ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Since early 2015, the media continuously confront us with images of refugee children drowning in the Mediterranean, surviving in appalling conditions in camps or walking across Europe. Within this group of fleeing children, a considerable number is travelling without parents, the unaccompanied refugee minors. While the media images testify to these flight experiences and their possible huge impact on unaccompanied minors’ wellbeing, there has been no systematic research to fully capture these experiences, nor their mental health impact. Equally, no evidence exists on whether the emotional impact of these flight experiences should be differentiated from the impact of the traumatic events these minors endured in their home country or from the daily stressors in the country of settlement. This project aims to fundamentally increase our knowledge of the impact of experiences during the flight in relation to past trauma and current stressors. To achieve this aim, it is essential to set up a longitudinal follow-up of a large group of unaccompanied refugee minors, whereby our study starts from different transit countries, crosses several European countries, and uses innovative methodological and mixed-methods approaches. I will hereby not only document the psychological impact these flight experiences may have, but also the way in which care and reception structures for unaccompanied minors in both transit and settlement countries can contribute to reducing this mental health impact. This proposal will fundamentally change the field of migration studies, by introducing a whole new area of study and novel methodological approaches to study these themes. Moreover, other fields, such as trauma studies, will be directly informed by the project, as also clinical, educational and social work interventions for victims of multiple trauma. Last, the findings on the impact of reception and care structures will be highly informative for policy makers and practitioners.

1 432 500 €

Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31

Do even the smallest clouds simply drift with the wind? Vast areas of our oceans and land are covered with shallow cumulus clouds. These low-level clouds are receiving increased attention as uncertainties in their representation in global climate models lead to a spread in predictions of future climate. This attention emphasizes radiative and thermodynamic impacts of clouds, which are thought to energize the large-scale Hadley circulation. But broadly overlooked is the impact of shallow cumuli on the trade-winds that drive this circulation. Reasons for this negligence are a lack of observations of vertical wind structure and the wide range of scales involved. My project will test the hypothesis that shallow cumuli can also slow down the Hadley circulation by vertical transport of momentum. First, observations of clouds and winds will be explicitly connected and the causality of their relationship will be exposed using ground-based and airborne measurements and high-resolution modeling. Second, new lidar techniques aboard aircraft are exploited to validate low-level winds measured by the space-borne Aeolus wind lidar and collect high-resolution wind and turbulence data. Third, different models of momentum transport by shallow convection will be developed to represent its impact on winds. Last, evidence of global relationships between winds and shallow cumulus are traced in Aeolus and additional satellite data and the impact of momentum transport on circulations in a control and warmer climate is tested in a general circulation model. This project exploits my expertise in observing and modeling clouds and convection focused on a hypothesis which, if true, will strongly influence our understanding of the sensitivity of circulations and the sensitivity of climate. It will increase the predictability of low-level winds and convergence patterns, which are important to many disciplines, including climate studies, numerical weather prediction and wind-energy research.

1 867 120 €

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

Droughts cause agricultural loss, forest mortality and drinking water scarcity. Their predicted increase in recurrence and intensity poses serious threats to future global food security. Several historically unprecedented droughts have already occurred over the last decade in Europe, Australia and the USA. The cost of the ongoing Californian drought is estimated to be about US$3 billion. Still today, the knowledge of how droughts start and evolve remains limited, and so does the understanding of how climate change may affect them. Positive feedbacks from land have been suggested as critical for the occurrence of recent droughts: as rainfall deficits dry out soil and vegetation, the evaporation of land water is reduced, then the local air becomes too dry to yield rainfall, which further enhances drought conditions. Importantly, this is not just a 'local' feedback, as remote regions may rely on evaporated water transported by winds from the drought-affected region. Following this rationale, droughts self-propagate and self-intensify. However, a global capacity to observe these processes is lacking. Furthermore, climate and forecast models are immature when it comes to representing the influences of land on rainfall. Do climate models underestimate this land feedback? If so, future drought aggravation will be greater than currently expected. At the moment, this remains largely speculative, given the limited number of studies of these processes. I propose to use novel in situ and satellite records of soil moisture, evaporation and precipitation, in combination with new mechanistic models that can map water vapour trajectories and explore multi-dimensional feedbacks. DRY-2-DRY will not only advance our fundamental knowledge of the mechanisms triggering droughts, it will also provide independent evidence of the extent to which managing land cover can help 'dampen' drought events, and enable progress towards more accurate short-term and long-term drought forecasts.

1 465 000 €

Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31

This project is a study of the regulation of ‘mixture’(‘interracial’ sex, relationships and marriage) in Europe’s past and present. Informed by critical race and critical mixed race studies, it challenges the common assumption that Europe never had ‘anti-miscegenation’ laws comparable to those in the United States. In exploring if, when, how and why forms of regulation aiming to prevent or restrict ‘interracial mixture’ developed in Europe in certain times and places, the project delivers a vital contribution to our knowledge of the development of racial thinking in Europe. The concept of ‘mixture’ provides an eminently suitable approach to the construction of ‘race’, since ‘mixture’ confuses and destabilizes racialized categories that seem fixed and essentialized in specific times and places, such as ‘black/white’. The project consist of a historical and a contemporary part. The historical part looks at the regulation of ‘mixture’ in four European countries: France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, in their African colonies, and wartime Europe. The contemporary part explores whether and how, in spite of norms of formal equality and colour-blindness, ‘race’ and ‘monoracial family norms’ still play a part in European law and the lived experiences of ‘interracial’ couples with law in their everyday lives. Through archival research, legal analysis and interviews with modern-day ‘mixed’ couples and families, this approach helps us understand what lawmakers and enforcers believed ‘race’ was, what they believed ‘mixture’ was, how this was translated into legal practices, and how targeted couples responded. Theoretically, the project delivers a groundbreaking contribution to the genealogy of racial thinking in Europe, especially in addressing the understudied role of law and legal scholarship in the social construction of ‘race’ and ‘mixture’ in a increasingly diverse Europe.

1 999 823 €

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

In 2012, the European Commission launched the campaign Science: It’s a girl thing!, aimed at encouraging women to choose research careers, as they are sorely underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Given that gender disparities in aptitude for specific fields are generally very small, highly gendered skewness in educational choices suggest pathways dictated by stereotypes rather than abilities, leaving valuable STEM talents unused. Many European countries have invested in boosting girls’ participation in STEM through workshops with girl-oriented science topics, contact with female role models, and information packages. However, the vast majority of these initiatives have not been scientifically evaluated. Further, most programs leave untouched one of the key underlying processes keeping girls from STEM that emerge from the research literature, namely daily socialization reinforcing gender stereotypes in the school and family context. I aim to fill this gap by developing a video-feedback intervention aimed at reducing teachers’ (largely unconscious) gendered classroom interactions in primary and secondary schools, testing its effectiveness in reducing gender disparities in STEM in a randomized control trial (RCT), and longitudinally investigating salient family processes from infancy to late adolescence to inform parent education programs. This approach is innovative because it is the first to apply and rigorously test a video-feedback intervention aimed at reducing gendered interactions in schools. Further, the comprehensive scope of the study design is unique because it includes children and adolescents across development in both the school and the family context. The insights from this study will provide new avenues for both research and practice regarding gender socialization. The project fits seamlessly with my expertise in gender socialization, and experience with longitudinal and RCT projects in schools and families.

1 999 342 €

Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2022-05-31

Injury poses a key threat to all multicellular organisms. However, while some animals can fully restore lost body parts, others can only prevent further damage by mere wound healing. Which molecular mechanisms determine whether regeneration is induced or not is an unsettled fundamental question. I will use whole body regeneration, one of the most fascinating biological processes, as an experimental paradigm to identify the mechanisms of regeneration initiation. As a model organism I will employ planarians, flatworms with extraordinary plasticity that regenerate every piece of their body within a few days. I will mechanistically dissect how these animals rapidly induce an efficient regeneration program in response to tissue loss and define the key switches that determine whether a wound regenerates. Combining the astonishing regenerative abilities of planarians with new technologies I will first comprehensively describe the molecular changes occurring during the amputation response. Second, with a powerful novel assay developed in my lab - dormant fragments - that allows for the first time the separation of wounding from tissue loss in a single planarian, I will analyze the dynamics of the earliest regenerative events. Third, I will functionally characterize the regeneration-initiating signals and their target pathways combining in vivo RNAi and phenotypic assays. Fourth, with a regeneration-deficient planarian species, I will test whether the identified key regulators act as network nodes that can be utilized to rescue regeneration. Importantly, using vertebrate paradigms, such as the regenerating zebrafish fin, I will investigate conserved roles of these network nodes and validate general principles of regeneration initiation. This project will not only uncover conserved mechanisms of regeneration initiation but will also identify the switches that must be levered to induce regeneration in non-regenerating animals.

1 500 000 €

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

Increasingly our societies are becoming more diverse and how to live with this diversity is one of the most pressing questions of our time. In Europe, intergroup tolerance has been proposed as a key aspect of living harmoniously and productively with diversity; it is critical because objection and disagreement about what is good and right are inevitable. A diverse, egalitarian, and peaceful society does not require that we all like each other, but it does require that people at least tolerate one another. Yet, there has been very little by way of social psychological theorizing and systematic empirical research on intergroup toleration. This research will advance the state of the art in the social sciences by moving beyond intergroup stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination, and focusing on the social psychology of intergroup toleration in which differences are endured. This new line of research will unravel the interrelated aspects of toleration. We will elucidate: (1) the underlying psychological aspects of tolerance (the objection component), 2) the psychological processes underlying tolerance (the acceptance component), 3) the limits of tolerance (the rejection component), and 4) the social psychological consequences of being tolerated. This program has a coherent theoretical framework and empirically toleration will be examined by using a combination of survey data, framing experiments, and lab experiments involving EEG. The research will provide key insights into the social psychological dynamics of intergroup toleration. This can form the basis for developing and implementing initiatives and approaches that contribute to a more tolerant society. Given the contested nature of cultural diversity and the absence of systematic social psychological investigations, the proposed research is both ground-breaking and timely.

2 205 494 €

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

Even in the absence of legal ownership, people tend to experience objects, places, and ideas as belonging to them (‘mine’). This state of mind is called psychological ownership. Research has shown that experiences of ownership are very important for individuals, but can also lead to interpersonal conflicts. What we know almost nothing about is collective psychological ownership (CPO): a shared sense that something is ‘ours’. CPO might be especially relevant with regard to territories and in the context of intergroup relations. Statements like ‘we were here first’ or ‘we built this country’ are increasingly used by right-wing politicians in immigration countries to claim ownership on historical basis for the dominant ethnic group, and to exclude newcomers. There are also contexts where two established groups disagree about territorial ownership, such as Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo. While CPO might strengthen solidarity within groups, it might worsen intergroup relations, thus threatening social cohesion. It is important to establish where a sense of CPO comes from, and how it shapes intergroup relations, so that interventions could be implemented. This ground-breaking project examines 1) the extent to which people perceive their ethnic group as historically owning the country, 2) the psychological needs that motivate them to claim collective ownership, and 3) the implications of collective ownership claims for attitudes towards ethnic groups. My approach is multidisciplinary, combining social psychological theories on intergroup relations with the literature on ownership and territoriality from organizational science and anthropology. I will develop an instrument to measure CPO and provide first empirical evidence about the importance of CPO by collecting representative survey data in European immigration countries (Netherlands, UK, France), settler societies (Australia, New Zealand, USA), and countries with clear territorial disputes (Kosovo, Cyprus, Israel).

1 499 082 €

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

The future consolidation or erosion of western democracies depends on the political perceptions, experiences and participation of ordinary citizens. Even when they disagree on the implications of their findings, previous studies stress that both attitudinal and behavioural forms of democratic linkages – political trust, political support, loyalty, formal and informal participation – have come under considerable pressure in recent decades. The QUALIDEM project offers a qualitative (re)appraisal of citizens’ (dis-)affection towards politics by relying on the core argument of the policy feedback literature: attitudes and behaviours are outcomes of past policy. It aims to explain the evolutions of democratic linkages as being shaped by public policy, and specifically by the turn to neoliberalism and supranationalisation. It aims to systematically analyse the domestic and socially differentiated effects of both of these major macro transformations to citizens’ representations and experiences of politics, as an addition to the existing emphasis on individual determinants and the existing contextual explanations of disengagement and disaffection towards politics. On the theoretical level, this project therefore aims to build bridges between scholars of public policy and students of mass politics. On the empirical level, QUALIDEM relies on the reanalysis of qualitative data – interviews and focus groups – from a diachronic and comparative perspective focusing on four Western European countries (Belgium, France, Germany and the UK) with the US serving as a counterpoint. It will renew the methodological approach to the question of ordinary citizens’ disengagement and disaffection by providing a detailed and empirically-grounded understanding of the mechanisms of production and change in democratic linkages. It will develop an innovative methodological infrastructure for the storage of and access to twenty years of qualitative European comparative surveys.

1 491 659 €

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

RICA will fundamentally challenge, reconceptualise and redefine core foundational assumptions of the regulatory state. Arm’s length governance and regulatory independence have become the cornerstone normative and institutional design principles of the European regulatory state. Regulatory credibility is premised on agency insulation from politics with major systemic implications in the form of a rise in non-majoritarianism and a parallel devaluation of the political process. Efforts to compensate through alternative sources of input legitimacy have proven challenging. Conceptualised in a rational-choice tradition, accountability is seen to be in a zero-sum relationship with regulatory autonomy. Bolstering accountability is said to threaten autonomy, undermining the system’s normative foundations. Informed by insights from the political science literature on reputation, RICA profoundly questions these assumptions. It does so in two separate and interlocking tracks. Module 1 theorises about, and tests, the established wisdom of a wholesale positive relation between agency insulation and credibility. To the contrary, from a reputational perspective, a strategy of insulation is expected to have a negative effect on regulatory credibility, with overall delegitimising effects. Similarly informed by reputation insights, Module 2 challenges dominant understandings of accountability and puts forward the building blocks of a new theory of public accountability. The module draws out and studies empirically how reputation shapes the accountability behaviour of regulatory actors, both account-holders and account-givers, and their interactions. It will re-conceptualise the role played by accountability in the regulatory state as well as its relationship with autonomy. In contrast to dominant understandings, as a mechanism of reputation-building, accountability can reinforce autonomy with sweeping implications for regulatory control strategies and institutional design choices.

1 444 852 €

Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2022-05-31

The amount of plastic in our ocean is exponentially growing, with recent estimates of more than 5 million metric tonnes of plastic reaching the ocean each year. This plastic infiltrates the ocean food chain and thus poses a major threat to marine life. However, understanding of plastic movement and its budget in the ocean is inadequate to fully establish its environmental impact, prompting the EU and G7 to recently make marine litter a top science priority. It is now recognised that the amount of plastic entering our ocean is several orders of magnitude larger than the estimates of floating plastic on the surface of the ocean. More than 99% of plastic within our ocean is therefore ‘missing’. This project will make breakthroughs towards closing the plastic budget by creating a novel comprehensive modelling framework that tracks plastic movement through the ocean. Building on well-established previous work to follow generic water parcels through hydrodynamic ocean models, this project will modify these ‘virtual’ parcels to represent pieces of plastic by, for the first time, simulating fragmentation, sinking, beaching, wave-mixing and ingestion by biota. The new parameterisations that underpin this modelling will be based on field data and new coastal flume wave tank lab experiments. The simulated plastic particles will be tracked within state-of-the-art hydrodynamic ocean models, in order to compute maps of pathways and transports around our oceans and on coastlines and in biota. This numerical modelling will be used to evaluate a broad suite of scenarios and test hypotheses, including where the risk to marine biota is greatest. The results from this project will inform policymakers and the public on which countries, for example, are responsible for which part of the plastic problem, crucial for mitigation and legal frameworks. It will also inform engineers on where and how to best invest resources in mitigating the problem of plastic in our ocean.

1 484 760 €

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

If it were possible to place seismometers and seismic vibrators anywhere below the ground in, for example, an induced-earthquake-sensitive area, we could measure the source mechanism of actual earthquakes, monitor the geomechanical state of the area over time, and quantify the ground motion caused by possible future earthquakes. Moreover, we could monitor fluid flow in aquifers, geothermal reservoirs or CO2 storage reservoirs, with unprecedented resolution. Unfortunately, placing seismic instruments anywhere below the ground is not practically feasible. I propose to develop groundbreaking methodology for creating virtual seismic sources (earthquakes or seismic vibrators) and virtual seismometers anywhere in the subsurface, from seismic reflection measurements carried out at the surface of the earth. I call this Virtual Seismology (VS). VS accurately mimics the responses to actual earthquakes that would be recorded by actual buried seismometers, including all multiple scattering effects. In particular I will develop VS for: (1) Investigating induced-earthquake problems. (a) I will develop high-density multi-component seismic acquisition methodology, using the latest technology of controllable seismic vibrators and seismic sensing with fibre-optic cables, and apply it in an actual induced-earthquake sensitive area. (b) I will use these data to create virtual sources and receivers in the subsurface to characterize induced earthquakes, quantify the ground motion of actual and possible future earthquakes, and monitor the geomechanical state of the area over time. (2) Imaging and monitoring subsurface fluid flow. I will develop highly repeatable VS methodology for time-lapse 3D reflection data to monitor fluid-flow processes in the subsurface with excellent spatial and temporal resolution. With my track record in pioneering seismic interferometry, I am in an excellent position to develop VS, which will have major impact on the field of seismic imaging and monitoring.

2 499 474 €

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