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

In a changing world, one hallmark feature of human behaviour is the ability to learn about the statistics of the environment and use this prior information for action selection. Knowing about a forthcoming event allows for adjusting our actions pre-emptively, which can optimize survival. This proposal studies how the human brain learns about the uncertainty in the environment, and how this leads to flexible and efficient action selection. I hypothesise that the accumulation of evidence for future movements through learning reflects a fundamental organisational principle for action control. This explains widely distributed perceptual-, learning-, decision-, and movement-related signals in the human brain. However, little is known about the concerted interplay between brain regions in terms of effective connectivity which is required for flexible behaviour. My proposal seeks to shed light on this unresolved issue. To this end, I will use i) a multi-disciplinary neuroimaging approach, together with model-based analyses and Bayesian model comparison, adapted to human reaching behaviour as occurring in daily life; and ii) two novel approaches for testing effective connectivity: dynamic causal modelling (DCM) and concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation-functional magnetic resonance imaging. My prediction is that action selection relies on effective connectivity changes, which are a function of the prior information that the brain has to learn about. If true, this will provide novel insight into the human ability to select actions, based on learning about the uncertainty which is inherent in contextual information. This is relevant for understanding action selection during development and ageing, and for pathologies of action such as Parkinson s disease or stroke.

1 341 805 €

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

Over the past decade, the media, international organisations, as well as policy-making bodies have voiced increasing concern about a growing overlap between the criminal and political spheres in South Asia. Many 'criminal politicians' are accused not simply of embezzlement, but of burglary, kidnapping and murder, so that the observed political landscape emerges not only as a 'corrupt', but also a highly violent sphere. This project is a collaborative and cross-national ethnographic study of the criminalisation of politics in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Bringing together local-level investigation, surveys and historical analysis, the project will produce comprehensive political ethnographies in sixteen sites across the subcontinent, providing empirical material and theoretical directives for further charting of the virtually unexplored terrain of extra-legal muscular politics in the region. Central to the proposed programme of research are the following interrelated objectives: 1) To further develop the method of collaborative political ethnography by designing, collecting and producing case studies which will allow us to write thematically across sites; 2) To generate policy relevant research in the fields of security, conflict, democracy and development; 3) To produce capability by forging an international network of scholars on issues related to democratisation, violence, crime and support the work and careers of the project's 4 Post-docs. The study capitalises on previous research and skills of the PI in the cross-cultural study of democracy and muscular politics in the global South. All members of the research team have expertise in ethnographic research in the difficult spheres of criminal politics, informal economies, and political violence and are hence well and sometimes uniquely equipped to pursue this challenging research thematic.

1 200 000 €

Start date: 2012-03-01, End date: 2016-02-29

Within a 12 month period, 20% of adults will meet criteria for one or more clinical anxiety disorders (ADs). These disorders are hugely disruptive, placing an emotional burden on individuals and their families. While both cognitive behavioural therapy and pharmacological treatment are widely viewed as effective strategies for managing ADs, systematic review of the literature reveals that only 30–45% of patients demonstrate a marked response to treatment (anxiety levels being reduced into the nonaffected range). In addition, a significant proportion of initial responders relapse after treatment is discontinued. There is hence a real and marked need to improve upon current approaches to AD treatment. One possible avenue for improving response rates is through optimizing initial treatment selection. Specifically, it is possible that certain individuals might respond better to cognitive interventions while others might respond better to pharmacological treatment. Recently it has been suggested that there may be two or more distinct biological pathways disrupted in anxiety. If this is the case, then specification of these pathways may be an important step in predicting which individuals are likely to respond to which treatment. Few studies have focused upon this issue and, in particular, upon identifying neural markers that might predict response to cognitive (as opposed to pharmacological) intervention. The proposed research aims to address this. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that there are at least two mechanisms disrupted in ADs, one entailing amygdala hyper-responsivity to cues that signal threat, the other impoverished recruitment of frontal regions that support cognitive and emotional regulation. Two series of functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments will be conducted. These will investigate differences in amygdala and frontal function during (a) attentional processing and (b) fear conditioning. Initial clinical experiments will investigate whether Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Specific Phobia involve differing degrees of disruption to frontal versus amygdala function during these tasks. This work will feed into training studies, the goal being to characterize AD patient subgroups that benefit from cognitive training.

1 708 407 €

Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-08-31

Many aphid species are restricted to one or few host plants, while some aphids, many of which are of agricultural importance, can infest a wide range of plant species. An important observation is that aphids spend a considerable time on nonhost species, where they probe the leaf tissue and secrete saliva, but for unknown reasons are unable to ingest phloem sap. This suggest that aphids, like plant pathogens, interact with nonhost plants at the molecular level, but potentially are not successful in suppressing plant defenses and/or releasing nutrients. To date, however, the plant cellular changes and the involvement of immune response, such as ETI and PTI, in aphid-host and -nonhost interactions remain elusive. The aim of the proposed project is to gain insight into the level of cellular host reprogramming that takes place during aphid-host interactions, the cellular processes involved in aphid nonhost resistance, and the role of aphid effectors in determining host range. We will compare interactions of two economically important aphid species, Myzus persicae (green peach aphid) and Rhopalosiphum padi (bird cherry oat aphid), with host and nonhost plants. We will investigate local changes in plant cellular processes during aphid-host and -nonhost interactions using microscopy and biochemistry approaches. We will apply a comparative transcriptomics approach and functional assays to identify aphid effectors as potential determinants of host range. Herein we will specifically looks for aphids-species specific effectors and those that are expressed in specific host interactions. To gain insight into molecular mechanisms of effector activities we will identify host targets and investigate the contribution of effector-target interactions to host range. The expected outcomes of the project will, in the long term, contribute to the development of novel strategies to control infestations by aphids and potentially other pests and pathogens, thereby improving food security.

1 463 840 €

Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2018-10-31

Most historians work in archives, but generally have not made archives into their primary object of research. While we tend to be preoccupied by documentary loss, what is striking is the sheer amount of paperwork preserved over the centuries. We need to study the reasons for this preservation. This project wishes to study the history of the archives and of the chanceries that oversaw their production storage and organization in late medieval and early modern Italy: essentially from the creation of the first chanceries in city-states in the late twelfth century to the opening of the Archivi di Stato that, after the ancient states’ dissolution, preserved documents as tools for scholarship rather than administration. Because of its fragmented political history, concentrating on Italy means having access to the archives of a wide variety of regimes; in turn, as institutions pursuing similar functions, archives lend themselves to comparison and therefore such research may help us overcome the traditional disconnectedness in the study of Italy’s past. The project proposes to break significantly new ground, first, by adopting a comparative approach through the in-depth analysis of seven case studies and, second, by contextualising the study of archives away from institutional history in a wider social and cultural context, by focusing on six themes researched in six successive phases: 1) the political role of archives, and the efforts devoted by governments to their development; 2) their organization, subdivisions, referencing systems; 3) the material culture of documents and physical repositories as well as spatial locations; 4) the social characteristiscs of the staff; 5) the archives’ place in society, including their access and misuse; 6) their use by historians. As implied in the choice of these themes, the project is deliberately interdisciplinary, and aims at the mutually beneficial exchange between archivists, social, political cultural and art historians.

1 107 070 €

Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2016-07-31

The nature of consciousness is one of the great unsolved mysteries of science. Although the global research effort dedicated to explaining how consciousness arises from neural and cognitive activity is now more than two decades old, as yet there is no widely accepted theory of consciousness. One reason for why no adequate theory of consciousness has yet been found is that there is a lack of clarity about what exactly a theory of consciousness needs to explain. What is needed is thus a model of the general features of consciousness — a model of the ‘architecture’ of consciousness — that will systematize the structural differences between conscious states, processes and creatures on the one hand and unconscious states, processes and creatures on the other. The aim of this project is to remove one of the central impediments to the progress of the science of consciousness by constructing such a model. A great many of the data required for this task already exist, but these data concern different aspects of consciousness and are distributed across many disciplines. As a result, there have been few attempts to develop a truly comprehensive model of the architecture of consciousness. This project will overcome the limitations of previous work by drawing on research in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience to develop a model of the architecture of consciousness that is structured around five of its core features: its subjectivity, its temporality, its unity, its selectivity, and its dimensionality (that is, the relationship between the levels of consciousness and the contents of consciousness). By providing a comprehensive characterization of what a theory of consciousness needs to explain, this project will provide a crucial piece of the puzzle of consciousness, enabling future generations of researchers to bridge the gap between raw data on the one hand and a full-blown theory of consciousness on the other

1 477 483 €

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

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

ATM is the protein kinase that is mutated in the hereditary autosomal recessive disease ataxia telangiectasia (A-T). A-T patients display immune deficiencies, cancer predisposition and radiosensitivity. The molecular role of ATM is to respond to DNA damage by phosphorylating its substrates, thereby promoting repair of damage or arresting the cell cycle. Following the induction of double-strand breaks (DSBs), the NBS1 protein is required for activation of ATM. But ATM can also be activated in the absence of DNA damage. Treatment of cultured cells with hypotonic stress leads to the activation of ATM, presumably due to changes in chromatin structure. We have recently described a second ATM cofactor, ATMIN (ATM INteractor). ATMIN is dispensable for DSBs-induced ATM signalling, but ATM activation following hypotonic stress is mediated by ATMIN. While the biological role of ATM activation by DSBs and NBS1 is well established, the significance, if any, of ATM activation by ATMIN and changes in chromatin was up to now completely enigmatic. ATM is required for class switch recombination (CSR) and the suppression of translocations in B cells. In order to determine whether ATMIN is required for any of the physiological functions of ATM, we generated a conditional knock-out mouse model for ATMIN. ATM signaling was dramatically reduced following osmotic stress in ATMIN-mutant B cells. ATMIN deficiency led to impaired CSR, and consequently ATMIN-mutant mice developed B cell lymphomas. Thus ablation of ATMIN resulted in a severe defect in ATM function. Our data strongly argue for the existence of a second NBS1-independent mode of ATM activation that is physiologically relevant. While a large amount of scientific effort has gone into characterising ATM signaling triggered by DSBs, essentially nothing is known about NBS1-independent ATM signaling. The experiments outlined in this proposal have the aim to identify and understand the molecular pathway of ATMIN-dependent ATM signaling.

1 499 881 €

Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2018-01-31

The proposed research entails an ethnographic study of two contemporary cases of post-conflict reconciliation: one, the Bosnian case, where international intervention ended conflict in a stalemate and went on to instigate a decade-long process of transition; and the other, the Spanish case, where a nationally-contrived pact of silence introduced an overnight transition after Franco's death a pact now being broken nearly seventy years after the country's civil war concluded. Both societies witnessed massive violations of international humanitarian law. Both societies are presently exhuming, identifying and re-burying their dead. But their trajectories of transitional justice could not have been more different. This project will investigate how Law shapes cultural memories of wartime atrocity in these contrasting scenarios. How do criminal prosecutions, constitutional reforms, and international rights mechanisms, provide or obfuscate the scales into which histories of violent conflict are framed? Does the systematic re-structuring of legislative and judicial infrastructure stifle recognition of past abuses or does it create the conditions through which such pasts can be confronted? How does Law shape or inflect the cultural politics of memory and memorialisation? And most importantly, how should legal activity be weighted, prioritised and sequenced with other, extra-legal components of peace-building initiatives? The ultimate goal of this project will be to mobilise the findings from the two field-sites to suggest a more nuanced assessment of Law s place in transitional justice. Arguing that disparate historical, cultural and legal contexts require equally distinct approaches towards social healing, the research aims to produce a Post-Conflict Action Framework an architecture of questions and concerns, which, once answered, would point towards context-specific designs for transitional justice programmes in the future.

1 420 000 €

Start date: 2009-09-01, End date: 2013-08-31

Can benefit-sharing address the equity deficit within the green economy? This project aims to investigate benefit-sharing as an under-theorised and little-implemented regulatory approach to the equity concerns (disregard for the special circumstances of developing countries and of indigenous peoples and local communities) in transitioning to the green economy. Although benefit-sharing is increasingly deployed in a variety of international environmental agreements and also in human rights and corporate accountability instruments, no comprehensive account exists of its conceptual and practical relevance to equitably address global environmental challenges. This project will be the first systematic evaluation of the conceptualisations and operationalisations of benefit-sharing as a tool for equitable change through the allocation among different stakeholders of economic and also socio-cultural and environmental advantages arising from natural resource use. The project will combine a comparative study of international law with empirical legal research, and include an inter-disciplinary study integrating political sociology in a legal enquiry on the role of “biocultural community protocols” that articulate and implement benefit-sharing at the intersection of international, transnational, national and indigenous communities’ customary law (global environmental law). The project aims to: 1. develop a comprehensive understanding of benefit-sharing in international law; 2. clarify whether and how benefit-sharing supports equity and the protection of human rights across key sectors of international environmental regulation (biodiversity, climate change, oceans, food and agriculture) that are seen as inter-related in the transition to the green economy; 3. understand the development of benefit-sharing in the context of global environmental law; and 4. clarify the role of transnational legal advisors (NGOs and bilateral cooperation partners) in the green economy.

1 481 708 €

Start date: 2013-11-01, End date: 2018-10-31

According to the European Commission, to design effective policies for ensuring a “more dynamic, innovative and competitive” economy, it is essential to understand the decision-making process of firms as they differ a lot in terms of their capacities and policy responses (EC 2007). The objective of my future research is to provide such an analysis. BIGlobal will examine the sources of firm growth and market power to provide new insights into welfare and policy in a globalized world. Much of analysis of the global economy is set in the paradigm of markets that allocate resources efficiently and there is little role for policy. But big firms dominate economic activity, especially across borders. How do firms grow and what is the effect of their market power on the welfare impact of globalization? This project will determine how firm decisions matter for the aggregate gains from globalization, the division of these gains across different individuals and their implications for policy design. Over the next five years, I will incorporate richer firms behaviour in models of international trade to understand how trade and industrial policies impact the growth process, especially in less developed markets. The specific questions I will address include: how can trade and competition policy ensure consumers benefit from globalization when firms engaged in international trade have market power, how do domestic policies to encourage agribusiness firms affect the extent to which small farmers gain from trade, how do industrial policies affect firm growth through input linkages, and what is the impact of banking globalization on the growth of firms in the real sector. Each project will combine theoretical work with rich data from developing economies to expand the frontier of knowledge on trade and industrial policy, and to provide a basis for informed policymaking.

1 313 103 €

Start date: 2017-12-01, End date: 2022-11-30

This research project investigates the dynamics of private and public property in contemporary biomedical research. It will develop an analytical framework combining insights from science and technology studies, economic sociology, and legal and political philosophy, and pursues a social scientific investigation of the evolution of intellectual property rights in three fields of bioscientific research: 1) the use of transgenic research mice; 2) the legal status of totipotent and pluripotent stem cell lines; and 3) modes of collaboration for research and development on neglected diseases. These three domains, and their attendant modes of appropriation, will be compared across three general research themes: a) the production of public scientific goods; b) categories of appropriation; and c) the moral economy of research. The project rests on close observation of research practices in these three domains. The BioProperty research programme will track the trajectories of property rights and property objects in each of the three fields of biomedical research.

887 602 €

Start date: 2011-03-01, End date: 2014-12-31

How does our acting, sensing and feeling body shape our mind? The mechanisms by which bodily signals are integrated and re-represented in the brain, as well as the relation between these processes and body awareness remain unknown. To this date, neuropsychological disorders of body awareness represent an indispensible window of insight into phenomenally rich states of body unawareness. Unfortunately, only few experimental studies have been conducted in these disorders. The BODILY SELF will aim to apply methods from cognitive neuroscience to experimental and neuroimaging studies in healthy volunteers, as well as in patients with neuropsychological disorders of body awareness. A first subproject will assess which combination of deficits in sensorimotor afferent and efferent signals leads to unawareness. The second subproject will attempt to use experimental, psychophysical interventions to treat unawareness and measure the corresponding, dynamic changes in the brain. The third subproject will assess how some bodily signals and their integration is influenced by social mechanisms. The planned studies surpass the existing state-of-the-art in the relevant fields in five ground-breaking ways, ultimately allowing us to (1) acquire an unprecedented ‘on-line’ experimental ‘handle’ over dynamic changes in body awareness; (2) restore awareness and improve health outcomes (3) understand the brain’s potential for reorganisation and plasticity in relation to higher-order processes such as awareness; (4) understand how our own body experience is modulated by our interactions and relations with others; (5) address in a genuinely interdisciplinary manner some of the oldest questions in psychology, philosophy and medicine; how embodiment influences the mind, how others influence the self and how mind–body processes affect healing.

1 453 284 €

Start date: 2013-04-01, End date: 2018-09-30

Parkinson’s Disease is usually characterised by motor impairment, and Autism by social difficulties. However, the co-occurrence of social and motor symptoms is critically underappreciated; Parkinson’s Disease patients exhibit social symptoms, and motor difficulties are common in Autism. At present, the biological basis of co-occurring social and motor impairment is unclear. Notably, both Autism and Parkinson’s Disease have been associated with dopamine (DA) system dysfunction and, in non-clinical populations, DA has been linked with social and motor ability. These disparate strands of research have never been combined. Brain2Bee will use psychopharmacology in typical individuals to develop a model of the relationship between DA, Motor, and Social behaviour – the DAMS model. Brain2Bee will use sophisticated genetic analysis to refine DAMS, elucidating the contributions of DA-related biological processes (e.g. synthesis, receptor expression, reuptake). Brain2Bee will then test DAMS’ predictions in patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Autism. Finally, Brain2Bee will investigate whether DAMS generalises to an animal model, the honey bee, enabling future research to unpack the cascade of biological events linking DA-related genes with social and motor behaviour. Brain2Bee will unite disparate research fields and establish the DAMS model. The causal structure of DAMS will identify the impact of dopaminergic variation on social and motor function in clinical and non-clinical populations, elucidating, for example, whether social difficulties in Parkinson’s Disease are a product of the motor difficulties caused by DA dysfunction. DAMS’ biological specificity will provide unique insight into the DA-related processes linking social and motor difficulties in Autism. Thus, Brain2Bee will determine the type of dopaminergic drugs (e.g. receptor blockers, reuptake inhibitors) most likely to improve both social and motor function.

1 783 147 €

Start date: 2018-07-01, End date: 2023-06-30

Aggregates of proteins such as amyloid-beta and alpha-synuclein circulate the extracellular space of the brain (ECS) and are thought to be key players in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. The clearance of these aggregates (among other toxic metabolites) is a fundamental physiological feature of the brain which is poorly understood due to the lack of techniques to study the nanoscale organisation of the ECS. Exciting advances in this field have recently shown that clearance is enhanced during sleep due to a major volume change in the ECS, facilitating the flow of the interstitial fluid. However, this process has only been characterised at a low spatial resolution while the physiological changes occur at the nanoscale. The recently proposed “glymphatic” pathway still remains controversial, as there are no techniques capable of distinguishing between diffusion and bulk flow in the ECS of living animals. Understanding these processes at a higher spatial resolution requires the development of single-molecule imaging techniques that can study the brain in living animals. Taking advantage of the strategies I have recently developed to target single-molecules in the brain in vivo with nanoparticles, we will do “nanoscopy” in living animals. Our proposal will test the glymphatic pathway at the spatial scale in which events happen, and explore how sleep and wake cycles alter the ECS and the diffusion of receptors in neuronal plasma membrane. Overall, BrainNanoFlow aims to understand how nanoscale changes in the ECS facilitate clearance of protein aggregates. We will also provide new insights to the pathological consequences of impaired clearance, focusing on the interactions between these aggregates and their putative receptors. Being able to perform single-molecule studies in vivo in the brain will be a major breakthrough in neurobiology, making possible the study of physiological and pathological processes that cannot be studied in simpler brain preparations.

1 552 948 €

Start date: 2018-12-01, End date: 2023-11-30

Every single human is the product of a pregnancy: an approximately nine-month period during which a foetus develops within its mother’s body. Yet pregnancy has not been a traditional focus in philosophy. That is remarkable, for two reasons: First, because pregnancy presents fascinating philosophical problems: what, during the pregnancy, is the nature of the relationship between the foetus and the maternal organism? What is the relationship between the pregnant organism and the later baby? And when does one person or organism become two? Second, because so many topics immediately adjacent to or involved in pregnancy have taken centre stage in philosophical enquiry. Examples include questions about personhood, foetuses, personal identity and the self. This project launches the metaphysics of pregnancy as an important and fundamental area of philosophical research. The core aims of the project are: (1) to develop a philosophically sophisticated account of human pregnancy and birth, and the entities involved in this, that is attentive to our best empirical understanding of human reproductive biology; (2) to articulate the metaphysics of organisms, persons and selves in a way that acknowledges the details of how we come into existence; and (3) to start the process of rewriting the legal, social and moral language we use to classify ourselves and our actions, so that it is compatible with and can accommodate the nature of pregnancy. The project will investigate these questions in the context of a range of philosophical sub disciplines, including analytic metaphysics, philosophy of biology and feminist philosophy, and in close dialogue with our best empirical understanding of the life sciences – most notably physiology.

1 273 290 €

Start date: 2016-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31

Non-invasive genomic analysis of cancer can revolutionize the study of tumour evolution, heterogeneity, and drug resistance. Clinically applied, this can transform current practice in cancer diagnosis and management. Cell-free DNA in plasma contains tumour-specific sequences. This circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) is a promising source of genomic and diagnostic information, readily accessible non-invasively. The study of ctDNA is therefore timely and of great importance. But it is also very challenging. Measurement can be complex, and high-quality samples are not easily obtained. Though progress has been made, much remains to be discovered. My lab pioneered the use of targeted sequencing to analyse mutations in ctDNA. We recently developed a ground-breaking paradigm for analysing evolving cancer genomes in plasma DNA, combining ctDNA quantification with exome-sequencing of serial plasma samples. Applied to extensive sets of clinical samples my lab has characterized, this will enable large-scale exploration of acquired drug resistance with unprecedented resolution. CancerExomesInPlasma aims to use ctDNA for genome-wide analysis of tumour evolution, as a means for non-invasive, unbiased discovery of genes and pathways involved in resistance to cancer therapy.

1 769 380 €

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

This project centres ‘the carceral archipelago’ in the history of the making of the modern world. It analyses the relationships and circulations between and across convict transportation, penal colonies and labour, migration, coercion and confinement. It incorporates all the global powers engaged in transportation for the purpose of expansion and colonization - Europe, Russia, Latin America, China, Japan – over the period from Portugal’s first use of convicts in North Africa in 1415 to the dissolution of Stalin’s gulags in 1960. It uses an innovative theoretical base to shift convict transportation out of the history of crime and punishment into the new questions being raised by global and postcolonial history. The project maps for the first time global networks of transportation and penal colonies. It undertakes case study archival research on relatively unexplored convict flows, and on the mobility of ideas and practices around transportation and other modes of confinement. It analyses its findings within the broader literature, including on transportation but also debates around the definition of freedom/ unfreedom, the importance of circulating labour, and global divergence and convergence. It redefines what we mean by ‘transportation,’ explores penal transportation as an engine of global change, de-centres Europe in historical analysis, and defines long-term impacts on economy, society and identity. It places special stress on investigating whether a transnational approach to the topic gives us a fresh theoretical starting point for studying global history that moves beyond ‘nation’ or ‘empire.’ The project lies at the intersections of national, colonial and global history, and economic, social and cultural history. It will be of wide interest to scholars of labour, migration, punishment and confinement; comparative and global history; diaspora, creolization and cultural translation; and museum and heritage studies.

1 492 870 €

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

The proposed research has two overarching objectives. First, it aims to examine whether it is possible and appropriate to extend a novel way of measuring social class recently devised for the United Kingdom to other post-industrial nations for the purposes of cross-national comparative research. If it is, the project will begin to explore, through secondary and primary analysis of large-scale survey data, the different shapes and trajectories of the class structures – or ‘social spaces’ – of various nation states. This will involve examination of which classes and sub-classes predominate and which have emerged or declined, as well as the different gender and ethnic/nationality constitutions of the classes and the distinct effects these differences have for understanding cultural and political struggles and, ultimately, the distribution of power or ‘recognition’ in each country. Second, the project aims to explore, through both statistical analysis and qualitative interviews, how social class is actually lived, experienced and balanced against other pressures and sources of recognition in everyday life, with a focus on three specific nations: the United States, Germany and Sweden. Of particular interest in this respect is the balancing of desire for recognition through money and education – the two cornerstones of social class in post-industrial capitalist societies – and their associated lifestyles with desires for recognition and love within the family. The comparative analysis included in both research aims will be guided by the hypothesis that national differences depend on the nature of the welfare regime in operation, especially as it relates to the nature and extent of workforce feminisation, though the research will also be alive to the possibility of alternative – or no significant – sources of contrast.

1 467 038 €

Start date: 2016-05-01, End date: 2021-04-30

The way in which normative principles (“norms”) matter in world politics is now a key area of international relations research. Yet we have limited understanding of why some norms emerge and gain traction globally whereas others do not. The politics of loss and damage related to climate change offers a paradigm case for studying the emergence of - and contestation over - norms, specifically justice norms. The parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have recently acknowledged that there is an urgent need to address the inevitable, irreversible consequences of climate change. Yet within this highly contested policy area - which includes work on disaster risk reduction; non-economic losses (e.g. loss of sovereignty); finance and climate-related migration - there is little consensus about what loss and damage policy means or what it requires of the global community, of states and of the (current and future) victims of climate change. Relying on an interdisciplinary theoretical approach and an ethnographic methodology that traverses scales of governance, my project - The Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) - will elucidate the conditions under which a norm is likely to become hegemonic, influential, contested or reversed by introducing a new understanding of the fluid nature of norm-content. I argue that norms are partly constituted through the practices of policy-making and implementation at the international and national level. The research will examine the micro-politics of the international negotiations and implementation of loss and damage policy and also involves cross-national comparative research on domestic loss and damage policy practices. Bringing these two streams of work together will allow me to show how and why policy practices shape the evolution of climate justice norms. CCLAD will also make an important methodological contribution through the development of political ethnography and “practice-tracing” methods.

1 471 530 €

Start date: 2018-05-01, End date: 2023-04-30

During an organism’s development it must integrate internal and external information. An example in plants, whose development stretches across their lifetime, is the coordination between environmental stimuli and endogenous cues on regulating the key hormone gibberellin (GA). The present challenge is to understand how these diverse signals influence GA levels and how GA signalling leads to diverse GA responses. This challenge is deepened by a fundamental problem in hormone research: the specific responses directed by a given hormone often depend on the cell-type, timing, and amount of hormone accumulation, but hormone concentrations are most often assessed at the organism or tissue level. Our approach, based on a novel optogenetic biosensor, GA Perception Sensor 1 (GPS1), brings the goal of high-resolution quantification of GA in vivo within reach. In plants expressing GPS1, we observe gradients of GA in elongating root and shoot tissues. We now aim to understand how a series of independently tunable enzymatic and transport activities combine to articulate the GA gradients that we observe. We further aim to discover the mechanisms by which endogenous and environmental signals regulate these GA enzymes and transporters. Finally, we aim to understand how one of these signals, light, regulates GA patterns to influence dynamic cell growth and organ behavior. Our overarching goal is a systems level understanding of the signal integration upstream and growth programming downstream of GA. The groundbreaking aspect of this proposal is our focus at the cellular level, and we are uniquely positioned to carry out our multidisciplinary aims involving biosensor engineering, innovative imaging, and multiscale modelling. We anticipate that the discoveries stemming from this project will provide the detailed understanding necessary to make strategic interventions into GA dynamic patterning in crop plants for specific improvements in growth, development, and environmental responses.

1 499 616 €

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

Humans are endowed with a number of advanced cognitive abilities not seen in other species. So what allows the human brain to stand out from the rest in these capabilities? In general, the brains of primates, including humans, have more neurons per unit volume than other mammals. But humans are also in the fortunate position of having the largest of the primate brains, making the number of neurons in the human cerebral cortex greatly expanded. Thus, the difference seems to be a matter of quantity, not quality. My laboratory is interested in understanding how neuron number, and thus brain size, is determined in human brain development. The research proposed here is aimed at taking an evolutionary approach to this question and comparing brain development in an in vitro 3D model system, cerebral organoids. This method, which relies on self-organization from differentiating pluripotent stem cells, recapitulates remarkably well the endogenous developmental program of the human brain. Having previously established the brain organoid approach, and more recently improved upon it with the application of bioengineering, my laboratory is in a unique position to carry out functional studies of human brain development. I propose to use this approach to compare developing human brain tissue to that of other hominid species and tease apart unique features of human neural stem cells and progenitors that allow them to generate more neurons and therefore a greater cerebral cortical size. Furthermore, we will perform transcriptomic and functional screening to identify factors underlying this expansion, followed by careful genetic substitution to test the contributions of putative evolutionary changes. In this way, we will functionally test putative human evolutionary changes in a manner not previously possible.

1 444 911 €

Start date: 2018-07-01, End date: 2023-06-30