ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

This proposal proceeds from an anomaly. Apartheid routinely breached the separation that it names. Whereas the South African regime was deeply isolationist in international terms, new research links it to the Cold War and decolonization. Yet this trend does not consider sufficiently that the global contest over the meaning of apartheid and resistance to it occurs on the terrain of culture. My project argues that studying the global circulation of South African cultural formations in the apartheid era provides novel historiographic leverage over Western liberalism during the Cold War. It recasts apartheid as an apparatus of transnational cultural production, turning existing historiography inside out. This study seeks: • To provide the first systematic account of the deterritorialization of “apartheid”—as political signifier and as apparatus generating circuits of transnational cultural production. • To analyze these itinerant cultural formations across media and national borders, articulating new intersections. • To map the itineraries of major South African exiles, where exile is taken to be a system of interlinked circuits of affiliation and cultural production. • To revise the historiography of states other than South Africa through the lens of deterritorialized apartheid-era formations at their respective destinations. • To show how apartheid reveals contradictions within Western liberalism during the Cold War, with special reference to racial inequality. Methodologically, I introduce the model of thick convergence to analyze three periods: 1. Kliptown & Bandung: Novel possibilities, 1948-1960. 2. Sharpeville & Memphis: Drumming up resistance, 1960-1976. 3. From Soweto to Berlin: Spectacle at the barricades, 1976-1990. Each explores a cultural dominant in the form of texts, soundscapes or photographs. My work stands at the frontier of transnational research, furnishing powerful new insights into why South Africa matters on the stage of global history.

1 861 238 €

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

The two fundamental challenges of this project are the integration of medieval Jewries and their histories within the framework of European history without undermining their distinct communal status and the creation of a history of everyday medieval Jewish life that includes those who were not part of the learned elite. The study will focus on the Jewish communities of northern Europe (roughly modern Germany, northern France and England) from 1100-1350. From the mid-thirteenth century these medieval Jewish communities were subject to growing persecution. The approaches proposed to access daily praxis seek to highlight tangible dimensions of religious life rather than the more common study of ideologies to date. This task is complex because the extant sources in Hebrew as well as those in Latin and vernacular were written by the learned elite and will require a broad survey of multiple textual and material sources. Four main strands will be examined and combined: 1. An outline of the strata of Jewish society, better defining the elites and other groups. 2. A study of select communal and familial spaces such as the house, the synagogue, the market place have yet to be examined as social spaces. 3. Ritual and urban rhythms especially the annual cycle, connecting between Jewish and Christian environments. 4. Material culture, as objects were used by Jews and Christians alike. Aspects of material culture, the physical environment and urban rhythms are often described as “neutral” yet will be mined to demonstrate how they exemplified difference while being simultaneously ubiquitous in local cultures. The deterioration of relations between Jews and Christians will provide a gauge for examining change during this period. The final stage of the project will include comparative case studies of other Jewish communities. I expect my findings will inform scholars of medieval culture at large and promote comparative methodologies for studying other minority ethnic groups

1 941 688 €

Start date: 2016-11-01, End date: 2021-10-31

Social-science explanations for rising wage inequality have reached a dead end. Most economists argue that computerization has been primarily responsible, while on the other side of the argument are sociologists and political scientists who stress the role of political forces in the evolution process of wages. I would like to use my knowledge and experience to come up with an original theory on the complex dynamics between technology and politics in order to solve two unsettled questions regarding the role of computerization in rising wage inequality: First, how can computerization, which diffused simultaneously in rich countries, explain the divergent inequality trends in Europe and the United States? Second, what are the mechanisms behind the well-known observed positive correlation between computers and earnings? To answer the first question, I develop a new institutional agenda stating that politics, broadly defined, mitigates the effects of technological change on wages by stimulating norms of fair pay and equity. To answer the second question, I propose a truly novel perspective that conceptualizes the earnings advantage that derives from computerization around access to and control of information on the production process. Capitalizing on this new perspective, I develop a new approach to measuring computerization to capture the form of workers’ interaction with computers at work, and build a research strategy for analysing the effect of computerization on wages across countries and workplaces, and over time. This research project challenges the common understanding of technology’s role in producing economic inequality, and would thereby significantly impact all of the abovementioned disciplines, which are debating over the upswing in wage inequality, as well as public policy, which discusses what should be done to confront the resurgence of income inequality.

1 495 091 €

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

The central research theme of this proposal is the study of social change (skills, productivity, attitudes and beliefs) in Europe along cohort lines and as a function of changing age composition. Using demographic methods, age-specific and cohort-specific changes shall be quantitatively disentangled. The impact of migration flows as well as fertility differentials combined with intergenerational transmissions will be taken into account. It is expected that viewed together, these analyses will result in significant new insights and represent frontier research about likely social and economic challenges associated with ageing and demographic change in Europe and the appropriate policies for coping with them. Unlike projections of long-term economic growth or energy use, demographic forecasts tend to have comparatively low margins of error, even for forecasts half a century ahead. Traits that change systematically along age or cohort lines may therefore be projected with some degree of accuracy, which in turn can allow governments and individuals to better foresee and improve policies for predictable social change. The study will investigate two major topics, the first relating to human capital, skills, and work performance; the second relating to beliefs and attitudes in Europe. Understanding age variation in productivity and how to improve senior workers skills and capacities are paramount for ageing countries. Moreover, individual-level demographic behaviour can have aggregate level implications, including changing societal values and belief structures. The binding element is how such projections will improve one s capacity to foresee and hence develop more targeted policies that relate to ageing societies.

981 415 €

Start date: 2009-10-01, End date: 2015-03-31

The chronology of ancient Egypt is a golden thread for the memory of early civilisation. It is not only the scaffolding of four millennia of Egyptian history, but also one of the pillars of the chronology of the entire ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. The basic division of Egyptian history into 31 dynasties was introduced by Manetho, an Egyptian historian (c. 280 BC) writing in Greek for the Ptolemaic kings. Despite the fact that this scheme was adopted by Egyptologists 200 years ago and remains in use until today, there has never been an in-depth analysis of Manetho’s kinglist and of the names in it. Until now, identifying the Greek renderings of royal names with their hieroglyphic counterparts was more or less educated guesswork. It is thus essential to introduce the principles of textual criticism, to evaluate royal names on a firm linguistic basis and to provide for the first time ever an Egyptological commentary on Manetho’s kinglist. Just like Manetho did long ago, now it is necessary to gather all inscriptional evidence on Egyptian history: dated inscriptions, biographic and prosopographic data of royalty and commoners, genuine Egyptian kinglists and annals. These data must be critically evaluated in context, their assignment to specific reigns must be reconsidered, and genealogies and sequences of officials must be reviewed. The results are not only important for Egyptian historical chronology and for our understanding of the Egyptian perception of history, but also for the interpretation of chronological data gained from archaeological excavations (material culture) and sciences (14C dates, which are interpreted on the basis of historical chronology, e.g., via ‘Bayesian modelling’). The applicant has already shown the significance of this approach in pilot studies on the pyramid age. Further work in cooperation with international specialists will thus shed new light on ancient sources in order to determine the chronology of early civilisation.

1 499 992 €

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

There is confusion surrounding how poverty eradication will contribute to climate change. This is due to knowledge gaps related to the material basis of poverty, and the relationship between energy and human development. Addressing this issue rigorously requires bridging gaps between global justice, economics, energy systems analysis, and industrial ecology, and applying this knowledge to projections of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. This project will develop a body of knowledge that quantifies the energy needs and related climate change impacts for providing decent living standards to all. The research will address three questions: which goods and services, and with what characteristics, constitute ‘decent living standards’? What energy resources are required to provide these goods and services in different countries, and what impact will this energy use have on climate change? How do the constituents of decent living and their energy needs evolve as countries develop? The first task will operationalize basic needs views of human development and advance their empirical validity by discerning characteristics of basic goods in household consumption patterns. The second will quantify the energy needs (and climate-related emissions) for decent living constituents and reveal their dependence on culture, climate, technology, and other contextual conditions in countries. This will be done using lifecycle analysis and input-output analysis, and mapping energy to climate change using state-of-the-art energy-economy integrated assessment modelling tools for 5 emerging economies that face the challenges of eradicating poverty and mitigating climate change. The third task will shed light on path dependencies and trends in the evolution of basic goods and their energy intensity using empirical analysis. This research will identify opportunities to shift developing societies towards low-carbon pathways, and help quantify burden-sharing arrangements for climate mitigation.

869 722 €

Start date: 2015-06-01, End date: 2019-05-31

The goal of this research initiative is to construct large-scale computational modeling of how knowledge of the world emerges from the combination of innate mechanisms and visual experience. The ultimate goal is a ‘digital baby’ model which, through perception and interaction with the world, develops on its own representations of complex concepts that allow it to understand the world around it, in terms of objects, object categories, events, agents, actions, goals, social interactions, etc. A wealth of empirical research in the cognitive sciences have studied how natural concepts in these domains are acquired spontaneously and efficiently from perceptual experience, but a major open challenge is an understating of the processes and computations involved by rigorous testable models. To deal with this challenge we propose a novel methodology based on two components. The first, ‘computational Nativism’, is a computational theory of cognitively and biologically plausible innate structures , which guide the system along specific paths through its acquisition of knowledge, to continuously acquire meaningful concepts, which can be significant to the observer, but statistically inconspicuous in the sensory input. The second, ‘embedded interpretation’ is a new way of acquiring extended learning and interpretation processes. This is obtained by placing perceptual inference mechanisms within a broader perception-action loop, where the actions in the loop are not overt actions, but internal operation over internal representation. The results will provide new modeling and understanding of the age-old problem of how innate mechanisms and perception are combined in human cognition, and may lay foundation for a major research direction dealing with computational cognitive development.

1 647 175 €

Start date: 2011-06-01, End date: 2016-05-31

The asset management industry is a 60 trillion euros industry world wide, with a ratio of assets under management by asset managers to GDP around 100 percent. Despite the prominence of financial intermediaries in financial markets, our understanding of the portfolio delegation relationship, and its equilibrium asset pricing and contracting implications is at its infancy. The recent financial crisis has further underscored the importance of better understanding the incentives of financial intermediaries, the distortions induced by these incentives, the contracts that can help mitigate these distortions, and the impact of their trading on asset pricing dynamics. One key feature that is at the core of the asset management relationship is its dynamic nature: investors can, and do, periodically re-allocate funds between managers and between funds and other investment vehicles. The magnitude of fund flows, both over time and accross funds at a given point in time, have been shown to be quantitatively large relative to assets under management. The ability of investors to quickly pull money out of funds at a time of crisis can have significant ramifications for the stability of the financial system. Understanding implications of the dynamic nature of the delegation relationship is imperative in order to understand multiple aspects related to delegation and financial markets at large, including: risk taking behavior by funds; welfare implications for investors who invest in funds; what regulatory restrictions should be imposed on contracts; the evolution, past and future, of the asset management industry; securities return dynamics. The objective is to develope models that will incorporate dynamic flows in settings that will allow studying implications and deriving empirical predictions on multiple dimensions: portfolio choice; optimal contracting; distribution of assets across funds; equilibrium asset pricing dynamics.

728 436 €

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

The pioneering enterprise I propose is the study of a particular type of linguistic discontinuity – language revival – inspired by the revival of Hebrew at the end of the 19th century. The historical and sociocultural dimensions the revival have been studied before, but not its linguistic dimensions. My main aim is to construct a model of the linguistic factors which have shaped the revival of Hebrew. I expect this model to provide clues for the understanding of the process of language revival in general. For a language to be revived, a new grammar must be created by its native speakers. I hypothesize that the new grammar is formed by some of the general principles which also govern other better known cases of linguistic discontinuity (creoles, mixed languages, emergent sign languages etc.). The model I will develop will lay the foundation for a new subfield within the study of discontinuity – the study of language revival. I will start with careful work of documenting the development of the grammar of Modern Hebrew, in particular its syntax, something which has not been done systematically before. One product of the project will be a linguistic application for the documentation and annotation of the novel syntactic constructions of Modern Hebrew, their sources in previous stages of Hebrew and in the languages with which Modern Hebrew was in contact at the time of the revival, and the development of these constructions since the beginning of the revival until the present time. The linguistic application will be made available on the web for other linguists to use and to contribute to. The institution of an expanding data-base of the syntactic innovations of Modern Hebrew which comprises both documentation/ annotation and theoretical modeling which could be applied to other languages makes this an extremely ambitious proposal with potentially wide-reaching ramifications for the revival and revitalization of the languages of ethno-linguistic minorities world wide.

2 498 750 €

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

This project will apply two distinctly demographic concepts to research questions that go far beyond demography. The wellbeing indicators proposed here will be based on life table methods and the recently operationalized concept of Demographic Metabolism – modelling social change through the replacement of generations – will be used to get a quantitative analytical handle on the temporal dynamics of improving human wellbeing. The project will theoretically develop, empirically estimate, test and forecast indicators of human wellbeing that are based on life table methods and hence reflect the basic – but often overlooked fact – that being alive is a necessary prerequisite for enjoying any quality of life. But since mere survival is not sufficient as an ultimate goal for most people the person years lived at each age will be weighted with four different dimensions of empowerment: health, literacy, happiness and being out of poverty. These are four dimensions of an indicator tentatively called ELY (Empowered Life Years). ELY will also serve as the explanandum of a global level econometric estimation of the determinants of wellbeing considering human, manufactured and natural capitals as well as knowledge and institutions. The global level analysis is complemented by a set of strategically chosen in-depth systems-analytical case studies in Namibia/Western Cape, Nepal, Costa Rica and historical Finland modelling the population-development-environment (PDE) interactions including feed-backs e.g. from environmental degradation to wellbeing and taking the trends of ELY in different sub-populations as sustainability criteria. They will also include stake holder involvement and science-policy interactions. This innovative inter-disciplinary cross-fertilisation can potentially make an important contribution to the current discussions about operationalizing the criteria and end goal of sustainable development and developing better human wellbeing based metrics of progress.

1 819 250 €

Start date: 2017-11-01, End date: 2022-10-31

In the era of globalisation, supply chains are increasingly organised on the international level, thus disconnecting final consumption from the location of material extraction and related environmental and social impacts. Reducing these global impacts – or footprints – of European consumption is a major societal and scientific challenge. Methods to assess teleconnections between distant places of raw material extraction and consumption along global supply chains have improved significantly, with multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis being the most prominent method applied. However, the limited spatial resolution of MRIO models distorts footprint calculations, as specific properties of raw materials as well as impacts of extraction can vary significantly within production countries. I therefore propose a new method for the calculation of fine-scale material consumption footprints. It will encompass (1) a spatial assessment of global material extraction on a high-resolution grid and (2) a detailed physical model that tracks raw materials from the location of extraction via international transport facilities to processing industries in importing countries. Integrating this very detailed spatial information with a MRIO model will enable the first fine-scale assessment of European countries’ material footprints, overcoming prevailing aggregation errors in footprint indicators. Furthermore, I will investigate environmental and social impacts related to material footprints through linking the spatially explicit multi-regional material flow model with datasets on impacts related to raw material extraction, such as increasing water scarcity, deforestation and mining conflicts. This project will not only lift the accuracy of footprint models to a new level, but will also open up a range of options for sustainability assessments of specific commodity flows. Building on this knowledge, targeted policy instruments for sustainable product supply chains can be designed.

1 999 909 €

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

This interdisciplinary project (combining social and earth sciences) addresses a key gap in the knowledge of global assessments concerning the likely consequences of future climate change on future human wellbeing. More information about the determinants of future adaptive capacity is necessary for setting policy priorities today: Should the significant funds allocated for adaptation be invested in enhancing existing infrastructure or currently practiced agricultural strategies (some of which may not be tenable under future climates), or should they invest alternatively in enhancing human empowerment through education and health which in consequence will enable affected societies to better cope with whatever challenges the future will bring? This study is expected to bring significant progress in this difficult multidisciplinary, yet highly relevant, field through a combination of: (a) New global science-based, long-term projections of human capital (population by age, sex and level of education) as a key element of adaptive capacity; (b) Three empirical multi-national studies on key factors involved in past vulnerability and adaptations to the Sahelian drought, Hurricane Mitch and the Asian tsunami; (c) Three prospective case studies assessing future adaptive capacity for the Phuket region, Mauritius and the Nicobar islands; (d) All held together and put into perspective by the elaboration of a new demographic theory of long-term social change with predictive power. This rather complex project structure is necessary for reaching generalizable and useful results. All components have been designed to complement each other to maximize the chances of achieving path-breaking and at the same time tangible results in this highly complex, multidisciplinary field. All components of the study will build on previous work of IIASA and Wolfgang Lutz and hence minimize the need to acquire additional experience for the case study sites or for the methodology used.

2 438 402 €

Start date: 2009-03-01, End date: 2014-07-31

Should sovereign governments be accountable only to their citizens or should they also consider the welfare of foreign stakeholders? Traditional doctrines on state sovereignty and citizenship offer a generally negative answer: Absent a specific, voluntarily accepted, treaty-based commitment, sovereign governments usually have no obligation to weigh foreigners’ interests. This traditional vision conceptualizes sovereigns as Janus-faced: Their public face is for domestic stakeholders to whom they are accountable and to whom they owe negative and positive obligations, and their private face is for all other stakeholders to whom their only obligation is the negative one of not inflicting a set of narrowly defined harms. The aim of this project is to revisit this Janus-faced concept of responsibility and to explore broader alternatives and their ramifications. This study will examine the scope of obligations sovereign governments currently have toward foreign stakeholders and humanity at large and will analyze the normative desirability and political feasibility of potential alternative strategies for enhancing sovereign accountability to non-citizens and promoting a more democratic, sustainable, and egalitarian management of public life and scarce global resources. This project will systematically review the extent to which current law (international law and comparative constitutional law) and institutions already regard sovereigns as public authorities accountable to foreign stakeholders. More specifically, this project will apply the general insights to examine the necessary and possible legal and institutional responses to climatic changes in an era of erratic and extreme weather conditions.

1 405 200 €

Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2018-02-28

The pioneering framework I propose for the analysis of the foundations of human language – the Grammar of the Body – is inspired by sign language. My main aim is to create a body-based model of linguistic compositionality and to provide clues of its evolutionary origins. Instead of analysing sign language (and language generally) from the perspective of mental categories, the radical approach I introduce here analyses language from the outside in, from the physical articulators of the face, hands, and body in sign language, to the grammatical structures they manifest. This new approach capitalizes on the discovery that gestures of each articulator make a meaningful contribution to the whole corporeal display, and yield a hierarchy from small to large in both body and grammar domains: hands/words > head and face/phrasal intonation > torso/discourse perspective. I hypothesize that the corporeal base of compositionality has deeper evolutionary roots in the emotional face and body displays of humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. The multi-disciplinary methodology I adopt will incorporate linguistic analysis of established and newly emerging sign languages with artistic manipulation of language form, and allow us to trace the origins of the system in emotional displays of both humans and apes. My central goal – determining the basis and structure of compositionality in human language – and the unconventional methodological approaches it exploits combine to make this an extremely ambitious proposal with potentially wide-reaching ramifications in the humanities and social sciences.

2 448 318 €

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

A forest transition, i.e. forest expansion after a long period of deforestation, has occurred in many, mostly industrialized countries. Forest transitions have recently resulted in declining rates of global net deforestation and contributed to carbon (C) sinks in terrestrial ecosystems. Studies have shown the concurrence of forest transitions and industrialization processes, but the systemic links between forest transitions, their underlying socio-metabolic processes and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been neither systematically explored nor quantified. HEFT introduces the idea of “hidden emissions of forest transitions”, i.e. the GHG emissions from socio-metabolic processes reducing pressures on forests. Hidden emissions may stem from processes such as substitution of fuelwood by modern energy sources, intensification of agriculture, and externalization of biomass production to remote regions. Building on the concept of socio-ecological metabolism, HEFT develops a consistent methodological framework to quantify the full GHG emissions and sinks from socio-metabolic and ecological processes in the course of forest transitions, within which their hidden emissions are identified. Forest transitions in multiple contexts are analyzed at local, national and supranational scales: in Europe since c. 1850, North America since c. 1880, and South East Asia since 1980. A coarse global-scale assessment complements the regional case studies. We will integrate sources and analytical methods from environmental and social sciences as well as the humanities to analyze context-specific trajectories and general features of socio-ecological GHG budgets and their respective socio-political contexts since the onset of forest transitions. The sound understanding of hidden emissions will be used to identify the least GHG-intensive trajectories and to draw lessons for future climate-friendly forest transitions.

1 401 941 €

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

This project conducts a theoretical, methodological, and normative paradigm shift in the research and analysis of human trafficking, one of the most pressing moral and political challenges of our times. It moves away from the currently predominant approach to trafficking, which focuses on criminal law, border control, and human rights, towards a labor-based approach that targets the structure of labor markets that are prone to severely exploitative labor practices. This shift represents an essential development both in the research of migratory labor practices and in the process of designing more effective, and more just, anti-trafficking measures, that are context-sensitive as well as cognizant to global legal and economic trends. The project will include four main parts: 1) Theoretical: articulating and justifying the proposed shift on trafficking from individual rights and culpabilities to structural labor market realities. 2) Case-studies: conducting a multidisciplinary study of a series of innovative case studies, in which the labor context emerges as a significant factor in the trafficking nexus – bilateral agreements on migration, national regulations of labor standards and recruiters, unionization, and voluntary corporate codes of conduct. The case studies analysis employs the labor paradigm in elucidating the structural conditions that underlie trafficking, reveal a thus-far mostly unrecognized and under-theorized set of anti-trafficking tools. 3) Clinical Laboratory: collaborating with TAUs Workers' Rights clinic to create a legal laboratory in which the potential and limits of the tools examined in the case studies will be tested. 4) Normative: assessing the success of existing strategies and expanding on them to devise innovative tools for a just, practicable, and effective anti-trafficking policy, that can reach significantly more individuals vulnerable to trafficking, by providing them with legal mechanisms for avoiding and resisting exploitation.

1 492 250 €

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

The Hyksos (Greek rendering of the Egyptian title “rulers of the foreign countries”) were a dynasty of foreign rulers of Egypt between c.1640 and 1530 BC. Some modern researchers, following the ancient historian Flavius Josephus (1st cent. AD) thought they were ancestors of the early Israelites, others suggested that their appearance should be tied to the Hurrian expansion to the Levant. Most scholars today think, according to the onomastic data, that they were western Semites. Their geographical origin in the Levant, their seizure of power and their role in history, remains, however, an enigma, as the period is poorly represented in texts. Nevertheless the Hyksos phenomenon has thus far mainly been studied by text-based Egyptology. In the last decades, however, excavations at T. el-Dab‘a, T. el-Rotaba, T. el Maskhuta and other places in the eastern Delta have produced an enormous wealth of new data such as urban settlements, palaces, tombs, temples, offering remains, besides enormous quantities of material culture and physical remains which can be attributed to the carriers of the Hyksos rule and their predecessors. These materials, left thus far largely aside in the historical discussion, can be utilised as first class historical sources. The envisaged investigations will be conducted in 8 interrelated research tracks, incorporating an array of archaeological, historical, theoretical and analytical sciences. The aim is to reveal in a holistic approach the origin, the dialogue with and the impact of western Asiatic people on culture of the host country and finally their heritage. They played a much greater role in the history of the Old World than envisaged and pushed Egypt into the focus of what happened in the Near East in the 2nd millennium BC. This innovative exploration of the Hyksos phenomenon has the potential to write a new chapter in the history of this salient region and offer a model.

2 446 819 €

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

The ultimate goal of INSPIRE is to develop Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)-based and training protocols that will improve semantic skills and creative thinking of healthy and impaired individuals by manipulating the balance between the hemispheres while they process language. Although ambitious and revolutionary, this goal is fundamental to conceptions of language processing and functional lateralization in the human brain. Specific objectives are: (1) To investigate how do semantic processes interact with creative thinking, particularly in the right hemisphere (RH). (2) To generate (reversible and temporary) localized functional impairment in healthy participants in order to specify the cortical areas involved in normal semantic processing. In particular, inhibitory TMS protocols will be used to investigate the role of the RH in processing remote associations, metaphors, sarcasm and subordinate meanings of ambiguous words. Complementary TMS-induced impairments are predicted for left hemisphere (LH) stimulation in language areas. (3) To improve RH semantic abilities and creative thinking by targeting excitatory TMS protocols at the regions of interest, and by enhancing the functioning of the homologue un-stimulated cortex with inhibitory protocols via disinhibition. (4) To improve RH semantic abilities and creative thinking by 'left' and 'right' hemisphere training. (5) To apply the research findings of objectives 1-4 above to aphasia, schizophrenia and RH brain damaged patients in order to improve their semantic skills. Prof. Lavidor is now moving back to Israel with her family after a long stay in the UK. The ERC support is requested for the re-establishment of an active and successful TMS lab in Israel, similar to the one Lavidor set up in the UK. The INSPIRE project, if funded, will allow her to build a new generation of inspired research students in her new lab, trained for excellence by Lavidor, who won the 2006 Marie Curie Excellence Award

638 400 €

Start date: 2008-10-01, End date: 2012-09-30

In the past few decades, the role of judges has changed dramatically and its nature has remained largely unexplored. To date, most cases settle or reach plea-bargaining, and the greater part of judges’ time is spent on managing cases and encouraging parties to reach consensual solutions. Adjudication based on formal rules is a rare phenomenon which judges mostly avoid. The hypothesis underlying JCR is that the various Conflict Resolution methods which are used outside the courtroom, as alternatives to adjudication, could have a strong and positive influence, both theoretical and practical, on judicial activities inside the courts. Judicial activities may be conceptualised along the lines of generic modes of conflict resolution such as mediation and arbitration. Judicial conflict resolution activity is performed in the shadow of authority and in tension with it, and crosses the boundaries between criminal and civil conflicts. It can be evaluated, studied and improved through criteria which go beyond the prevalent search for efficiency in court administration. Empirically, JCR will study judicial activities in promoting settlements comparatively from a quantitative and qualitative perspective, by using statistical analysis, in-depth interviews, mapping and framing legal resources, court observations and narrative analysis. Theoretically, JCR will develop a conflict resolution jurisprudence, which prioritises consent over coercion as a leading value for the administration of justice. Prescriptively, JCR will promote a participatory endeavour to build training programs for judges that implement the research findings regarding the judicial role. Following such findings, JCR will also consider generating recommendations to change legal rules, codes of ethics, measures of evaluation, and policy framings. JCR will increase accountability and access to justice by introducing coherence into a mainstream activity of processing legal conflicts.

1 272 534 €

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

The central purpose of this project is to bring down interdisciplinary barriers by showing how the Slavic and the Jewish heritage can each be approached as a unique repository of the unknown texts, traditions, and sensibilities of the other. By focusing on previously unexplored or under-explored medieval texts, I aim to reconstruct the Jewish and Slavic legacies, some of whose materials have been considered lost, while others were misinterpreted or neglected. This research project will resort to historical and philological techniques hitherto considered mutually incompatible in this field. The study intends to use methods of cultural archaeology to explore medieval Judeo-Slavic transparency. By cultural transparency we understand the mutual permeability of different cultures, which facilitates the exchange of ideas and genres of creativity between them. Cultural archeology involves methods of multi-disciplinary research based on the assumption that Eastern Europe constituted a melting pot characterized by an intensive cross-fertilization of cultural legacies. Cultural archaeology studies different historical, religious, and literary texts by looking at them as a palimpsest in which earlier texts and types of discourse come to the fore as shaped by their contemporary socio-cultural settings. The proposed theme has far-reaching methodological implications beyond the Judeo-Slavic cultural realm. This project will build a model of cross-cultural interaction to achieve a better understanding of the situations in which different faith-based ethnic cultures cohabit.

1 044 000 €

Start date: 2010-11-01, End date: 2016-10-31

The overarching goal of L2STAT is to understand L2 literacy acquisition by bringing together, for the first time, recent advances in the neurobiology of statistical learning (SL), a detailed statistical characterization of the world’s writing systems, and neurally-plausible general principles of learning, representation, and processing. L2STAT aims to provide a new theoretical framework that considers L2 learning and SL a two-way street: SL, on the one hand, tunes learners to the regularities of a new linguistic environment, and on the other hand, L2 environment shapes learners’ sensitivity to its specific types of statistical properties. The project will focus on the assimilation of reading skills in four novel linguistic environments, and investigate how exposure to their distinct writing systems shape, in turn, SL. L2STAT is an interdisciplinary project that launches in parallel five mutually informative research axes: 1) we employ advanced methods from computational linguistics and machine learning to precisely characterize the statistics of four highly contrasting writing systems (English, Spanish, Hebrew, Chinese). 2) We study the learning that results from biologically-inspired computational models that are exposed to these statistics, to generate a priori predictions regarding what statistical properties can (or cannot) be learned, and how neural mechanisms constrain the representations learned during L2 literacy acquisition. 3) We develop psychometrically reliable behavioral tests of individuals’ capacities to extract regularities in the visual and auditory modalities. 4) We use state of the art neuroimaging techniques including EEG, MEG, fMRI to probe the neurobiological underpinning for detecting regularities in the visual and auditory modalities. 5) We conduct behavioral experimentation in four sites (Israel, Spain, Taiwan to track literacy acquisition longitudinally in the four different languages.

2 500 000 €

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

Possible Life: The Philosophical Significance of Extending Biology Due to the latest technological advances in genetic engineering and space technology, scientists have developed strategies to engineer novel biological systems in laboratories, and to study through space telescopes the signs of possible life from other planets and solar systems. These newly discovered biological possibilities may turn out to be epoch-making. Apart from challenging our notion of life, they also have fundamental philosophical implications. The very question motivating the project is: How is biology being extended beyond the actual evolved life on Earth – and what is the philosophical significance of the turn to possible life? This question is studied through a two-pronged approach that puts scientific practice into a dialogue with philosophy of science and naturalistic metaphysics. First, the project examines the emerging fields of synthetic biology and astrobiology. The key themes studied include unnatural biochemical bases and organizational principles of life, synthetic life, evolutionary possibilities and constraints, and the habitability of exoplanets. Empirical studies in six leading laboratories in Europe and the US are used to inform the study of these themes. Second, the research on possible life is employed as a resource for the development of philosophical theory. The three philosophical subprojects examine (i) modelling and simulating the possible, (ii) multiple realizability of biological kinds, and (iii) contingency and necessity in biology. The project will advance our understanding of the modal dimension of science by addressing a paramount case – life. The project draws together and develops diverse strands in theorizing of the possible within philosophy of science and metaphysics. Through an unconventional combination of philosophical and empirical analysis the project seeks to facilitate the application of metaphysical concepts to cutting-edge scientific research.

1 999 566 €

Start date: 2019-06-01, End date: 2024-05-31

In order to protect marine biodiversity and ensure that benefits are equally shared, the UN General Assembly has decided to develop a new legally binding treaty under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Marine biodiversity data will play a central role: Firstly, in supporting intergovernmental efforts to identify, protect and monitor marine biodiversity. Secondly, in informing governments interested in particular aspects of marine biodiversity, including its economic use and its contribution to biosecurity. In examining how this data are represented and used, this project will create a novel understanding of the materiality of science-policy interrelations and identify new forms of power in global environmental politics as well as develop the methodologies to do so. This is crucial, because the capacities to develop and use data infrastructures are unequally distributed among countries and global initiatives for data sharing are significantly challenged by conflicting perceptions of who benefits from marine biodiversity research. Despite broad recognition of these challenges within natural science communities the political aspects of marine biodiversity data remain understudied. Academic debates tend to neglect the role of international politics in legitimising and authorising scientific concepts, data sources and criteria and how this influences national monitoring priorities. The central objective of MARIPOLDATA is to overcome these shortcomings by developing and applying a new multiscale methodology for grounding the analysis of science-policy interrelations in empirical research. An interdisciplinary team, led by the PI, will collect and analyse data across different policy-levels and spatial scales by combining 1) ethnographic studies at intergovernmental negotiation sites with 2) a comparative analysis of national biodiversity monitoring policies and practices and 3) bibliometric and social network analyses and oral history interviews for mapping marine biodiversity science.

1 391 932 €

Start date: 2018-11-01, End date: 2023-10-31

The purpose of this project is to write a long-term regional history of medicine in the Middle East and North Africa from a transnational and multi-layered perspective. A regional approach will enable tracing both global influences and local specificities, while a long-term perspective (1830-1960) will allow tracing continuity and change from the late Ottoman Middle East through the colonial to the post-colonial periods. Combining archival and published sources in Arabic, French, English, Hebrew, English, German and Ottoman Turkish, it will offer a unique perspective into the formation of the modern Middle East. Research for this project will revolve around five main cores: First, the global context: global vectors of disease transmission, alongside the transmission of medical knowledge and expertise. Second, the international aspect: how international conventions and international bodies affected the region and were affected by it. Third, the regional flow of both health challenges and proposed solutions, the regional spread of epidemics and the formation of regional epistemic communities. Fourth, the colonial aspect, noting both inter- and intra-colonial influences, and the encounter between colonial bodies of knowledge and locally produced ones. Fifth, the role played by doctors in various national projects: the nahda, namely the Arabic literary revival from the mid-nineteenth century onwards; the Zionist project; Egyptian and Syrian interwar nationalism and, later, Arab nationalism. This project will portray an intersection between the corporal, the social, the cultural and the technological and trace these interconnections across time and space. Health, medicine and hygiene will be a prism through which to explore large processes, such as colonization and decolonization, national identity and state-building. The scientific development of medicine and the globalization of health-risks and medical knowledge in this period make medicine an ideal case study.

1 867 181 €

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