Why do children believe in Santa Claus, and how could Christmas rituals bring us closer together in the current pandemic crisis? By exploring the fundamental causes and consequences of cultural rituals, ERC grantee Harvey Whitehouse at the University of Oxford could provide answers to these questions. His research seeks to help policymakers tackle major global challenges such as COVID-19, terrorism and climate change.
War and post-war periods have a strong impact on the life of people, but women are often invisible in the historical accounts relating them. ERC grantee Marta Verginella at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia explores the position of women in post-war times and the role that they played in border areas in the North-Eastern Adriatic area.
What holds Europe together? In the face of economic instability, shifting political trends and a global pandemic, this question comes to mind more and more often. ERC grantee Anelia Kassabova is part of a team of four researchers who, in 2019, won a Synergy Grant to investigate this issue and find what really ‘unites us in diversity’.
By the end of the 21st century, sea levels are estimated to rise between 40 and 60 centimetres worldwide. Coping with this will be a major challenge for many European coastal communities. ERC grantee Jadranka Šepić at the University of Split in Croatia is investigating how climate change will affect the strength and frequency of tsunami-like flooding events along European coastlines. Her research could help coastal communities prepare better for future challenges.
ERC grantee Konstantinos Nikolopoulos at the University of Birmingham recently won the first ERC Public Engagement with Research Award in the category of public outreach. His ExclusiveHiggs project looks at the origin of mass by exploring the interactions of the elementary matter particles with the Higgs boson. In this interview, he describes his efforts to make the public understand this field of physics through art and dance.
The tails of our DNA – telomeres – are the focus of many aging studies, as their length affects our health and longevity. A new study by ERC grantee Sonja Entringer shows that supporting the psychological wellbeing of mothers during pregnancy could have a positive effect on our telomeres at birth, boosting our long-term health. We spoke with her on the occasion of the publication of a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry based on a collaboration between her team at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and partners in Finland and the USA.
How can researchers successfully engage with citizens to improve their scientific outputs? To find out, we talked to ERC grantee, Anna Davies of Trinity College Dublin, the winner of the first ERC Public Engagement Award in the online and social media category. Her project set out to map urban food-sharing practices and discovered early on that they would need the help of citizen scientists.
There is much more to marine plastic pollution than meets the eye. In his quest to set the record straight about this litter, Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University, is garnering international interest from the public, media, schoolchildren and policymakers alike. His passion for public outreach has led him to become one of the first laureates of the ERC Public Engagement with Research Award. We interviewed him to find out more about his winning media relations strategy and the benefits public engagement has brought to his research.
Beans, peas, lentils and other legumes are key elements in a balanced diet as they are a source of high-quality proteins. ERC grantee Jens Stougaard leads one of the most prominent research groups in legume science whose results may have long-term implications for sustainable agriculture and food security.
Three-time ERC grantee and four-time panel member in the ERC evaluations (the last three as panel chair), Maciej Lewenstein is not only one of the key physicists of the 21st century, but also a jazz expert. In this interview, he talks about his passion for free-improvised music and explains the intrinsic connections between quantum physics and jazz.
