferences in political science, law, and risk analysis, with a major research monograph to be completed in year 4 and a final interdisciplinary conference.

948 448 €

Start date: 2009-09-01, End date: 2013-09-30

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

1 457 869 €

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

APPLAUSE’s aim is to produce a body of evidence that illustrates how young people with mental health problems currently interact with both formal mental health services and informal social and familial support structures. Careful analysis of data gathered in the UK and Brazil will allow formulation of globally relevant insights into mental health care delivery for young people, which will be presented internationally as a resource for future health care service design. APPLAUSE will allow the collection of an important data set that does not currently exist in this field, and will look to other disciplines for innovative approaches to data analysis. Whist standard analysis may allow for snapshots of health service use, using innovative life course methods will allow us to to characterise patterns of complete service use of each individual participant’s experience of accessing mental health care and social support. Adolescence is a critical period in mental health development, which has been largely neglected by public health efforts. Psychiatric disorders rank as the primary cause of disability among individuals aged 10-24 years, worldwide. Moreover, many health risk behaviours emerge during adolescence and 70% of adult psychiatric disorders are preceded by mental health problems during adolescent years. However, delays to receiving care for psychiatric disorders, following disorder onset, avreage more than ten years and little is known about factors which impede access to and continuity of care among young people with mental health problems. APPLAUSE will analyse current access models, reports of individual experiences of positive and negative interactions with health care services and the culturally embedded social factors that impact on such access. Addressing this complex problem from a global perspective will advance the development of a more diverse and innovative set of strategies for improving earlier access to care.

1 499 948 €

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

The Hippocratic Aphorisms have exerted a singular influence over generations of physicians both in the East and in the West. Galen (d. c. 216) produced an extensive commentary on this text, as did other medical authors writing in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew. The Arabic tradition is particularly rich, with more than a dozen commentaries extant in over a hundred manuscripts. These Arabic commentaries did not merely contain scholastic debates, but constituted important venues for innovation and change. Moreover, they impacted on medical practice, as the Aphorisms were so popular that both doctors and their patients knew them by heart. Despite their importance for medical theory and practice, previous scholarship on them has barely scratched the surface. Put succinctly, the present project breaks new ground by conducting an in-depth study of this tradition through a highly innovative methodology: it approaches the available evidence as a corpus, to be constituted electronically, and to be analysed in an interdisciplinary way. We propose to survey the manuscript tradition of the Arabic commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, beginning with Ḥunayn ibn ʾIsḥāq’s Arabic translation of Galen’s commentary. On the basis of this philological survey that will employ a new approach to stemmatics, we shall produce provisional electronic XML editions of the commentaries. These texts will constitute the corpus, some 600,000 words long, that we shall investigate through the latest IT tools to address a set of interdisciplinary problems: textual criticism of the Greek sources; Graeco-Arabic translation technique; methods of quotation; hermeneutic procedures; development of medical theory; medical practice; and social history of medicine. Both in approach and scope, the project will bring about a paradigm shift in our study of exegetical cultures in Arabic, and the role that commentaries played in the transmission and transformation of scientific knowledge.

1 499 968 €

Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2017-07-31

The Arctic has risen to global attention in recent years, as it has been reconfigured through debates about global environmental change, resource extraction and disputes over sovereign rights. Within these discourses, little attention has been paid to the cultures of the Arctic. Indeed, it often seems as if the Circumpolar Arctic in global public understanding remains framed as a 'natural region' - that is, a place where the environment dominates the creation of culture. This framing has consequences for the region, because through this the Arctic becomes constructed as a space where people are absent. This proposal aims to discover how and why this might be so. The proposal argues that this construction of the Arctic emerged from the exploration of the region by Europeans and North Americans and their contacts with indigenous people from the middle of the eighteenth century. Particular texts, cartographic representations and objects were collected and returned to sites like London, Copenhagen, Berlin and Philadelphia. The construction of the Arctic thereby became entwined within the growth of colonial museum cultures and, indeed, western modernity. This project aims to delineate the networks and collecting cultures involved in this creation of Arctic Cultures. It will bring repositories in colonial metropoles into dialogue with sites of collection in the Arctic by tracing the contexts of discovery and memorialisation. In doing so, it aspires to a new understanding of the consequences of certain forms of colonial representation for debates about the Circumpolar Arctic today. The project involves research by the Principal Investigator and four Post Doctoral Researchers at museums, archives, libraries and repositories across Europe and North America, as well as in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. A Project Assistant based in Oxford will help facilitate the completion of the research.

1 996 250 €

Start date: 2017-10-01, End date: 2022-09-30

Who are the people of Europe? This question is facing statisticians as they grapple with standardising national census methods so that their numbers can be assembled into a European population. Yet, by so doing—intentionally or otherwise—they also contribute to the making of a European people. This, at least, is the central thesis of ARITHMUS. While typically framed as a methodological or statistical problem, the project approaches this as a practical and political problem of assembling multiple national populations into a European population and people. Why is this both an urgent political and practical problem? Politically, Europe is said to be unable to address itself to a constituted polity and people, which is crucial to European integration. Practically, its efforts to constitute a European population are also being challenged by digital technologies, which are being used to diversify census methods and bringing into question the comparability of national population data. Consequently, over the next several years Eurostat and national statistical institutes are negotiating regulations for the 2020 census round towards ensuring 'Europe-wide comparability.' ARITHMUS will follow this process and investigate the practices of statisticians as they juggle scientific independence, national autonomy and EU comparability to innovate census methods. It will then connect this practical work to political questions of the making and governing of a European people and polity. It will do so by going beyond state-of-the art scholarship on methods, politics and science and technology studies. Five case studies involving discourse analysis and ethnographic methods will investigate the situated practices of EU and national statisticians as they remake census methods, arguably the most fundamental changes since modern censuses were launched over two centuries ago. At the same time it will attend to how these practices affect the constitution of who are the people of Europe.

1 833 649 €

Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30

Knowledge is an anthropological constant that is indissociable from the birth and interactions of human societies, but is at best a secondary concern for scholars of international relations and globalization. Contemporary global studies are thus unable to account for the co-constitution of knowledge and politics at a macro-scale, and remain especially blind to the historical patterns of epistemic development that operate at the level of the species as a whole and have shaped its global political history in specific, path-dependent ways up to now. ARTEFACT is the first project to pursue a knowledge-centered investigation of global politics. It is uniquely grounded in an anthropological approach that treats globalization and human knowledges beyond their modern manifestations, from the longue-durée perspective of our species’ social history. 'The global as artefact' is more than a metaphor. It reflects the premise that human collectives 'make' the political world not merely through ideas, language, or norms, but primordially through the material infrastructures, solutions, objects, practices, and skills they develop in response to evolving structural challenges. ARTEFACT takes agriculture as an exemplary and especially timely case-study to illuminate the entangled global histories of knowledge and politics, analyzing and comparing four increasingly inclusive 'global political systems' of the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary eras and their associated agrarian socio-epistemic revolutions. ARTEFACT ultimately aims to 1) develop an original theory of the global, 2) launch Global Knowledge Studies as a new cross-disciplinary domain of systematic empirical and theoretical study, and 3) push the respective boundaries of the anthropology of knowledge, global history, and international theory beyond the state-of-the-art and toward a holistic understanding that can illuminate how past trends of socio-epistemic evolution might shape future paths of global life.

1 428 165 €

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31

Since 2012, over 4 million people have fled Syria in ‘the most dramatic humanitarian crisis that we have ever faced’ (UNHCR). By November 2015 there were 1,078,338 refugees from Syria in Lebanon, 630,776 in Jordan and 2,181,293 in Turkey. Humanitarian agencies and donor states from both the global North and the global South have funded and implemented aid programmes, and yet commentators have argued that civil society groups from the global South are the most significant actors supporting refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Whilst they are highly significant responses, however, major gaps in knowledge remain regarding the motivations, nature and implications of Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement. This project draws on multi-sited ethnographic and participatory research with refugees from Syria and their aid providers in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to critically examine why, how and with what effect actors from the South have responded to the displacement of refugees from Syria. The main research aims are: 1. identifying diverse models of Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement, 2. examining the (un)official motivations, nature and implications of Southern-led responses, 3. examining refugees’ experiences and perceptions of Southern-led responses, 4. exploring diverse Southern and Northern actors’ perceptions of Southern-led responses, 5. tracing the implications of Southern-led initiatives for humanitarian theory and practice. Based on a critical theoretical framework inspired by post-colonial and feminist approaches, the project contributes to theories of humanitarianism and debates regarding donor-recipient relations and refugees’ agency in displacement situations. It will also inform the development of policies to most appropriately address refugees’ needs and rights. This highly topical and innovative project thus has far-reaching implications for refugees and local communities, academics, policy-makers and practitioners.

1 498 069 €

Start date: 2017-07-01, End date: 2022-06-30

‘Consistency’ is regularly cited as a desirable attribute of border control, but it has received little critical social scientific attention. This inter-disciplinary project, at the inter-face between critical human geography, border studies and law, will scrutinise the consistency of European asylum adjudication in order to develop richer theoretical understanding of this lynchpin concept. It will move beyond the administrative legal concepts of substantive and procedural consistency by advancing a three-fold conceptualisation of consistency – as everyday practice, discursive deployment of facts and disciplinary technique. In order to generate productive intellectual tension it will also employ an explicitly antagonistic conceptualisation of the relationship between geography and law that views law as seeking to constrain and systematise lived space. The project will employ an innovative combination of methodologies that will produce unique and rich data sets including quantitative analysis, multi-sited legal ethnography, discourse analysis and interviews, and the findings are likely to be of interest both to academic communities like geographers, legal and border scholars and to policy makers and activists working in border control settings. In 2013 the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) was launched to standardise the procedures of asylum determination. But as yet no sustained multi-methodological assessment of the claims of consistency inherent to the CEAS has been carried out. This project offers not only the opportunity to assess progress towards harmonisation of asylum determination processes in Europe, but will also provide a new conceptual framework with which to approach the dilemmas and risks of inconsistency in an area of law fraught with political controversy and uncertainty around the world. Most fundamentally, the project promises to debunk the myths surrounding the possibility of fair and consistent border controls in Europe and elsewhere.

1 252 067 €

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

Infant is the most powerful learner: He learns in a few months to master language, complex social interactions, etc. Powerful statistical algorithms, simultaneously acting at the different levels of functional hierarchies have been proposed to explain learning. I propose here that two other elements are crucial. The first is the particular human cerebral architecture that constrains statistical computations. The second is the human’s ability to access a rich symbolic system. I have planned 6 work packages using the complementary information offered by non-invasive brain-imaging techniques (EEG, MRI and optical topography) to understand the neural bases of infant statistical computations and symbolic competence from 6 months of gestation up until the end of the first year of life. WP1 studies from which preterm age, statistical inferences can be demonstrated using hierarchical auditory oddball paradigms. WP2 investigates the consequences of a different pre-term environment (in-utero versus ex-utero) on the early statistical computations in the visual and auditory domains and their consequences on the ongoing brain activity along the first year of life. WP3 explores the neural bases of how infants infer word meaning and word category, and in particular the role of the left perisylvian areas and of their particular connectivity. WP4 questions infant symbolic competency. I propose several criteria (generalization, bidirectionality, use of algebraic rules and of logical operations) tested in successive experiments to clarify infant symbolic abilities during the first semester of life. WP5-6 are transversal to WP1-4: WP5 uses MRI to obtain accurate functional localization and maturational markers correlated with functional results. In WP6, we develop new tools to combine and analyse multimodal brain images. With this proposal, I hope to clarify the specificities of a neural functional architecture that are critical for human learning from the onset of cortical circuits.

2 554 924 €

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

The role of experience in language acquisition has been the focus of heated theoretical debates, between proponents of nativist views according to whom experience plays a minimal role and advocates of empiricist positions holding that experience, be it linguistic, social or other, is sufficient to account for language acquisition. Despite more than a half century of dedicated research efforts, the problem is not solved. The present project brings a novel perspective to this debate, combining hitherto unconnected research in language acquisition with recent advances in the neurophysiology of hearing and speech processing. Specifically, it claims that prenatal experience with speech, which mainly consists of prosody due to the filtering effects of the womb, is what shapes the speech perception system, laying the foundations of subsequent language learning. Prosody is thus the cue that links genetically endowed predispositions present in the initial state with language experience. The proposal links the behavioral and neural levels, arguing that the hierarchy of the neural oscillations corresponds to a unique developmental chronology in human infants’ experience with speech and language. The project uses state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, EEG & NIRS, with monolingual full term newborns, as well as full-term bilingual, preterm and deaf newborns to investigate the link between prenatal experience and subsequent language acquisition. It proposes to follow the developmental trajectories of these four populations from birth to 6 and 9 months of age.

1 621 250 €

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

The aim of BAPS is to develop a ground-breaking simulation model of international migration, based on a population of intelligent, cognitive agents, their social networks and institutions, all interacting with one another. The project will transform the study of migration – one of the most uncertain population processes and a top-priority EU policy area – by offering a step change in the way it can be understood, predicted and managed. In this way, BAPS will effectively integrate behavioural and social theory with modelling. To develop micro-foundations for migration studies, model design will follow cutting-edge developments in demography, statistics, cognitive psychology and computer science. BAPS will also offer a pioneering environment for applying the findings in practice through a bespoke modelling language. Bayesian statistical principles will be used to design innovative computer experiments, and learn about modelling the simulated individuals and the way they make decisions. In BAPS, we will collate available information for migration models; build and test the simulations by applying experimental design principles to enhance our knowledge of migration processes; collect information on the underpinning decision-making mechanisms through psychological experiments; and design software for implementing Bayesian agent-based models in practice. The project will use various information sources to build models bottom-up, filling an important epistemological gap in demography. BAPS will be carried out by the Allianz European Demographer 2015, recognised as a leader in the field for methodological innovation, directing an interdisciplinary team with expertise in demography, agent-based models, statistical analysis of uncertainty, meta-cognition, and computer simulations. The project will open up exciting research possibilities beyond demography, and will generate both academic and practical impact, offering methodological advice for policy-relevant simulations.

1 455 590 €

Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2021-05-31

"This project will develop a new framework for modeling economic agents having ""boundedly rational expectations"" (BRE). It is based on the concept of Bayesian networks (more generally, graphical models), borrowed from statistics and AI. In the framework's basic version, an agent is characterized by a directed acyclic graph (DAG) over the set of all relevant random variables. The DAG is the agent's ""type"" – it represents how he systematically distorts any objective probability distribution into a subjective belief. Technically, the distortion takes the form of the standard Bayesian-network factorization formula given by the agent's DAG. The agent's choice is modeled as a ""personal equilibrium"", because his subjective belief regarding the implications of his actions can vary with his own long-run behavior. The DAG representation unifies and simplifies existing models of BRE, subsuming them as special cases corresponding to distinct graphical representations. It captures hitherto-unmodeled fallacies such as reverse causation. The framework facilitates behavioral characterizations of general classes of models of BRE and expands their applicability. I will demonstrate this with applications to monetary policy, behavioral I.O., asset pricing, etc. I will extend the basic formalism to multi-agent environments, addressing issues beyond the reach of current models of BRE (e.g., formalizing the notion of ""high-order"" limited understanding of statistical regularities). Finally, I will seek a learning foundation for the graphical representation of BRE, in the sense that it will capture how the agent extrapolates his belief from a dataset (drawn from the objective distribution) containing ""missing values"", via some intuitive ""imputation method"". This part, too, borrows ideas from statistics and AI, further demonstrating the project's interdisciplinary nature."

1 379 288 €

Start date: 2016-07-01, End date: 2021-06-30

Social interactions are multifaceted and subtle, yet we can almost instantaneously discern if two people are cooperating or competing, flirting or fighting, or helping or hindering each other. Surprisingly, the development and brain basis of this remarkable ability has remained largely unexplored. At the same time, understanding how we develop the ability to process and use social information from other people is widely recognized as a core challenge facing developmental cognitive neuroscience. The Becoming Social project meets this challenge by proposing the most complete investigation to date of the development of the behavioural and neurobiological systems that support complex social perception. To achieve this, we first systematically map how the social interactions we observe are coded in the brain by testing typical adults. Next, we investigate developmental change both behaviourally and neurally during a key stage in social development in typically developing children. Finally, we explore whether social interaction perception is clinically relevant by investigating it developmentally in autism spectrum disorder. The Becoming Social project is expected to lead to a novel conception of the neurocognitive architecture supporting the perception of social interactions. In addition, neuroimaging and behavioural tasks measured longitudinally during development will allow us to determine how individual differences in brain and behaviour are causally related to real-world social ability and social learning. The planned studies as well as those generated during the project will enable the Becoming Social team to become a world-leading group bridging social cognition, neuroscience and developmental psychology.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31

"I will study questions of central microeconomic importance via interwoven theoretical, empirical, and experimental analyses, from a behavioural perspective combining standard methods with assumptions that better reflect evidence on behaviour and psychological insights. The contributions of behavioural economics have been widely recognized, but the benefits of its insights are far from fully realized. I propose four lines of inquiry that focus on how institutions interact with cognition and behaviour, chosen for their potential to reshape our understanding of important questions and their synergies across lines. The first line will study nonparametric identification and estimation of reference-dependent versions of the standard microeconomic model of consumer demand or labour supply, the subject of hundreds of empirical studies and perhaps the single most important model in microeconomics. It will allow such studies to consider relevant behavioural factors without imposing structural assumptions as in previous work. The second line will analyze history-dependent learning in financial crises theoretically and experimentally, with the goal of quantifying how market structure influences the likelihood of a crisis. The third line will study strategic thinking experimentally, using a powerful new design that links subjects’ searches for hidden payoff information (“eye-movements”) much more directly to thinking. The fourth line will significantly advance Myerson and Satterthwaite’s analyses of optimal design of bargaining rules and auctions, which first went beyond the analysis of given institutions to study what is possible by designing new institutions, replacing their equilibrium assumption with a nonequilibrium model that is well supported by experiments. The synergies among these four lines’ theoretical analyses, empirical methods, and data analyses will accelerate progress on each line well beyond what would be possible in a piecemeal approach."

1 985 373 €

Start date: 2014-04-01, End date: 2019-03-31

This project will investigate the interface between the study of the bible and the study of antiquity in the nineteenth century. These two areas -- the bible and classics -- are central to the intellectual world of the 19th century, a source of knowledge, contention, and authority both as discrete topics, and, more importantly, in relation to and in competition with one another. It is impossible to understand Victorian society without appreciating the intellectual, social and institutional force of these concerns with the past. Yet modern disciplinary formation has not only separated them in the academy, but also marginalized both subject areas -- which has deeply attenuated comprehension of this foundational era. Our project will bring together scholars working on a range of fields including classics, history of education, cultural history, art history, literary history to bring back into view a fundamental but deeply misunderstood and underexplored aspect of the nineteenth century, which continues to have a significant impact on the contemporary world.

2 497 046 €

Start date: 2012-06-01, End date: 2017-05-31