Social Sciences Humanities and Interdisciplinary Research Full Paper

SOCIAL SCIENCES,
HUMANITIES AND
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
A SHOWCASE OF EXCELLENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
FROM LERU UNIVERSITIES
Introduction
by the
LERU Chair Since its founding in 2002, the League of European
Research Universities (LERU) has emerged as a
prominent advocate for the promotion of basic research
at European universities. LERU strongly believes that
basic research plays an essential role in the innovation
process and significantly contributes to the progress of
society.
LERU aims at furthering the understanding and

knowledge of politicians, policy makers and opinion
leaders about the role and activities of research-intensive
universities. Drawing on the impressive academic
potential and expertise of its network, LERU has a
strong and significant impact on research policy in
Europe.
LERU is dedicated to continuing this through direct

communication and discussions within the policy
Colofon community, sound proposals for further improvement
LERU wishes to thank the members
and progress, and carefully considered position papers
of its Social Sciences and Humanities
on fundamental issues such as academic careers and the
community and the researchers involved
role of universities.
for their collaboration in supplying text and
pictures for the brochure.
Our broad spectrum of activities and our contributions
Editorial:
to the research policy debate have established LERU’s
Laura Keustermans (LERU Policy Officer)
reputation as a major stakeholder in the EU. LERU
Design:
now has an important and well-respected voice in the
Vaes Grafische Producties
discussions about the future of Europe’s research policy.
In the years to come, LERU will continue to influence
LERU publications policy, and intensify cooperation among like-minded
organisations worldwide to stress the importance of
LERU regularly publishes a variety of papers universities for research and innovation.
and reports which make high-level policy
statements, provide in-depth analyses This brochure provides an excellent overview of the
and make concrete recommendations for interdisciplinary research being undertaken at the LERU
policymakers, universities, researchers and member universities, focusing on interdisciplinary
other stakeholders. research lead by researchers from the Social Sciences
and Humanities.
All LERU publications are freely available I wish you pleasant reading.
in print and online at www.leru.org.
Alain Beretz
All LERU publications, Chair of LERU
unless otherwise stated,
are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.
2
Introduction by
the Chair of the
LERU Social The Social Sciences and Humanities at the LERU universities flourish. This brochure gives a
few examples of exciting and valuable research done in the fields of the Social Sciences and
Sciences and Humanities. The examples make clear this research is of the utmost importance to society.
The Social Sciences and Humanities provide society first of all with a deep understanding of
Humanities human behaviour and human culture, in past and present. The importance of this understanding
should be obvious, since most challenges we are faced with are human in nature. Climate change
community cannot be understood without understanding human behaviour, now and in the past. Technology
alone cannot create a secure society. Health and wellbeing cannot be achieved by medicine alone.
LERU wants to confirm the importance of SSH research to its members. Humanities research
generates important new knowledge that is fundamental to broader societal issues in the
world. They include international conflicts, human rights, ethics, religious traditions,
institutions, changing media, literacy, identities and cultural memories, linguistic diversity,
creative industries and cultural heritage. The Social Sciences investigate the processes that
govern the behaviours of individuals and groups. This understanding is as important as
contributions from scientific and technological disciplines to the creation, implementation
and evaluation of effective public policies and innovative structures underpinning corporate
performance. Humanities and Social Sciences are a key part of the research and innovation
spectrum and must be represented as both a separate and integrated part of any new research
and innovation programme, national, European and global.
The members of LERU support SSH research in their institutions. To paraphrase the UCL
Council White Paper 2011–2021: today, in an era when the arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences are perceived as being under threat from government’s funding changes, LERU
remains committed to maintaining and investing in them. We need to counter a trend towards
instrumentalist attitudes towards higher education in the new funding environment. A
significant part of the LERU members’ staff work in the SSH domain and a significant number
of ERC grants in SSH are executed at LERU institutions. The top-5 universities with regard to
the number of ERC grants in the SSH domain are member of LERU.
So it is with pride that the 21 LERU universities present inspiring examples of Social Science
and Humanities research. It is research which also inspires and informs the teaching at our
institutions to many students in a multitude of programmes. And as the Hefei statement on
the ten characteristics of contemporary research universities says, these students will leave
universities to work in government, business and the non-profit sector, taking with them the
knowledge, skills, and understanding that make it possible for these sectors to work effectively,
to respond to changing circumstances and to innovate, but also to create a richer, more
resilient and often more diverse and humane society.
I hope you enjoy the reading!
Wim van den Doel

Chair of the LERU SSH
community
© Veerle Van Kerckhove
3
University of Amsterdam
Cognition, Biology,
and Evolution of Musicality
Principal investigator
and research team
Henkjan Honing is a precious multi

talent. He entered the university in 1992 at
the age of 33, after a successful career as a
musician. Both a composer and performer
of new music, he covered a broad field
ranging from composing computer music
and constructing sound installations,
to participating in gamelan ensembles
and explorations in Brazilian percussion
and harpsichord playing. Meanwhile he
obtained his PhD in London. In 1992 he
started research at the University of Am-
sterdam with flying colours. His research
career is a straight line that demonstrates What was the role of music in the evolu- that combine into a complex cognitive trait -
tremendous results, international ack- tionary history of human beings? I would in our case musicality-, is an alternative and
nowledgments and prestigious prizes. like to explore the idea that we may know potentially fruitful way to proceed.
the evolution of music by investigating the
He is leader of the Music Cognition Group fundamental cognitive mechanisms that It could well be that there are more species
that has 12 group members, 7 affiliated make up musicality (e.g., relative pitch and than just humans that have the proper
professors, several PhD students and a beat induction). In addition, I propose to predispositions for music to emerge,
changing set of about 20 MA-students. collect accumulative evidence from a variety species that share with us one or more basic
[See http://www.mcg.uva.nl/about.html] of sources (e.g. developmental, psychologi- mechanisms that make up musicality. The
cal, computational, physiological, phylo- mere fact that music did not emerge in
genetic, and cross-cultural evidence) to be some species is no evidence that the trait of
able to identify whether a specific cognitive musicality is absent.
mechanism is an adaptation or not.
While it recently became quite popular to Project details

address the study of the origins of music
from an evolutionary perspective, there is The Cognition, Biology, and Evolution
still little agreement on the idea that music of Musicality project is part of a com-
is in fact an adaptation, that it influenced bined effort of a dozen devoted scholars
our survival, or that it made us sexually participating in several interconnected
more attractive (to mention three prevalent projects and programmes that all aim at
positions). Music appears to be of little use. the exploration of the origins of music
So why argue that music is an adaptation? and musicality from an interdisciplinary
perspective.
In this project I will develop a strategy that The Music Cognition Group started in
emphasizes cognitive traits that could have 2005 and developed fast in an internati-
contributed to the origins of music. I will in- onally recognised research lab.
vestigate whether a bottom up approach, in
which one looks for the basic mechanisms Link to the Music Cognition Group:
http://www.mcg.uva.nl
4
and the research team
Centre for Social Science Prof. Anita Hardon and Prof. Robert Pool
co-direct SSGH. They both have extensive
and Global Health experience leading ambitious multi-site and

multidisciplinary research programmes
addressing key global health challenges –
such as pharmaceutical use, HIV/AIDS and
The Centre for Social Science and Global • The development of large international malaria prevention, and end-of-life care - in
Health (SSGH) facilitates the use of social databases of qualitative data relating to Europe, Africa and Asia.
science expertise to better understand glo- global health
bal health processes and move global health • Historical ethnographies of the origins The centre is comprised of ten full
towards a truly global and trans-disciplinary of existing health-related phenomena professors, three emeriti, five associate
perspective on health problems. The Centre • Applied problem-solving social science professors, nine assistant professors and
brings together leading social scientists research in clinical and medical research six post-doctoral researchers. In addition
working on key global health challenges at settings to various large programme grants the
the University of Amsterdam and collabo- • Theory-oriented research and theory team also hold a number of prestigious
rates with medical scientists. The centre is development as a framework for under- individual grants: three ERC Advanced
part of the University of Amsterdam Global standing global health processes Grants (Anita Hardon, Niko Besnier and
Health Research Priority Area. Annemarie Mol), two ERC Consolidator
SSGH has a broad theoretical and methodo- Current SSGH projects include: Grants (Amade M’charek and Vinh-Kim
logical approach involving: • COHERE: Developing sustainable com- Nguyen) and one ERC Starting Grant
• Multi-site ethnographic studies of munity health resources in Uganda (Jarrett Zigon). Annemarie Mol has also
the micro-context of particular health • Eating Bodies: The eating body in Wes- received the NWO’s Spinoza Prize, the
phenomena and of the role of culture in tern practice and theory highest Dutch award in science.
health • AIDSRIGHTS: Rights, Responsibilities,
• Macro-level studies and analyses of and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic
social and economic processes, flows • SociaLab: Addressing social, cultural
of people, medical technologies and in- and historical factors limiting the con-
formation, and complex health-related tribution of medical laboratory services
inequalities to antenatal care in West Africa
• Methodological innovation, develop- • Chemical Youth: What chemicals do for
ment of mixed methods and qualitative youths in their everyday lives
methodologies for studying global • ADAPT: Adapting European health
health issues systems to diversity Anita Hardon Robert Pool
Project details
Since 2010, SSGH has been supported

by core funding allocated to the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam’s Global Health Re-
search Priority Area (€300 000 per year).
Furthermore, the projects currently
undertaken by SSGH members amount
to a contract value of over € 10,000,000
of external funding.
WEBSITE: www.ssgh.uva.nl
5
Universitat de Barcelona
Combating Inequalities
through Innovative Social
Practices of and for Young
People in Cities
Principal investigator across Europe (CITISPYCE)
While the project is coordinated by The aim of the project is to examine the Europe. A key outcome will be a contribution
Dr Helen Higson at Aston University, current state of social innovation against to the knowledge base of the complex ways
Dr Olga Jubany of University of Barcelona inequalities faced by young people, particu- inequalities manifest in the current econo-
is responsible for the scientific and metho- larly those disadvantaged by origin, cultural mic climate. This will be complimented with
dological coordination of this interdiscipli- background, area of living, and educational detailed case studies of innovative strategies
nary project, which includes scholars from and economic situation. The project seeks to that exist at the everyday level among young
10 countries, with backgrounds in social uncover the various strategies for navigating, people and disadvantaged groups, and which
anthropology, sociology, urban studies, surviving and overcoming inequality that have help them mitigate against the effects of
economics, social policy and educational emerged and are emerging, among young deprivation and civic disengagement.
science. In addition to the interdisciplinary people, in 10 cities across Europe. Through
academic perspective, another important in-depth ethnographic research with a range
aspect of the project is the active participa- of stakeholders the project looks to uncover Project details
tion and inclusion in the research consorti- the conditions and resources that give rise to
um by City Halls and NGOs. these ‘innovations’. It also seeks to map the CITISPYCE is a 3 year collaborative
Dr. Olga Jubany is the Director of the Eu- current state of play with regard to policy and project, launched in January 2013 and
ropean Social Research Unit and Reader at practice aimed at tackling inequalities and the funded by the European Commission
the Social Anthropology Department. She extent to which these register the changing under the FP7 Research programme for
is a social anthropologist, author of several demographic landscape of inequalities as this Social Sciences and Humanities.
investigations and publications in the manifests in large urban centres of EU cities The budget of the project is € 2.496.684
fields of social exclusion, social control, in the context of the current economic crisis.
resilience and identity, from an ethno- The project will examine the extent to which PROJECT WEBSITE: www.ub.edu/ESRU
graphic tradition focused on comparative these strategies might be regarded as socially
multi-sited research within the European innovative and explore ways in which such
framework. Her work engages in topics of strategies are transferable to contexts across
gender, age and origin, from an intersecti-
onal approach. Her current work includes
the International Coordination for the pro-
ject LinkAge: Labour Market Integration
of Vulnerable Age Groups through Social
Dialogue (funded by the DG Employment,
Social Affairs & Inclusion).
Trajectories of modernity (TRAMOD) Peter Wagner is a ICREA Re-
Comparing non-European and search Professor; Department

of Sociological Theory, Philos-
European varieties
ophy of Law, and Methodology
of the Social Sciences; Faculty
of Economics and Business, Universitat de
Barcelona.
The “Trajectories of modernity” (TRAMOD) commonalities shared by all modern so-
project aims at advancing the comparative cieties and differences that are due to the Educated in economics, political science
analysis of contemporary societies and poli- variety of possible interpretations of mo- and sociology in Hamburg, London and
ties with a particular emphasis on the existing dernity – in a first step, these components Berlin, Peter Wagner has been academi-
plurality of societal self-understandings and are defined as the political, economic and cally active in various European countries,
related institutional structures in the current epistemic problems of modernity respec- including Germany, the United Kingdom,
global context. It analyses these self-under- tively, or in other words, as the answers France, Italy and Norway, as well as the
standings against the background of the societies give to the questions: what are USA and South Africa, before coming to
historical trajectories of those societies. The the rules that enable people to live togeth- Barcelona. He held a permanent research-
analysis of the existing multiple forms of mo- er; how will their material needs best be er position at the Wissenschaftszentrum
dernity is the major challenge to current social satisfied; what are the knowledge bases Berlin für Sozialforschung, was Professor
and political theory and comparative-histor- on which social action can rest; of Sociology at the Universities of Warwick
ical and political sociology. It requires a con- (c) to analyze selected non-European soci- and of Trento and Professor of Social and
ceptual and empirical analysis of that which is eties – in sub-Saharan Africa and South Political Theory at the European University
common to different forms of modernity and America – in terms of their specific articu- Institute, Florence.
that which varies between them. lations of these components of modernity Wagner’s research has found wide inter-
and their historical transformations; national recognition in three areas: the
The specific objectives are: (d) to confront analyses of European moder- sociology of the social sciences; social
(a) to complement the prevalent institu- nity with the new analyses of non-Euro- and political theory; and comparative
tional analysis of modern societies with pean modernities with a view to laying and historical sociology. Since his widely
an interpretative approach that focuses empirically rich foundations for a global cited A Sociology of Modernity (1994) he
on societal self-understandings, and to sociology of trajectories of modernity. has combined his interest in the latter
elaborate an understanding of how novel two areas in the conceptually guided and
interpretations emerge and how they TRAMOD has made major steps towards ac- historically sound, comparative analy-
contribute to reshaping institutions; complishing its core objectives. Maybe most sis of contemporary societies and their
(b) to disentangle the overly complex concept fundamentally, it embarked on an extensive historical trajectories, leading to further
of modernity into components that are retrieval of historical and conceptual debates path-breaking publications such as Mo-
empirically analysable in terms of both that aim at revising prevalent views of the dernity as experience and interpretation
past half millennium of human history, in the (2008) and Modernity: understanding the
West often joined together as the periods of present (2012). The latter work is the first
early modernity and modernity. major publication from the ongoing ERC
Project details
Advanced Grant project “Trajectories of
http://www.ub.edu/tramod/ modernity”, comparing societal self-un-
derstandings in Latin America (focusing
European Research Council Advanced on Brazil and Chile) and in Southern Africa
Grant “Trajectories of modernity: com- (focusing on South Africa) with those in
paring non-European and European Europe. Against current trends towards
societies” (TRAMOD); no. 249438 overspecialization, his work aims at recre-
7th Framework Programme, Call of ating a comprehensive social science, with
2009, start date July 2010; budget 2,3 philosophical grounding and historical
mln € perspective, at the current level of concep-
tual and methodological debate.
Team:
http://www.ub.edu/tramod/members/#R
7
University of Cambridge
Food Globalisation in
Prehistory
The project is led by Professor Martin

Jones, George Pitt-Rivers Professor of
Archaeological Science at the University of
Cambridge.
The research team includes:

Five postdoctoral researchers –
Dr Harriet Hunt, Dr Emma Lightfoot,
Dr Diane Lister, Dr Xinyi Liu, and
Dr Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute;
Six PhD students - Yijie Zhuang,
Yiru Wang, Minghao Lin, Min Min Ma Each of today’s major food species is distri- In order to understand the pathways of mo-
(visiting PhD student), Natalia Przelomska, buted worldwide. While much of that food vement across the continent, we are collabo-
and Penny Jones; globalisation has resulted from modern trade rating in excavations in Kazakhstan and Wes-
Four MPhil students - Lucy Burghardt, networks, it has its roots in prehistory. By the tern China. To place those vast landscapes in
Sarah Browncross, Ligia Trombetta-Lima, end of the second millennium BC, the south context, we are undertaking palaeoclimatic
and Ningning Dong; west Asian crops, wheat and barley, were in analyses with a primary focus upon the stable
One undergraduate student - Mary Price; several parts of China, and Chinese millets isotope record.
One research technician - Catherine Kneale; and buckwheat were in Europe. There was
Nine visiting scholars - Zhao Zhijun a parallel exchange of crops between South The project is necessarily interdisciplinary
(Insitute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy Asia and Africa. and shows the importance of SSH research
of Social Sciences, China), for the Food Security and Climate challenges
Dawei Cai (Jilin University, China), There are some striking features of that early of Horizon2020.
Anubha Pathak (Banaras Hindu University, phase of food globalisation, features that
India), Hongen Jiang (Chinese Academy of relate both to the crop plants themselves and
Science, China), to the societies that utilised them. A series of
Rong Wang (Fudan University, China), later episodes of globalisation, from the Clas-
Hongliang Lv (Sichuan University, China), sical period onwards, involve exotic fruits,
Elena Malinovskaya (Vavilov Research vegetables and spices. The earlier phase, Project details
Institute of Plant Industry, Russia, however, is manifested in evidence for staple
Guanghui Dong, Lanzhou University, China, sources of grain starch, the cereals, and the The project, which is primarily funded
Lu He, Shanxi Agricultural University, China ‘pseudo-cereal’ buckwheat. by an ERC Advanced Grant, started in
2010 with an approximate budget of
This is in addition to a range of colleagues Our project employs archaeobotany, genetics, £1.7M.
in other institutions around the world. stable isotope analyses and ethno-archae-
ology to establish when and how that early The project web-site is:
globalisation of staple foodstuffs happened, http://www.foglip.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/
what it meant for human societies in very index.html
different parts of Eurasia, and what it meant
for the plants upon which they relied for
food. Our primary foci for genetic analysis are
barley, wheat, foxtail millet and broomcorn
millet.
8
A Science of Human Nature?
Philosophical Disputes at the Interface of
Natural and Social Science
Recent years have seen renewed attempts on synthesis between cultural and evolutionary Principal investigator
the part of natural scientists to invigorate approaches is impossible, but rather that the and the research team
and inform the social sciences. Two promi- evolutionists have failed to understand the
nent examples include the efforts of cultural legitimate sources of resistance to neo-Dar- The project is led by Professor Tim Lewens,
evolutionary theorists to account for cultural winian approaches within social and cultural Professor of Philosophy of Science in the
change and cultural stasis, and the efforts anthropology. This five-year multidisciplinary department of History and Philosophy of
of evolutionary psychologists to provide a project seeks to uncover the philosophical Science, University of Cambridge.
scientific account of human nature. foundations of these disputes, to offer a
resolution of them, and ultimately to point The research team includes two postdoc-
The two trends are sometimes seen as mutu- the way towards a reconciliation of the two toral researchers, Drs Adrian Boutel and
ally complementary, sometimes as antagonis- domains. Christopher Clarke, one postdoctoral
tic: cultural evolutionary theory needs to be research assistant, Dr Elizabeth Hannon,
informed by research on human psychology, It has wide-ranging significance for discus- and two PhD students, Andrew Buskell and
and some argue that evolutionary psychology sions concerning inter-disciplinarity and the Riana Betzler.
can provide this. In both cases, these efforts leading role of the humanities and social sci-
have met considerable resistance from the ences therein. This has a bearing, then, on all
social sciences, especially from social anthro- of Horizon2020’s Grand Societal Challenges,
pology. though perhaps particularly the cross-cutting
themes of Science with and for Society and
Opponents of evolutionary approaches the integration of SSH.
often argue not so much that an integrated
Project details
The project, which is funded by an ERC

Starting Grant, started in 2011 with a
budget of approximately £1.2M.
The link to the project web-site is:

https://www.humannature.hps.cam.ac.uk/
9
University of Edinburgh
The Europeanisation of
Citizenship in the New States
of South East Europe (CITSEE)
Principal investigator When states break up, new states are created, multiplicity of different territorial regimes,
and the research team along with new citizenship regimes. This is the impact on minorities and also on citizens
what happened in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and of other former Yugoslav republics, the ef-
Jo Shaw holds the Salvesen Chair of 2000s, with some states involved in successi- fects on the Roma as a transnational minority
European Institutions at the University of ve disintegrations. However, in Europe today, without a ‘kin state’, and problems of dual
Edinburgh. She led a team of researchers another ‘integrative’ force comes into play, citizenship.
including the project senior researcher and that is the European Union.
Dr Igor Stiks, and more than fifteen rese- CITSEE has studied citizenship in the
arch fellows for differing periods of time post-Yugoslav states against the backdrop of
throughout the life of the project. processes of European integration, looking
at those processes of disintegration and
The team was interdisciplinary in charac- re-integration through a prism of citizenship,
ter, encompassing lawyers, political which stresses the link between individuals
scientists, political theorists, sociologists, and polities.
anthropologists, historians and other in- The project has involved detailed and contex-
terdisciplinary specialisms such as gender tualised studies of the individual citizenship
and women’s studies. regimes, plus comparative studies of the Project details
main elements which are distinctive of the
Many members of the team are early career post-Yugoslav constellation, such as the The project was initially funded for 60
researchers from the new states of South prevalence of ethnic citizenship regimes, the months by an ERC Advanced Investiga-
East Europe and the project has enab- tor Grant, from April 2009 (€2.24m).
led them to develop their careers within A project extension for dissemination
international academia (including funded purposes has been agreed until the end
PhD positions and various postdoctoral of December 2014.
positions).
www.citsee.ed.ac.uk (this is our project
website and it contains more than 30
working papers and details about the
project)
www.citsee.eu (this is our project web

magazine – Citizenship in South East
Europe – it contains more than 100
shorter contributions, including stu-
dies, stories, blogs, op-eds, news items,
and photo reportages.
A feature of the project has been the use

of visual representations for dissemi-
nation – photo reportages, animations
and now videos, available via http://
vimeo.com/citsee).
Monument in Zagreb marking Croatia’s accession to the EU: 1 July 2013 - © Jo Shaw
10
Nudget-it: The neurobiology of decision-
making in eating - Innovative Tools
(Coordinator: Gareth Leng, Experimental Physiology, University of Edinburgh)
Nudge-it is a European Commission-funded The work undertaken by Professor Belot will Principal investigator
FP7 project bringing together dozens of involve field and lab experimental work with and the research team
scientists from 16 institutions across six Eu- families from poor socio-economic back-
ropean countries, the US and New Zealand. ground. The goal will be to develop better Prof Michèle Belot is Professor of Econo-
The project engages internationally leading behavioural models of eating behaviour and, mics in the School of Economics, College
experts in the neurobiology of motivational in particular, shed light on the importance of of Humanities and Social Sciences at
behaviour, reward and regulation of appe- early exposure to obesogenic foods as well as UEDIN. She is the director of the new
tite, experimental psychology, functional the role of maternal stress on preferences for Experiment Laboratory at the School.
brain imaging, behavioural economics and obesogenic foods. We aim to understand how She works mainly in the area of behavi-
computational modelling. The project will dietary preferences are shaped by early expe- oural economics and economic policy,
develop innovative tools that link understan- rience in life and how malleable they are later and has been involved in the design and
ding across these interacting disciplines. on in life. Ultimately, the research findings evaluation of policy interventions using
The overall aim is to better understand should help to develop more suitable policy administrative data, survey data and data
decision-making in food choice and to build tools to tackle the problem of obesity. collected through randomised controlled
predictive models to contribute to improving experiments both in the laboratory and
public health policy. in the field. Her recent work encompas-
ses studies on habitual behaviour in the
context of diet.
Other team members include Jonathan

James, lecturer at the Department of
Economics at the University of Bath, whose
research has focused on the implications
of free school lunch programmes in the
UK and Dr Valeria Skafida, lecturer in
Sociology at the University of Edinburgh,
who has studied how infant and toddler
diets develop and change in the early part
of the lifespan, and how children’s diets
relate to family meal habits, family income
and human capital.
Project details
STARTING DATE: January 2014

FUNDING PERIOD: 5 years
BUDGET: £1,289,720
(£7.4 billion in total)
FUNDING PROGRAMME: EU consortium,
7th Framework Programme
WEBSITE: http://www.nudge-it.eu/
11
University of Freiburg
The Maoist Legacy:

Party Dictatorship,
Transitional Justice and
the Politics of Truth
The main objective of the project is two-
fold: It is to provide a detailed analysis of
the reversal of verdicts through a case-stu-
dy approach in three selected Chinese The question of how states and societies cope ously, the party reevaluated the legacy of the
regions and to document policy implemen- with the legacy of past atrocities has attracted Maoist era. This reassessment included se-
tation and past human rights abuses in a considerable attention during the past two veral million “unjust” cases from the Maoist
digital database. Accordingly, the scientific decades. Research has often been framed past and has been virtually left unattended
background of the research team is highly by the concept of “transitional justice”, to by scholarly research. The project aims at
interdisciplinary, ranging from history and denoting various types of judicial or non-ju- addressing this gap by analyzing and docu-
sinology, to law and computer science. dicial approaches to address past human menting the communist party’s strategies
rights abuses. Underlying most studies is the and the societal consequences of this major
The principal investigator, Daniel Leese, is normative precondition to analyze transitions reversal of verdicts in a digital database. It
professor of modern Chinese history and from dictatorship to democracy only. Yet, proposes to interpret the partial break from
politics at the University of Freiburg. He how are we to frame large-scale rehabilita- the Maoist legacy as an important, yet by and
is in charge of the general project design tions of victims, lustrations of bureaucratic large overlooked example of transitional jus-
and currently conducts a case study of the personnel, and trials against perpetrators tice. The project will significantly contribute
reversal of verdicts in Beijing Municipality. during non-democratic regime transitions? to comparative theorizing about standards
Two Ph.D. students, Song Guoqing and The project “The Maoist Legacy” looks at one and processes of dealing with past injustices
Puck Engman, analyse the handling of the major example of redressing past injustices within different types of system changes and
Maoist legacy in two selected regions: Gu- under continuing authoritarian governance: regime transitions.
angxi Zhuang autonomous region and Ji- the reversal of political verdicts in the Peop-
angsu province. Four team members joint- le’s Republic of China after the death of Mao
ly work on the database: Thomas Kaiser is Zedong.
in charge of infrastructure programming In December 1978, the Chinese Communist
and Wang Baigulahu digitizes, transcribes Party decided to embark on a reform path that
and archives the relevant documents with has led to China’s spectacular economic suc-
the help of two research assistants. cesses in the past three decades. Simultane-
Project details
STARTING DATE:
March 1, 2014 until February 28, 2019
TOTAL BUDGET: 1.45 million Euros
FUNDING SOURCES: ERC Starting Grant,
Fellowship of the Bavarian Academy of
Sciences
PROJECT WEBSITE:
www.maolegacy.uni-freiburg.de
12
Cultures of Mobility in Europe (COME)
The research group currently consists of 5

researchers and 2 non-academic staff mem-
bers (a student assistant and a part-time
secretary). It is directed by Anna Lipphardt,
who holds a tenure-track Junior-Profes-
sorship with the focus on “Mobility and
Culture in Europe”. Having studied Interna-
tional Relations, Baltic, Jewish and Cultural
Studies in in Lithuania, Germany and the
US, she was a member of the interdiscipli-
In the context of increasing globalization, local, the national and the European level, 3. nary DFG Graduate Program MAKOM at
mobility has become a political key concept how legal, economic and social inequalities Potsdam University, where she also received
and counts among the founding principles impact mobile work-life arrangements of her doctorate in Cultural Studies in 2006.
of the European Union. COME explores EU citizens, and 4. how social affiliation and For her Dissertation she was awarded the
the variegated practices, experiences and political participation are negotiated under Klaus-Mehnert-Preis 2007 of the Deutsche
perceptions of mobility in Europe as well as the premise of increasing mobility within the Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde (DGO)
the complex societal challenges that arise EU and its member states. and the Prix de la Fondation Auschwitz
with it, focusing on milieus and groups 2009.
that have engaged in extensive and versatile After her first postdoc position at Centre
mobile work-life arrangements, long before Marc Bloch, Berlin, where she also co-di-
the emergence of long-distance air travel and rected the Groupe de Recherche “Nazis-
the internet, and/or have often been margi- me” (2006-2008), she joined the Institute
nalized and discriminated against on the very of Advanced Studies, Center fo Excellence
grounds of their mobility. The explorative “Cultural Foundations of Integration” and
case studies include: the Zukunftskolleg at Konstanz University
• Travelling Artists. Mobility and Artistic as a postdoc fellow (2008-2011).
Practice in the 21st Century
• Between Global Desire and Local Angst: Further members include Dr.des. Matthias
the Circus in Germany Möller, who holds a Magister Artium and
• Romani Mobilities across the Atlantic doctorate in Empirical Cultural Studies
• Contemporary Im/Mobile Life-Worlds of from the University of Tübingen, and three
Yeniche in Switzerland and Germany doctoral students: Esteban Acuña, who
• Mobility through the Body – Practices and received his Master of Arts in Cultural
Experiences of Contemporary Street Perfor- Project details Anthropology and Development Socio-
mers logy at Leiden University and a B.A. in
• Vivre dans une roulotte: Mobile Lifeworlds DURATION OF THE PROJECT: Anthropology at the National University of
of Alternative Travellers in Germany and April 2011 – March 2017 Columbia, Bogota, Jeanne Labigne, who
France FUNDING SOURCE: after training as a professional dancer in
Excellence Initiative I London and Paris, received her Magister
From the perspective of highly mobile actors, (Freiburg University/DFG) Artium (M.A.) in Ethnology at the Johan-
COME sets out to explore 1. which mobi- BUDGET: 1.391.959€ nes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, and
lity regimes currently exist in the EU and + additional 3rd party funding for Anja Joos (currently on maternity leave),
how they intersect with each other, 2. how COME-workshops and individual travel who holds a BA and an MA in Sociology
individuals and groups navigate the trajec- grants from Konstanz University.
tories emerging from di- and converging PROJECT WEBSITE:
regulations for mobility, entry and stay on the http://www.come.uni-freiburg.de/
13
Université de Genève
National Centre of
Competence in Research for
Affective Sciences
Klaus Scherer David Sander
The founder and the present director Established by the University of Ge-
neva, the Swiss Centre for Affective
Born 1943, Klaus Scherer studied econo- Sciences (Centre Interfacultaire en
mics and social sciences at the University Sciences Affectives, CISA) hosts the
of Cologne and the London School of National Centre of Competence in
Economics. He received a Ph.D. in Social Research (NCCR) “Affective Sciences
Psychology from Harvard University in – Emotions in Individual Behaviour
1970. Prior to joining the University of and Social Processes”, funded by the
Geneva in 1985, he taught at the University Swiss National Science Foundation
of Pennsylvania and the University of Kiel and the Swiss State Secretariat for
and held a professorship at the University Research. Spanning the biological,
of Giessen (1973-1985). Scherer is a fellow psychological, and social dimensi-
of several international scientific societies, ons of affect, the CISA is devoted to
including the Academia Europea and the the study of emotions from a mul-
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, ti-disciplinary and interdisciplinary
and has received honorary doctorates from perspective, in terms of both basic
the University of Bologna and the Univer- and applied research. The vocation
sity of Bonn. He has supervised 20 PhD of the Center is to understand emo-
theses and 11 postdoctoral fellows. He is tions, and how they affect the way
co-editor of the Affective Science Series individuals and societies behave. The
of Oxford University Press and founding Center, founded in 2005, is recog- disciplinary domains, and by the capacity
co-editor of the journal Emotion. Sche- nized as one of the leading research of the Center to establish numerous col-
rer participated in the FP7 Networks of institutes on emotion, as attested by laborations with institutions (universities
Excellence HUMAINE (Human-Machine the high number of publications in and companies) from different countries.
Interaction) and SSPNet (Social Signal Pro- journals and books from different
cessing), and has obtained further research
funding from other sources as well. He is
the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant for Project details
2008-2015 (“Production and Perception of
Emotion”). Founded by Prof. Klaus Scherer and
presently directed by Prof. David San-
The Center is now directed by Prof. David der, the CISA has received 27 million
Sander who studied mathematics and psy- Swiss francs in funding from the Swiss
chology at the University René Descartes National Science Foundation and 6
(Paris, France), and received a PhD in Cog- million from the University of Geneva.
nitive Sciences from the University Louis In addition to multiple research projects
Lumière (Lyon, France). He joined the in different Swiss universities, the Cen-
Department of Psychology at the University tre has established successful doctoral
of Geneva (Switzerland) in 2001. and postdoctoral programs as well as
an international summer school. It is
active in the advancement of women
and many knowledge-transfer activities
Website: http://www.affective-sciences.org
14
LIVES. Overcoming Vulnerability:
Life Course Perspectives.
Co-hosted by the University of Geneva

and the University of Lausanne, LIVES is a
National Centre of Competence in Research
(NCCR) funded by the Swiss State Secretariat
for Research and the Swiss National Science
Foundation. It approaches the concept of
“vulnerability” from an interdisciplinary
perspective, drawing on sociology, psycho-
logy, social psychology, socio-economics,
economics, demography and medicine.
From a socio-economic and a political point

of view alike, human vulnerability is a gro-
wing concern, associated with more turbulent
life courses and family dynamics, with the im-
pact of economic changes in a global world
on individual careers, with the injunction of
self-realization, and with the “psychologiza-
tion”, if not “pathologization,” of the social.
Precariousness, exclusion, suffering, distress, Principal investigator
and frailty are some of the related concepts and the research team
addressed by the various disciplines. LIVES
uses the analytical tools of the life-course Michel Oris holds a
and life-span research traditions to opera- professorship at the Project details
tionalize vulnerability, to disentangle latent University of Geneva,
and realized states of vulnerability, to identify Faculty of Social Sci- LIVES was launched in January, 2011.
sources of vulnerability but also of stability ences, and directs the For the first four years, it has received 14
and resilience, and to analyse interactions Centre for the Inter- million Swiss francs in funding by the
between individual and social resources as disciplinary Study of Swiss Confederation. The associated
well as the life-long construction of inequali- Gerontology and Vulne- Swiss institutions of higher education
ties. The LIVES research programme surveys rability (CIGEV). He is the Geneva leader of have provided an additional 5 million
and analyzes longitudinal data with both the LIVES project, coordinating more than Swiss francs in funding. LIVES is also
quantitative and qualitative methods. 40 researchers. supported by cantons and foundations
such as Pro Senectute Switzerland.
Originally trained as an historian and a The expected duration of Swiss Natio-
demographer, he has a wide experience of nal Centres of Competence in Research
European research networks. His current is 12 years. Most NCCRs are in life
research focuses on the health and living and technical sciences. Along with the
conditions of the elderly, interactions bet- Centre for Affective Sciences, LIVES
ween individual trajectories and dynamics is one of a handful of NCCRs in social
of social change and the inscription of sciences and humanities.
vulnerabilities in individual life-courses.
Website: http://lives-nccr.ch/fr
15
Universität Heidelberg
Cluster of Excellence
Heidelberg University’s Cluster of “Asia and Europe in a Global
Context. The Dynamics of
Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Glo-
bal Context” is headed by a Directorate
Transculturality”
consisting of Prof. Joseph Maran (Pre- and
Protohistory), Prof. Axel Michaels (Clas-
sical Indology) and Prof. Barbara Mittler
(Sinology) and supported by a Scientific
Project Manager, Dr. Oliver Lamers.
Previously, Prof. Madeleine Herren-Oesch Heidelberg University’s Cluster of Excellence Transcultural Studies offer a structured, inter-
(History, now Director of the Institute for “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” has disciplinary curriculum and enable individual
European Global Studies at the University become a hot spot for young researchers and research projects. The Heidelberg Research
of Basel), Prof. Thomas Maissen (History, senior scholars in the humanities and social Architecture supports collaboration by
now Director of the German Historical sciences from around the globe. About 250 providing research infrastructure, knowledge
Institute Paris) and Prof. Rudolf G. Wagner scholars examine the processes of exchange management and database development. The
(Sinology, now at Harvard University) be- between cultures, ranging from migration scientific results are published in two book
longed to the Directorate. Further Principal and trade to the formation of concepts and series and an e-journal.
Investigators are: Prof. Christiane Brosius institutions. A central question is in which
(Visual and Media Anthropology), Prof. dynamics the transcultural processes between The Cluster’s researchers come from a wide
Susanne Enderwitz (Islamic Studies), Prof. and within Asia and Europe develop. These range of disciplines including Anthropology,
Harald Fuess (Cultural Economic History), complex historical relationships are of great Archaeology, Art History, Assyriology, Chine-
Prof. Hans Harder (Modern South Asian relevance for the global transformations of se Studies, Egyptology, European Historical
Languages and Literatures), Prof. Monica our time. Studies, Islamic Studies, Japanese Studies,
Juneja (Global Art History), Prof. Birgit Media and Communication Studies, Musi-
Kellner (Buddhist Studies), Prof. Joachim The Cluster’s more than 60 research projects cology, Public Health, Philosophy, Political
Kurtz (Intellectual History), Prof. Stefan are divided into the four research areas Science, Religious Studies, Social Sciences,
Maul (Assyriology, Dean of the Faculty of “Governance & Administration”, “Public and South Asia Studies.
Philosophy), Prof. Marcus Nüsser Spheres”, “Knowledge Systems”, and In 2013 the Heidelberg Centre for Trans-
(Geography of South Asia), “Historicities & Heritage”. Interdiscipli- cultural Studies was founded as a central
Prof. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos (Classi- nary Research Groups enable collaboration research institute of Heidelberg University.
cal Archaeology), Prof. Joachim Friedrich between scholars across the areas, and It will continue the structures and transcul-
Quack (Egyptology), Prof. Susan Richter five professorships, including Germany’s tural agenda in research and teaching of the
(History), Prof. William Sax (Anthropology first chair for Global Art History, deepen Cluster beyond 2017.
of South Asia), Prof. Bernd Schneidmül- the expertise. Start-up professorships and
ler (History), Prof. Melanie Trede (East Junior Research Groups create career paths
Asian Art History), Prof. Stefan Weinfurter for young scholars. The M.A. “Transcultural Project details
(History), Prof. Roland Wenzlhuemer Studies” and the Graduate Programme for
(History). FIRST FUNDING PERIOD:
2007 – 2012
SECOND FUNDING PERIOD:
2012 – 2017
BUDGET: ca. 7 Mio. EUR p.a.
FUNDING SOURCE:
German Research Foundation (DFG)
within the framework of the Excellence
Initiative of the German Federal and
State governments
WEBSITE: http://www.asia-europe.uni-hei-
Axel Michaels, Barbara Mittler, Joseph Maran delberg.de/en/
16
An Interdisciplinary
Education Concept for Older
Employees - A Response to
Demographic Change Principal investigator
Since 2008, the University’s Institute of Ger- influence on the images of age in companies. Andreas Kruse, Dr. Dr. h.c., Professor
ontology has been implementing interdisci- for Gerontology, Director of the Institute
plinary education concepts in large German The intervention areas mentioned form part of Gerontology, born 1955, Academic
companies and administration departments of an intervention project which extends over education in Psychology, Philosophy, Psy-
which are pursuing five objectives: (1) Main- a period of five months in the respective in- chopathology and Music. Research areas:
taining employability, professional moti- dividual intervention groups. There are three Potentials, resources and competence in
vation, good health and quality of life until survey time points: before the beginning, in old age; prevention and training; rehabi-
reaching retirement age; (2) developing and the middle, and at the end of the interventi- litation, coping with border situations in
fostering perspectives for the continuation of on. Numerous medical, sport and exercise old age; palliative care; ethics; translation
professional activity beyond the legally-de- science, as well as psychological, parame- of research into politics. – The companies
fined retirement age; (3) promoting collabo- ters are checked. To date, a total of N = 750 which have participated in this educational
ration between young and old in the profes- persons have participated in these education project include German Railway Com-
sional and working world; (4) increasing the programmes. It has been shown that the pany, (Berlin), Robert Bosch Company
utilisation of older employees’ creativity; (5) cognitive, physical and emotional plasticity (Stuttgart), and several companies which
preparing for their own old age. up into the seventh decade of life is so strong are members of the Chemical Company
that older employees greatly benefit from the Association of Baden-Württemberg, as well
These education concepts encompass the intervention measures. The willingness to as several town/city councils. Since 2003,
following intervention areas: (1) Medical participate in such measures is very strong in the study leader – Andreas Kruse, Director
examination, and positively influencing a all educational and professional classes. of the Institute of Gerontology – has been
healthy lifestyle; (2) cognitive training with Chairman of the Federal Government’s
the teaching of new cognitive strategies; (3) The project received the 2013 Human Re- Commission on Age and Ageing, and, in
endurance, agility and light weight-training; sources Award for Health Management by this capacity, has the ability to translate the
(4) reflection on the own personality and the Berlin-based journal Human Resources project results directly into government
the potential to design ageing; (5) positive Manager. policy.
Project details
The project has started in 2008;

the total budget is € 1,400,500.
Funding source: German Ministry for

Labour and Social Affairs, German
Ministry for Health, German Railway
Company, Robert Bosch Ltd.,
Robert Bosch Foundation.
17
University of Helsinki
European language
diversity for all
The starting point of the project was that the highly or weakly standardized languages etc.
European linguistic landscape is experien- Those minority languages that were analysed
cing a profound transformation. Innovations in more detail all belong to the Finno-Ugric
and changes in language policies, educati- language family which is seriously under-
on, migration patterns etc. challenge and represented in internationally accessible
Preparing for a group interview with retired change the roles and functions of languages sociolinguistic literature. The results of the
Vepsians at the museum of Sholtozero within and between states, ethnic groups and research project, however, are generalizable
(Veps Šoutjärv; Eldia, March 2011) nations. They even influence the behaviour which was the main goal from the very begin-
of individual people and entire language ning. The results of the project contribute to
communities. the study of multilingualism and the develop-
ment of language policies in other multilin-
The project ELDIA (European Language gual contexts as well, in and outside Europe.
Principal investigator Diversity for All) was built up as an interdis- The European Language Vitality Barometer
and the research team ciplinary research project and platform for was developed for the detailed analysis of
reconceptualizing, promoting and re-evalua- language minorities.
The University of Helsinki was involved in ting individual and societal multilingualism.
the project from three perspectives. Two It consisted of experts on applied linguistics
case-studies (Karelian and Veps in Russia), and sociolinguistics, law, social studies and
the preparation of the statistical analysis statistics, who represented eight universi-
and the sociological media survey were ties in six European countries. Each team
carried out at the University of Helsin- consisted of several researchers and speci-
ki. Professor Riho Grünthal (PI) was a alists of issues related with contemporary
member of the steering committee and the multilingualism. The main strategy of the Project details
leader of the two mentioned case-studies consortium was to elaborate on shared aims
representing minority language policies and contribute to a better understanding of
and practices in Russia, a multiethnic non- how local, “national” and “international” lan- TIME:
EU country. He had earlier been actively guages interact in contemporary Europe. The 1 March 2010 – 30 September 2013
doing research on Finno-Ugric minority key term of vehicular language was launched
languages and carried out fieldwork in in the call for projects. TOTAL BUDGET (FOR THE WHOLE ELDIA
various communities. The research team During three years the empirical research was CONSORTIUM):
consisted of local PhD students. The em- conducted with a selected sample of multi- 3,6 million euros (including overhead);
pirical part of the case-studies was carried lingual communities, which sought to cover research 2,7 million euros
out in close collaboration with the Karelian practically the whole spectrum of different
Research Institute, Petrozavodsk, Republic political and socioeconomic circumstances of FUNDING SOURCE:
of Karelia (RUS) and local researchers who linguistic minorities in Europe. The list of in- European Commission (EU)
were in charge for the extensive survey vestigated target groups included smaller and
sample of both target groups. more numerous, autochthonous or migrant PROJECT WEBSITE:
communities, vigorous and endangered, http://www.eldia-project.org
As regards the research of Finno-Ugric Reports of the team of the PI (Karelian
languages at the University of Helsinki, in Russia) https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/
the project was an illustrative example of detail_object/o:314612
actual topics emerging from present-day Reports of the team of the PI (Veps in
language environments. Russia) https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/
detail_object/o:315545
18
Interdisciplinarity, cognitive tools,
and the future of social science
(Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences - TINT)
The Centre of Excellence is the largest

international research community in its
field with 30+ members and a number of
research associates and visitors, represen-
ting a multidisciplinary compilation of
competences. The director, Uskali Mäki,
is currently an Academy Professor at the
Academy of Finland. He has published
on a range of topics in the philosophy of
economics, scientific realism and social
studies of science. His current work focu-
ses on modelling in science and varieties of
Much of contemporary debate over scientific tically relevant philosophy of the social sciences interdisciplinary dynamics.
research and research policy is concerned with consequences for scientific practice
with varieties of interdisciplinarity: how and its management. And it pursues a path Mäki has extensive experience of designing
scientific disciplines are best related to one towards a new philosophy of interdisciplinarity in and coordinating innovative and interna-
another (science-science relations) and all its important varieties. tionally visible collective activities. In 1997
how they are to be related to extra-acade- at Erasmus University of Rotterdam, he
mic agents and concerns (science-society The attainment of these goals requires multi- founded an interdisciplinary institute that
relations). disciplinary collective effort utilising multiple brought together expertise from philosop-
methodological approaches. The disciplinary hy, economics, cultural studies and busi-
These debates are laden with issues of con- targets and perspectives include philosophy, ness studies; and in 2006 in Helsinki, he
ceptual clarity as well as explanatory and nor- economics, sociology, anthropology, history, launched a research project that addresses
mative principle. These issues set the agenda political science, cognitive science, medicine, issues of interdisciplinarity in and between
of the Centre of Excellence. Its mission is (evolutionary, systems and synthetic) biology, the social, cognitive and life sciences.
defined by two broad goals. It pursues a prac- and more. The future of the social sciences
will largely be shaped by how they interact
with one another (such as economics shaping
the styles and theories in other disciplines)
Project details and how they interact with the cognitive and
life sciences (such as cognitive neuroscience
TIME: making an impact on conceptions of agency
1 January 2012 – 31 December 2017 in the social sciences), as well as how the
social sciences are utilised for designing
TOTAL BUDGET: policies dealing with societal issues (such as
2,5 million euros (2012-2014) business innovation, urban planning, global
poverty, and climate change). TINT not only
FUNDING SOURCE: Academy of Finland analyses these very complex trends and the
and the University of Helsinki tensions therein, but also actively intervenes
and thereby seeks to facilitate desirable future
PROJECT WEBSITE: www.helsinki.fi/tint developments.
19
Universiteit Leiden
Empowering expectancies
for health and disease:
Training the immune and
endocrine system
After her PhD (2003 cum laude) at Rad- The variability between patients in respon- research. Findings are of crucial importance
boud University, Andrea Evers obtained ses to the same treatment is one of the most for various health problems, opening new
several grants for high-potential resear- challenging health care problems. Expec- horizons for innovative health prevention
chers (NWO-Veni 2004, NWO-Vidi 2009, tancies about health and disease, including and therapeutic strategies for a broad range
ERC-Consolidator-Grant 2013) to build up chronic inflammatory conditions, are known of inflammatory conditions and physical
her translational research team focusing to induce immune and endocrine respon- symptoms.
on psychoneurobiological mechanisms ses and directly affect health and treatment
and treatments for health and disease. outcomes, with explained variance between
Her research is characterized by a strong 25-50%. Expectancy mechanisms and their Project details
interdisciplinary focus, particularly due to consequences on the immune and endocrine
connecting Social Sciences with Biome- system can be consequently expected to large- Andrea Evers obtained an ERC Con-
dical and Life Sciences, in addition to ly contribute to the treatment variability. solidator Grant in 2013, the personal
collaborations with Neuroscience and grant for high-potential researchers in
Humanities. Her research group uniquely The major aim of this project is to unravel the their mid-term career, within the 7th
combines fundamental and applied science central mechanisms of how peoples’ expecta- Framework Programme for Rese-
in translational research, by focusing both tions affect immune and endocrine responses arch, technological Development and
on basic research on psychoneurobiology and related health outcomes, through the use Demonstration, Panel Social Sciences
(e.g. placebo mechanisms) and translati- of multidisciplinary methods in experimental and Humanities (The Human Mind and
onal research on screening and interven- studies in healthy and clinical populations. Its Complexity). The grant is entitled
tions for somatic conditions (e.g. e-health For this purpose, we systematically apply this “Empowering expectancies for health
tools). In 2011, Andrea Evers became Pro- innovative approach to humans with different and disease: Training the immune and
fessor for Psychobiology of Somatic Con- expectancy learning approaches (e.g. con- endocrine system”, with a total budget
ditions at Radboud University. Since 2013, ditioning) and relate them to psychological, of ca. 2.000.000 Euro. The ERC project
she is professor of Health Psychology and neurobiological and genetic mechanisms. focuses on optimizing the role of place-
chair of the Health-Medical-and-Neuropsy- Moreover, we study the long-term effects of bo mechanisms and expectations (e.g.
chology-Unit at Leiden University as well novel psychological expectancy therapies, di- conditioning) in health and disease
as Young Academy member of the Royal rected at immune and endocrine trainings, on by training the immune and endocri-
Netherlands Academy of Sciences. reduced regular pharmacological treatments ne system. In this ERC Consolidator
in chronic inflammatory conditions (e.g. Grant, both laboratory experiments
replacing anti-inflammatory pharmacothera- and clinical-experimental research in
pies, reducing side effects). healthy subjects and clinical conditions
are conducted. The project is hosted
This unique, cross-boundary approach at the Institute of Psychology at Leiden
provides innovative theoretical and clinical University with close collaborations
implications by connecting Social Sciences with the Leiden University Medical Cen-
with Biomedical and Life Sciences, in additi- ter and other (inter)national partners,
on to collaborations with Neuroscience and such as the Donders Institute for Brain,
Humanities. Unraveling these mechanisms Cognition & Behavior of the Radboud
of training immune and endocrine responses University or the University of Essen.
provides a major validation of translational The project has a time schedule from
research that is largely based on animal 1 September 2014 to 1 September 2019.
20
NEXUS1492
The project research team is a multi-disci-

plinary team of four principal investigators
from the Faculty of Archeology in Leiden
(Professor C.L. Hofman and Professor
W.J.H. Willems), the Vrije Universiteit in
Amsterdam (Professor G. Davis) and the
University of Konstanz (Professor U. Bran-
des), and their research groups consisting
of more than 60 archeologists, social, na-
tural and computer scientists, and heritage
experts.
Corinne L. Hofman is Corresponding

NEXUS1492 investigates the impacts of colonial Principal Investigator of the ERC-synergy
encounters in the Caribbean, the nexus of the Project details project NEXUS 1492. She directs a large
first interactions between the New and the Old international research group. Hofman has
World. This Synergy Programme intends to The project is an ERC Synergy Grant carried out archaeological research in the
rewrite a crucial and neglected chapter in global (FP7) awarded in 2012 for a duration of Caribbean since the 1980s. Her primary
history initiated by European colonisation by 6 years with a total budget of €14.8M interests are the communication systems
focussing on transformations to indigenous, and interaction networks of the indigenous
Amerindian cultures and societies. NEXUS1492 THE TITLE OF THE PROJECT: NEXUS 1492: Amerindian populations prior and after
addresses intercultural Amerindian-Euro- New World Encounters in a Globalising European colonisation of the New World
pean-African dynamics at multiple temporal and World in 1492.
spatial scales across the historical divide of 1492.
NEXUS1492 will work with local experts to PROJECT PARTNERS: NEXUS1492’s unique trans-disciplinary
develop sustainable heritage management stra- • Prof. dr. Corinne L. Hofman (CPI), synergy of four PIs and their teams of ar-
tegies, creating a future for the past. This past University of Leiden, chaeologists, social, natural and computer
is under threat from looting and illegal trade, the Netherlands (archaeology) scientists, and heritage experts will pioneer
construction development and natural disasters • Prof. dr. Gareth R. Davies (PI), new analytical tools, and apply multi-disci-
(e.g., climate change, earthquakes, and volcanic VU University, Amsterdam, plinary cutting-edge techniques, theoreti-
eruptions). the Netherlands (geochemistry) cal frameworks and skill sets to provide a
• Prof. dr. Ulrik Brandes (PI), novel perspective on New World encoun-
By placing the Caribbean’s indigenous past University of Konstanz, ters in a globalising world.
within a contemporary heritage agenda, this pro- Germany (network science)
gramme strives to increase the awareness and • Prof. dr. Willem J.H. Willems (PI),
protection of heritage resources. The innovative University of Leiden,
approach and outcomes of NEXUS1492 will be the Netherlands (heritage)
of global scientific significance and high societal
relevance. PROJECT WEBSITE: www.nexus1492.eu
21
KU Leuven
Comparing Technology
cultures in Urban
DR Congo (1960-present):
Kinshasa, Kikwit and
Principal investigator Lubumbashi
Prof Dr Katrien Pype, the PI, has been Contemporary societies are faced with an the dialectics between technology, society and
conducting ethnographic research in ever-increasing importance of new kinds of culture in African urban contexts. The cities
Kinshasa since 2003. She has mainly worked technologies. Anthropologists ask questions are Kinshasa, Kikwit and Lubumbashi.
on popular culture. Previous research about the interactions between the non-hu- The methods used are long-term fieldwork in
projects analysed how television fiction, man and the human. Urban anthropologists DR Congo, including participant-observation,
and later on radio and mobile phones are look into the ways in which technologies or- interviews, and archival research in Congo.
embedded in social dynamics in the city ganize and are organized by urban lifeworlds. Drawing on insights of urban anthropology,
(inter-generational relations; propaganda The research program sets out to analyse the anthropology of technology and African
by the state; evangelization efforts by ways in which technological infrastructures studies, the goal is threefold: (a) to contri-
Pentecostal proselytizers). Her postdoctoral have been co-producing the postcolonial bute to the field of urban anthropology by
research at MIT inspired Prof Dr Pype to society in 3 different cities of the Democratic bringing in new concepts and claims through
bring ideas of the anthropology of technology Republic of Congo (1960-present). a “technology” focus; (b) to contribute to the
to Congo-Studies. field of Science, Technology & Society (STS)
The selected types of technology are located by formulating Africanist perspectives; and
The team is composed of 8 researchers in the domains of communication (telegraph (c) to contribute to the genre of ethnographic
(6 remunerated; 2 not remunerated). The PI communication, radio/TV, landline and writing by experimenting with “localized
(5 years, 100%) will study communication cellular telephony, and/or Internet interacti- manuals”
technologies in Kinshasa. 1 doctoral ons), health (e.g. hospitals, medical labo-
researcher, Trisha Phippard, will focus on ratories, blood tests, imaging technologies
health technologies in Kikwit. Another like X-Ray radiography and ultrasound), and Project details
doctoral researcher, to be hired as from energy (electricity, nuclear energy, and/or
October 2015, will work on technologies hydro-energy). The choice of 3 different types The project started in January 2014
of energy Lubumbashi. A third doctoral of technology is informed by a desire to distin- and is funded by a generous Odysseus-
researcher, to be hired as from January 2015, guish between the specificities of particular Project
grant details
(FWO, G.A005.14N) and an ERC-
will study energy cultures in Kinshasa. Dr technologies and political, cultural and social Runner Up grant (FWO, G.0.E65.14N).
Griet Steel will work on communication influences on appropriations of technology. A website will be operating as from
technologies in Ethiopia (50%, Oct 2014-Sept This will be the first comprehensive study of October 2014.
2016). The team will be joined by another
postdoctoral researcher as from October For now, a summary of the
2016. 2 senior scholars (non-reumunerated) project can be found on https://
complement the team: Dr Clapperton www.academia.edu/6110569/
Mavhunga (MIT) is an expert on technology Comparing_Technologies_in_Urban_
and energy cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa; DR_Congo_1960-present_Kinshasa_
Dr Filip De Boeck (KU Leuven) is an expert Kikwit_and_Lubumbashi_2014-2019_
on Congolese urban cultures and has been team_research_.
trained as a medical anthropologist. Both will Information about the project members
co-supervise the doctoral projects. and their publications can be found on
www.iara.be
22
FRAME – Fostering Human
Rights Among EU (Internal
and External) Policies
Context - FRAME focuses on the ways in by providing the necessary building blocks FRAME is coordinated
which the EU’s internal and external policies for the development of comprehensive and by Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters and a specially
can contribute to the promotion of human coherent European Human Rights Poli- assigned team of five researchers at the
rights. The Lisbon Treaty has made the cies. FRAME contribute in this regard: (i) a Leuven Centre for Global Governance Stu-
respect and promotion of human rights sound knowledge base taking into account dies (KU Leuven). The project as a whole is
a core value and objective for all the EU’s the evolving factors, concepts, institutions carried out by a consortium of 19 academic
actions and policies. However, the EU is and instruments underlying the protection partners from the EU (Austria, Belgium,
confronted with important challenges in and promotion of human rights at the EU, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy,
this respect, such as the fragmentation of international and national levels; (ii) a critical the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, UK) and
human rights-related competences between examination and appraisal of the EU’s real third countries (China, Egypt, India, Peru,
itself and the Member States, the coherence and potential contribution to global human South Africa, the US). The full list and
between its human rights and other policies, rights governance through its engagement presentation of partners is available here:
and the growing contestation by a number of with actors and its wide-ranging policies and http://www.fp7-frame.eu/partners-univer-
third countries of certain understandings of instruments; (iii) a thorough scrutiny of the sities/
human rights and of the position of the EU to effectiveness of human rights promotion in
promote them. the maze of EU institutions, competences and The project was entrusted to the consor-
policies; and (iv) a set of indicators, tools and tium after a highly competitive selection
Objectives – FRAME’s main objective is to policy proposals allowing for a consistent and process.
address these challenges through multidis- tailor-made integration of human rights in
ciplinary social science research and thereby EU external and internal actions and policies. Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters is Full Professor of
to have a decisive impact on the EU’s policies International Law and International Orga-
nizations, Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam
EU and Global Governance, and founding
Project details Director of the Leuven Centre for Global
Governance Studies and of the Institute for
FRAME is a Collaborative Research International Law at Leuven University. He
Project funded by the European is Visiting Professor at Sciences Po (Paris),
Commission’s Seventh Framework Luiss University (Rome) and the College of
Programme (FP7). It has a total budget Europe (Bruges).
of 8 155 278,40 euros, of which
6 435 059 will be funded by the See full bio here: https://ghum.kuleuven.
European Commission. be/ggs/about-us/people/wouters_jan.html
The project was kicked off on 1 May
2013 and will run for four years until
April 2017.
More information and outputs can
be found on the project’s dedicated
website at www.fp7-frame.eu
Contact: [email protected]
23
Imperial College London
Adaptive governance of
mountain ecosystem
services for poverty
alleviation enabled by
environmental virtual
Participatory monitoring of river flow in the Peruvian Andes.
observatories
© CONDESAN Archive
Principal investigator Mountain regions are complex socio-eco- new scientific knowledge, and the conse-
and the research team logical systems undergoing unprecedented quences for local development and poverty
environmental changes. At the same time, alleviation.
The international research team inclu- they are some of the most data scarce regions
des investigators from Imperial College in the world. This is especially true for remote The ultimate goal of the project is to turn the
London, the University of Birmingham, regions such as the Himalaya and the Andes, classic top-down approach of knowledge ge-
Wageningen University, the University of which contain many “poverty pockets”: neration and transfer into a participatory and
Antwerp, the Technical University of Ber- poor communities bypassed by economic inclusive process of “co-generation of know-
lin, and Cornell University. The consortium development, and suffering most from the ledge” between all involved actors, favouring
merges expertise in environmental engi- degradation of ecosystems services such as poor and disadvantaged groups.
neering, hydrology, meteorology, political water supply and soil fertility.
geography and environmental governance,
natural resources management, public New technological developments in sensor
administration and policy, institutional de- technology and mobile networks hold great
velopment, and ecology. Regional project promise to alleviate the lack of knowledge
partners provide further research capacity about ecosystem services in such regions. At
and locally relevant knowledge: the Univer- the same time, technology to promote social
sity of Bahir Dar (Ethiopia), the University interaction and knowledge sharing, such as
of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), the Society mobile phones, make it possible to include
for Hydrology and Meteorology (Nepal), local people and other decision-makers in Project details
and the Consortium for Sustainable Deve- this process, to ensure that the generated
lopment of the Andean Eco-region (Peru), information is relevant for local ecosystem The 3-year project started in November
who all represent an elaborate network of management and adopted in the decision 2013 with a budget of £ 1.8 million.
local partners. making process.
It is funded by the NERC/ESRC/DFID
Principal Investigator Wouter Buytaert is a The project experiments with participatory programme on Ecosystem Services for
senior lecturer at Imperial College London. monitoring of water supply and soil quality in Poverty Alleviation (ESPA).
He has 15 years of research experience in remote regions of Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Ethio-
tropical mountain regions, focusing on the pia and Peru. A team of engineers and natural PROJECT WEBSITE:
impact of human activities on the water cy- scientists develops new sensors and methods http://paramo.cc.ic.ac.uk/espa/
cle, water resources for data quality control and interpretation
management and together with local stakeholders. Meanwhile,
decision support, a team of social scientists analyses the dyna-
and sustainable mics of local decision-making, the impact of
development.
24
Weather and Trade in Principal investigator
a Globalized World: Dr Mirabelle Muûls is a Junior Research
A Firm-level Analysis
Fellow in the Business School and an
associate of the Grantham Institute at
Imperial College London. Her research
focuses on the economics of climate
change, seeking to understand the impact
of climate change policies on environmen-
tal and economic performance, as well as
climatic influence on economic and social
outcomes.
Jonathan Colmer is a PhD candidate at the
London School of Economics, based at
the Centre for Economic Performance. His
research explores the intersection between
economic and natural systems and the
assessment of policy interventions on busi-
ness and environmental performance.
Dr Ralf Martin is an Assistant Professor
in Economics at Imperial College Lon-
Evidence is mounting that climate change is Using a unique dataset of firm-level tra- don. His research assesses the impact of
not only a phenomenon of the future, but that de-transactions combined with high resoluti- government interventions on business and
the weather might already be changing now. on weather data, we examine the relationship environmental performance.
In recent years, the frequency of extreme we- between weather and the productivity of Dr Ulrich Wagner is an Associate Professor
ather events, such as extreme temperatures, manufacturing firms in Europe. Through in Economics at Carlos III University in
draughts and floods, has risen. This project econometric analysis, we derive both the Madrid, Spain. His work focuses on asses-
assesses the costs that arise from climate direct and indirect effects of weather on the sing the impact of climate change policies,
change, not on the basis of simulations, but firms’ economic performance. We observe such as the European Union Emissions
from actual events. In a globalized world, that domestic exposure to high temperatures Trading Scheme or the UK Climate Change
economic activity is likely to be affected both can reduce firm productivity. Global firms are Levy on economic performance.
by local weather and by events worldwide shown to be affected by weather events in-
through global supply chains. ternationally if they import elements of their
production process from countries exposed
to such events, emphasizing the importance
Project details of the degree of vertical specialization, as well
as changes in comparative advantage, when
Our project started in Summer 2013 and looking to understand the global impact of
is ongoing. Mirabelle Muûls was funded climate shocks.
by the Leverhulme Trust through an
Early Career Fellowship Mitigating climate change necessitates
(ECF-2011-622). major economic shifts for our societies. By Mirabelle Muûls Jonathan Colmer
measuring with greater precision the amount
This research is also supported by the of damages that could be avoided by reducing
Grantham Institute at Imperial College greenhouse-gas emissions, one can provide
London (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ better motivation for the required actions.
grantham/resources/ipccwg2/supply- This is an example of how economic and
chains). other SSH research can inform policy making
on climate change, one of society’s greatest
challenges.
Ralf Martin Ulrich Wagner
25
University College London
UCL Lancet Commission on

Managing the Health Effects
of Climate Change
Jonathan Wolff Maria Lee
The Principal investigator was Professor This report, the result of a truly inter-discipli- An epistemological challenge identifies
Anthony Costello from UCL’s Institute nary team of researchers from virtually every the various informational gaps needed to
of Global Health, and the team included one of UCL’s ten faculties, argued that climate address the health effects of claim change.
Mustafa Abbas (medical student) Adriana change is the greatest threat to global health An ethical challenge identifies the injustice
Allen (Development Planning Unit), in the 21st Century. It demonstrated that at that the worst effects of climate change are
Sarah Ball (Institute of Global Health), least six different pathways connect climate likely to fall on the poor and most vulnera-
Sarah Bell (Institute of Global Health), change to global health: changing patterns of ble. A political challenge identifies the lack
Richard Bellamy (School of Public Policy), disease and morbidity; food security; water of global and local governance mechanisms
Sharon Friel (Epidemiology and Public and sanitation; shelter and human settle- needed to undertake concerted action. This
Health), Nora Groce (Disability and Inclu- ments; extreme events; and population and framing, which structures the entire report,
sive Development), Anne Johnson (Popu- migration. While the empirical work was pro- was devised by a sub-group of the commissi-
lation Health), Maria Kett (Disability and vided by a team of medical and other scienti- on including academics and researchers from
Inclusive Development), Maria Lee (Laws), fic specialists, the report was framed as a set anthropology, law, political science, geograp-
Caren Levy (Development Planning Unit), of distinctive challenges drawing on concepts hy, economics and philosophy.
Mark Maslin (Geography), David McCoy from social science, law and humanities.
(Global Health), Bill McGuire (Earth Scien-
ce), Hugh Montgomery (Medical School),
David Napier (Anthropology), Christina
Pagel (Mathematics), Jinesh Patel (Medical
Student), Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveira
(Environment and Sustainable Develop-
ment), Nanneke Redclift (Anthropology),
Hannah Rees (Researcher), Daniel Rogger
(Economics), Joanne Scott (Law), Judith Project details
Stephenson (Population Health), John
Twigg (Civil Engineering), Jonathan Wolff 2008-2009
(Philosophy), Craig Patterson (Facilitator).
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/igh/research/pro-
jects/all-projects/lancet-1
Budget around £50,000, provided by

UCL Grand Challenge of Global Health
and The Lancet.
Currently it has 756 citations

on Google Scholar
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

philosopher, jurist and spiritual father of UCL
26
UCL Lancet Commission on
Shaping cities for health:
complexity and the planning
of urban environments in
the 21st century Principal investigator
The Commission met during November, These are inter-related issues: changes in the Yvonne Rydin Principal Investigator,
2009, to June, 2011, to provide an analysis urban environment often lead to unintended Professor of Planning, Environment and
of how health outcomes can be improved consequences which particularly affect the Public Policy in the UCL Bartlett School of
through modification of the physical fabric of poor and vulnerable who are often exclu- Planning.
towns and cities and to discuss the role that ded from the debates that gave rise to the
urban planning can have in the delivering of initiatives. More inclusive, community based, Ana Bleahu (Geography), Michael Davies
health improvements. The Commission be- engagement is recommended as part of (Building Physics and Environment), Julio
gan from the premise that cities are complex future planning. The inter-disciplinary team D Dávila (Urban Policy), Sharon Friel
systems, with urban health outcomes de- included academics from the Barlett School (Global Health), Giovanni De Grandis
pendent on many interactions and feedback of Planning, Geography, Philosophy, Engi- (Philosophy), Nora Groce (Disability and
loops, so that prediction within the planning neering, Population Health and elsewhere Inclusive Development), Pedro C Hallal
process is fraught with difficulties and unin- in order to provide a holistic framework in (Child Health), Ian Hamilton (Sustaina-
tended consequences are common. approaching a topic which is intrinsically ble Design), Philippa Howden-Chapman
multi-disciplinary. (Public Health), Ka-Man Lai (Civil Enginee-
The report emphasized the importance of en- ring), C J Lim (Architecture), Juliana Mar-
gaging stakeholders in the planning process; tins (Urban Design), David Osrin (Global
the difficulties of health inequalities within Health), Ian Ridley (Planning), Ian Scott
cities; and the importance of complexity (Facilitator), Myfanwy Taylor (Geography),
analysis to explore unintended consequences Paul Wilkinson (Epidemiology), James
in complex systems. Wilson (Philosophy).
Project details
2009 - 2011
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/healthy-cities/
Budget around £50,000, provided by

UCL Grand Challenge of Sustainable
Cities and The Lancet, UCL Alumni and
the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council Crucible Programme.
UCL Wilkins Building from Quad 27

Lund University
Embodied bilingualism:
Handling multiple languages
in development and use
Marianne Gullberg, PI, is professor of Most people in the world speak several The first necessary focus of the project is on
Psycholinguistics at the Centre for Langua- languages and often learn new languages in method development, specifically for the
ges and Literature, Lund University, and adolescence or adulthood. All speakers also coordination and alignment of articulography
Director of Lund University Humanities coordinate speech and gestures in langua- (speech) and motion capture (gesture) sys-
Lab, an interdepartmental research and ge-specific ways. The world is thus bilingual tems in data collection and in analyses. New
training facility for the Humanities. At the and communication is bimodal. Yet we know test paradigms for electrophysiology must
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, surprisingly little about the neuropsycho- also be piloted. One key challenge is to deve-
the Netherlands, 2000-2009, she headed logical processes underlying bimodal use lop models of coarticulation of (sustained)
the research group The Dynamics of Mul- and learning of multiple languages, and speech data in articulography which has so
tilingual Processing and co-founded the even less about how language learning can far mainly been applied to the production of
Nijmegen Gesture Centre, the first centre be improved and facilitated. Understan- isolated words. Another challenge is to deve-
of its kind. She has published extensively ding these issues is central to all disciplines lop detailed hand models for manual gestures
on second language/bilingual acquisition concerned with the human condition – our in motion capture. Existing models have
and processing, on gesture production and thinking, learning, communication, and typically been tailored to practical goal-di-
comprehension. She uses both behavioural evolution. It is also a societal challenge of rected actions (grasping and lifting cups,
and neurocognitive methods and her rese- the first order. In a world where bilingualism for example), rather than manual gestures
arch is funded by several national funding is prevalent and also an educational goal, which have different properties. The project
agencies. She edits three international it becomes imperative to probe the nature therefore has few breakthroughs to report at
journals, and has acted as Vice-president of of bilingualism and learning, and to find this point, but we expect to have made major
EUROSLA. The research team will consist effective strategies for education. This project advances in all areas within a year, advances
of SSH experts on language, acquisition, tackles these challenges in three ways. First, crucially dependent on crossdisciplinary col-
gesture, and neurocognition, of pro- we establish bimodal profiles of monolingual laboration between SSH scholars and experts
grammers and VR specialists, forming an and bilingual speakers combining data from from other fields.
interdisciplinary team. sensor technology (articulography, motion
capture) with detailed linguistic analyses. Project details
Second, we build virtual monolingual and
bilingual speakers combining the sensor data The project is funded by a Wallenberg
with virtual reality (VR) techniques to develop Scholar grant to Gullberg from the
test platforms and digital tools for teaching Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation
(e.g. virtual French teachers). Third, we probe with a total budget of 15 million SEK
monolingual and bilingual speakers’ bimodal (approx. 1.6 million EUR) over five
comprehension using electrophysiological years. The project has started in earnest
measures of brain activity and manipulated in 2014.
virtual agents (e.g. accent-free speech with
foreign gesture). Strand one and three pro- http://www.sol.lu.se/en/project/631
vide baseline data, and strand two crucially
develops tests of bilingualism and tools for
improving learning based on these baselines.
The combination of expertise in linguistics,
phonetics, learning theory, didactics, and
computational approaches to (big) language
data is vital to the enterprise.
28
Just and Durable
Peace
The project focused on just peace and how to conflicts are particularly resistant to conflict The project was coordinated by the
build a durable peace in the Middle East and settlement through negotiation and tradi- Department of Political Science, Lund
the Western Balkans. The project utilised an tional diplomacy. The use of transitional University and the consortium consisted
interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon justice mechanisms, for instance, democratic of seven partners. Associate professor
insights in peace & conflict research, interna- reforms, protection of human rights and the Karin Aggestam was project leader and
tional law, political science and international (re)installation of the rule of law, have come scientific coordinator; associate professor
relations in order to make contributions to to the fore on the peace-building agenda. The Annika Björkdahl was project manager.
science, policy-making and the causes of just second objective focused on the quest for du- Principal investigators and team leaders
and durable peace. rable peace as several contemporary conflicts were professor Oliver Richmond, school
tend to resist negotiated settlement and the of International Relations, University St
The project focused on three objectives: ones that do reach a peace agreement still Andrews; professor Adrian Hyde-Price,
The first concerned the quest for justice in have a poor track record on implementation. Centre for European politics and langua-
contemporary peace processes, which is a The third objective addressed the quest for ef- ges, Bath University; professor Chandra
central concern as several violent conflicts fective strategies, particularly concerning the Lekha Sriram, Centre for human rights,
and wars are distinguished by gross hu- legal and democratic accountability of states University of East London; professor Inger
man rights violation, ethnic cleansing and and international organisations in compre- Österdahl, faculty of law, and professor
extensive suffering among civilians. These hensive post-conflict peacebuilding. Peter Wallensteen, department of peace
& conflict, Uppsala University; professor
Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, swiss centre for
conflict resolution, the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem; and dr Hasan Mohmani, cen-
tre for conflict prevention, Jordan Institute
for Diplomacy.
Project details
The project was funded within the 7th

Framework Programme, awarded 2007,
for the period 2008 – 2011, with a total
budget of €1 350.
www.justpeace.eu
29
University of Milan
Tarquinia Project
The “Tarquinia Project” is designed to their context of use, needs and interests. The
carry out global archaeological, cultural and virtual Museum of the “Tarquinia Project”,
historical research at a small (mobile finds), available on-line, offers a dynamic over-
Principal investigator medium (archaeological contexts), large scale view of the cultural heritage of the Etruscan
and the research team (territory). The project involves groups from Tarquinia (UNESCO 2004) and represents a
the Università Statale di Milano (Archaeology, model to be adopted also in other situations.
The P.I., Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni, is Information and Communication Techno-
associate professor of Etruscan Studies in logies, Geoarchaeology), the Politecnico di
the Università degli Studi di Milano Milano (Architecture and Topography), etc. Project details
(Dipartimento di Beni Culturali e Ambien- Thanks to our interdisciplinary approach
tali - L-ANT/06), a member of the Dottorato supported by ICTs we implement creative The “Tarquina Project” started in 1982
di Ricerca (Etruscologia) group at Sapienza solutions to bridge the gap among soft and and has been carried out by the Uni-
Università di Roma and of the Istituto Na- hard sciences. We foster the delicate operation versità degli Studi of Milan thanks to
zionale di Studi Etruschi e Italici. Her most of assessing recurrence of association rates a series of national grants. “Tarchna”,
important achievements relate to contact among different series of evidence that helps the virtual Museum of the “Tarquinia
among different cultures in the ancient to identify patterns corresponding to recurrent Project”, was co-funded by the EU.
European and Mediterranean world. actions and behaviours in the Ancient World.
FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME: T.Arc.H.N.A.
She is the director (2004) of the archaeo- Despite the current use of multidisciplinary (Towards Archaeological Heritage New Acces-
logical excavations of the Università degli methods, we face archaeological interpreta- sibility ) European Union Culture 2000
Studi di Milano at Tarquinia and responsi- tion still entrusted to preconceived theoretic programme (N°2004-1488) – 2004-2007
ble for an interdisciplinary research team models. On the contrary our ecosystem of DURATION: 2004-2007
that is formed by a number of scholars tools and services, thanks to which multi- TOTAL BUDGET: 1046.000 euros
involved in research, conservation and disciplinary domain experts can examine all link to project website http://tarchna.
valorization of Cultural Heritage: typologies of data of a given culture, makes tarchna.it/totemonline/ (web browser
- Università degli Studi di Milano it possible to shift from the materiality of CHROME)
Stefano Valtolina (Informatica) Archaeology to invisibility of Ancient life
Andrea Zerboni (Geografia Fisica e Geom- through the identification of the “syntactic” PROJECT PARTNERS:
orfologia) links connecting the material aspects of the Project leader:
Eleonora Riva (Psicologia Sociale) documentation left by ancient communities. Università degli Studi di Milano
- Politecnico di Milano However by controlling the whole research 1. Dipartimento di Scienze dell’An-
Susanna Bortolotto (Settore ICAR/19 - process, the “Tarquinia Project” is also going tichità
Restauro) to be the benchmark for developing outreach 2. Dipartimento di Informatica e Comu-
innovative and creative solutions to involve nicazione (DICO)
scholars and the public at large, according to Co-organisers:
• Computer Science Department, Clau-
de Bernard University Lyon (France)
• Institute of Archaeology/ Art Collec-
tions, Ruhr - University of Bochum
(Germany)
• Department of Computer Sciences,
University College Dublin (Ireland)
• Dublin Institute of Technology
(Ireland)
• Department of Classical Archaeology,
University of Warszawa (Poland)
• Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
(Greece)
30
Reconciling Economic
and Social Europe: Values,
Ideas and Politics (RESc-EU)
The welfare state (WS) and the EU are two Maurizio Ferrera is Professor of Political
precious legacies of the XX century. Their Project details Science and President of the Graduate
mutual relationship has been however fr- School in Social, and Political Studies of
aught by unresolved tensions (and a potential The project is funded by an ERC Advan- the University of Milan. He has published
“clash”), which the recent crisis seems to ced Grant and has started in June 2014. widely in the fields of comparative welfare
have markedly exacerbated. The project pur- states and European Integration. He is
pose is to investigate the genetic roots of such The host Institution is the University the author of “The Boundaries of Welfare.
tensions, their temporal swings, the possible of Milan, Department of Social and European Integration and the New Spatial
institutional solutions and their political Political Sciences. There will also be Politics of Social protection” (Oxford
pre-conditions. When, how and why did the an additional participant: the Centro di University Press, 2005). In Italian he has
initial “elective affinity” between the WS and Ricerca e Documentazione Luigi Einau- recently co-authored “Alle Radici del
the EU start to weaken? Is “reconciliation” di, Turin, which will host the EUvision Welfare all’Italiana” (Marsilio, 2012). He
possible and how? The project will focus on observatory. sits in many scientific boards and has been
the intellectual and political dynamics of both adviser of the European Commission since
WS-building and EU-building. Drawing on The total funds will be in the order of 1993. In his role as policy adviser, he has
Weber’s insights on the relationship between 2,5 million euros for five years. constantly strived to highlight the role of
values, ideas, and politics, a new framework interdisciplinarity for framing and solving
will be elaborated, aimed at reconnecting The project’s main deliverables will collective problems.
these three elements in the explanation be scientific articles, and at least two
of change, thus breaking new grounds in edited books and one single author The project team includes a senior re-
institutional theories. An extensive empirical monograph. A number of academic searcher and three post-docs, recruited
work will be carried out, based on a mul- seminars and conferences will be orga- through an open competition. The “EUvi-
ti-disciplinary approach (political science, nized, bringing together scholars from sion” observatory involves several junior
political philosophy, sociology, history, policy different backgrounds. The EUvision policy analysts.
analysis, law and economics). Detailed case observatory’s production will be more
studies will reconstruct the logic of key past policy-oriented and will include: a
junctures, such as the crisis of the 1970s, the regular newsletter on “EU-voices from
years between the Amsterdam and the Lisbon the net”, tapping in almost real time
Treaties, the post-2008 crisis. Public attitudes public orientations on EU-building; a
on the EU’s social dimensions will be tapped number of timely issue papers on rele-
through a survey and a “Blog Sentiment Ana- vant challenges, in order to contribute
lysis”. Academic and expert networks will be to the European policy debate and a
involved as well as EU policy makers, in order series of regular “Intellectual Europe re-
to discuss the scientific and policy implicati- views” discussing major statements by
ons of the project results. Policy documenta- academics, think tanks experts, public
tion, assessment and proposals will be pro- intellectuals etc.
duced through an observatory (“EUvisions”)
for systematic data collection and analysis on
(social) EU-building “in action”.
31
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Transformations in
Environment and Society
(Rachel Carson Center)
Professor Christof Mauch, the principal The Rachel Carson Center (RCC) is an im Wandel—Gesellschaftsvertrag für eine
investigator of the Rachel Carson Center international and interdisciplinary project at Große Transformation (World in Transiti-
Project, is Chair in American Cultural LMU that started in 2009. It is sponsored by on: A Social Contract for Sustainability). In
History at LMU, and a leading scholar in Germany’s Federal Ministry for Research and their work, Carson fellows are focusing on
international environmental history. A Education. Its research focuses on “Nature as the dynamism of natural transformation, the
former President of the European Society a Cultural Challenge” and on “Transforma- force of social change, and gradual shifts in
for Environmental History, Mauch is an tions in Environment and Society”. The RCC environment and society. Many of the questi-
Honorary Professor and Fellow at Renmin is open to scholars from different discipli- ons that project members ask are of immedi-
University, China. Helmuth Trischler, Head nary backgrounds. RCC fellows and staff ate political relevance; they deal with changes
of Research at the Deutsches Museum, is a members have training in the humanities, in economies and values, with the creation
co-director of the project. He and his staff social sciences and natural sciences; many of new political systems and technologies,
are currently working on a large Carson are environmental historians. More than with the drying up of old natural resources or
Center exhibition. Titled “Welcome to the 100 fellows and over 30 doctoral students the discovery of new ones, and they discuss
Anthropocene”, this exhibition will show- have been working on issues regarding the unintended consequences and risks that have
case how humans have manipulated the interrelationship between environmental been involved in historical attempts to control
environment to such an extent that some and social changes. Our research focuses in nature.
scientists, most notably the chemist and particular on the reasons—social engines,
Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, have called political factors, cultural perceptions, and
for a new epoch in the history of the planet environmental conditions—that have caused
changes in the past and will cause changes
The team of advanced researchers consists in the future. The focus on “transformati-
of 12-25 scholars from a dozen disciplines on” has particular currency in the context
and every continent. It is permanently of current public discussions. It is found in
changing because fellowships for interna- the main recommendations of Germany’s
tional scholars are limited to 12 months. Advisory Council on Global Change, Welt
Project details
The project was started on August 1,

2009 and it is being funded by the Fede-
ral Ministry of Research and Education
in Germany. The budget for Phase I
(2009-2015) is approximately 13 million
Euros; the project will be continued
through 2021. We expect additional fun-
ding in the amount of 10 million plus.
WEBSITE: www.rachelcarsoncenter.de
32
Individual and societal consequences of
digitalization: The influence of algorithms
on the aggregation und composition of
media content
Digitalization has been dramatically chan- The goal of this project is to address these Principal investigator
ging the communication of news. While questions by examining two main elements of and the research team
journalists were traditionally responsible the media ecosystem: agenda setting and the
for creating, interpreting and distributing funding of news services. In an experimental The project is lead by Professors Hans-
news, the rise of the Internet has empowered setting, we will test different methods for Bernd Brosius (Department of Commu-
regular citizens to participate in (and thus to aggregating and personalizing news. These nication Science and Media Research,
influence) this process. Recently, digitaliza- methods include content-based filtering [email protected]) and
tion has also begun to take over other tasks (which selects content based on the individu- Thomas Hess (Institute for Information
that used to be reserved for journalists such al interests of the user), collaborative filtering Systems and New Media, [email protected].
as the selection and aggregation of news. In (which selects content prioritized by the de) at LMU Munich. Other team members
particular, services that automatically bundle crowd of other users), and a hybrid of both include Andreas Graefe, Mario Haim, and
content and tailor it to the users’ individual methods. The results will provide informa- Oliver Oechslein.
preferences are becoming increasingly popu- tion on the topic agenda and users’ willing-
lar as a cost-effective and efficient means to ness-to-pay and will thus contribute to the
process information (e.g., Google News). Yet, agenda setting theory and the digital goods
little is known about how these developments theory. The project provides the starting point
may change the traditional business models for the new research area “Individual and
of publishers and thus may affect the quality Societal Consequences of Digitalization” at
of public communication in general. LMU Munich.
Hans-Bernd Brosius Thomas Hess
Project details
The project started in October 2013 and

is funded by LMUexcellent with a total
budget of 100,000 Euro.
33
University of Oxford
IMPacts and Risks from high-

End Scenarios: Strategies for
Innovative solutiONS (IMPRESSIONS)
Dr. Paula A. Harrison is a Senior Research IMPRESSIONS is a new EU-funded 9 million range of existing and new models of impacts
Scientist and Project Manager within the euro research project coordinated by the and adaptation in five case studies covering
Biodiversity Group of the Environmental University of Oxford (Dr. Paula Harrison) and global, European and regional/local (Scot-
Change Institute. She has a D.Phil. entitled involving 27 research institutions in Europe land, Iberia and Hungary) scales.
Climate Change and Wheat Production: and beyond from a wide range of disciplinary,
Spatial Modelling of Impacts in Europe interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary back- The impacts modelling work is embedded
(University of Oxford), a M.Sc. in Opera- grounds. This team are working together on within an integrated assessment approach
tional Research (University of Lancaster) the major societal challenge of climate chan- which advances analysis of multi-scale and
and a B.Sc. in Geography and Statistics ge. More specifically, IMPRESSIONS aims to cross-sectoral synergies and trade-offs (cove-
(University of Salford). advance understanding of the consequences ring the agricultural, forestry, biodiversity,
of high-end climate change and to evalua- water, coastal, urban and health sectors). The
Dr. Harrison has extensive experience of te how such knowledge can be embedded time- and path-dependency of adaptation
coordinating and managing numerous EC within effective and integrated adaptation and mitigation options will then be evalua-
and national research projects on climate and mitigation decision-making processes. ted taking account of the non-linearity and
change impacts and adaptation over the The project works closely with decision-ma- tipping points described in the scenarios and
last 20 years. She is Coordinator of the kers to better understand their knowledge impact model results. Finally, all the results
IMPRESSIONS project and was coordi- needs and maximise their active participation will be synthesised and analysed to identify
nator of its predecessor, the CLIMSAVE in the research. It is also developing a novel the inherent risks and opportunities associa-
(Climate Change Integrated Assessment stakeholder-driven methodology for the cre- ted with new integrated policy strategies for
Methodology for Cross-Sectoral Adapta- ation of an integrated set of high-end climate adaptation to, and mitigation of, high-end
tion and Vulnerability in Europe) project and more extreme socio-economic scenarios. climate change.
(2010-13). She is also Deputy Coordina- These scenarios are being applied to a wide
tor for the EU BESAFE (Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services: Arguments for our
Future Environment) project (2011-15), WP
leader for the FP7 OPENNESS (Operationa- Project details
lisation of the concepts of Natural Capital
and Ecosystem Services) project (2012- The IMPRESSIONS project started on
2017) and WP leader for the UK National 1 November 2013 and has a duration of
Ecosystem Assessment Follow-on Project. 5 years, finishing on 31 October 2018.
The interests of her research team in the
Environmental Change Institute include The total budget for the project is
the development and application of mathe- 11,250,000 euros of which the EU con-
matical models for investigating climate tribution is approximately 9 million.
change impacts and adaptation options for
biodiversity and ecosystem services and de- The project is funded under the Euro-
veloping integrated assessment techniques pean Commissions’ 7th Framework
which bring together diverse disciplines to Programme.
analyse climate change adaptation taking
account of cross-sectoral interactions and Further information can be obtained
multiple drivers. from the projects website:
www.impressions-project.eu.
34
The Balkh Art and Cultural
Heritage Project (BACH)
Oxford University’s ‘Balkh Art and Cultural • BACH will serve as a case study for revi- Edmund Herzig is the project’s Principal
Heritage Project,’ (BACH) funded by the Le- siting the history of other eastern Islamic Investigator. Arezou Azad co-manages the
verhulme Trust has a dual aim of undertaking cities, and by extension the political and project and oversees the textual survey and
new research on Afghanistan’s early Islamic economic development of this part of the critical edition and translation of the Fa-
history, and building the capacity of Afghan Islamic world. da’il-i Balkh. She works closely with Ali
colleagues in cultural heritage research. It • BACH researchers visiting Afghanistan Mir-Ansari. Paul Wordsworth is Research
is an excellent example of the humanities always pair with Afghan cultural heritage officer on the team, and is investigating the
helping to develop Innovative and Reflective workers. The team members provide wider landscape of Balkh, analysing trade
Societies1 that understand their history by ‘on-the-job’ training to their Afghan routes and regional hydrological networks.
supporting those locally who would protect counterparts. In December 2013, the pro- Both he and Michael Athanson are working
and enhance their cultural heritage, and ject hosted two Afghan visitors from the on the digital cartography of the city.
using digital methods to enable greater parti- National Archives and Kabul University Other team members include Pierre
cipation and awareness in Afghanistan of the on visits to Oxford and Birmingham. Simeon, and Stefan Heidemann, who take
region’s rich history. • BACH is helping to build a corps of qua- responsibility for artefact analysis. Hugh
lified Afghan partners, and to integrate Kennedy and Tasha Vorderstrasse work
• BACH is using Oxford’s IT expertise to them within the wider community of with textual sources in Arabic and Chinese
build a comprehensive database into a international cultural heritage and histo- respectively. Robert Hoyland has held a
time-series or ‘layers’ of maps, and analy- rical researchers and practitioners. seminar series in Kabul on the early Islamic
sed within a GIS framework. The finished • BACH’s partners include research and history Afghanistan and Central Asia.
datasets will be published as Google cultural heritage organisations in Afgha- Each international team member has
Maps© layers. nistan, including the Ministry of Infor- partnered with Afghan scholars for training
• A Dari language version of the website is mation and Culture, the Kabul National and communication purposes. Nicholas
being created to maximise the informa- Museum and the French Archaeological Evans, a doctoral student in Oxford, worked
tion available in Afghanistan about the Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA). through dozens of reports by Soviet archae-
local area. ologists on Bactria; an intern Zeinab Alsadat
Azarbadegan carried out London-based
research in the India Office Records to sup-
port the mapping team, and helped in the
planned Dari version of the BACH website.
Project details
http://balkhheritage.org/
START DATE: Sept 2011
1 ‘Understanding the roles of individuals, communities, institutions, states and cross-natio- FULL PROJECT COST: £493,810 - £257,233
nal collaboration over time is crucial for Europe’s future’. The Future of the Social Sciences from Leverhulme Trust, £236,577 from
and Humanities in Europe, p.37. Oxford University
35
Pierre & Marie Curie University
DECINDICO
Mice and Human: individuals
© UPMC-Pierre Kitmacher
and collective decisions
DECINDICO involves junior and senior DECINDICO is an interdisciplinary project of interdisciplinary approach of natural sciences
researcher from two universities and research teams in the fields of neuroscience and SSH.
research institutes of Sorbonne Universi- (UPMC, CNRS, INSERM) and philosophy of
ties. The project brings together two teams sciences (Université Paris-Sorbonne). The With this objective in mind, the neuroscien-
of neuroscience of UPMC and a group researchers will study in a new and simplified tists have developed an experimental device,
of science philosophers from Université way the decision making process in collecti- ‘Souris-City’, a large environment where
Paris-Sorbonne. vity of animals and transfer these results to animal groups live during long periods in
Human beings. semi-natural conditions with socially and
The three laboratories are: “FRE 3593 ecologically adequate situations. In this
Sciences, normes, decision” (Université Recently, numerous research projects, especi- environment, groups of mice have controlled
Paris-Sorbonne), “UMR Adaptation Biolo- ally in the fields of social psychology and cog- access to specific areas to feed and drink
gique et Vieillissement” (UPMC-CNRS and nitive sciences have highlighted the influence while their social and circadian behavior are
ERL-INSERM) and “UMR Neuroscience of structure and social hierarchies on decisi- permanently monitored via several sensors
PARIS Seine” (UPMC, CNRS, INSERM). ons of individuals. Other studies suggest that (video control and RFID detection).
The principal investigator of the project is the concept of individuality is very common
Jean Mariani, professor at the UPMC. Prof. among animals. This “individuality” is The neuroscientists focus on the device of
Jean Mariani teaches neuroscience and defined by the coherency of an individual in ‘Souris City’ and the philosophers work on
the biology of ageing as well as practi- terms of his answers and decisions faced with the influence of collective organizations and
cing at the Charles Foix hospital (Public environmental and social challenges and by social hierarchies on decision making pro-
Assistance-Paris Hospitals). He works in constant differences between the answers cesses among Humans. The experiments and
the research laboratory B2A, Biological of individuals. The results are in general on results of ‘Souris-City’ are analyzed through
Adaptation and Ageing and is the head of a descriptive level and DECINDICO enters a interaction between neuroscientists and phi-
the research group “Brain development new phase in order to update these mechanis- losophers and are compared and transmitted
repair and ageing”. ms and realise innovative insights due to the to decision making models of Human beings.
Project details
The project started in June 2014 and is

initially planned for one year. The total
budget is about 270.000 €.
The project is financed by Sorbonne

Universities in the frame of the pro-
gramme Convergence, by the LABEX
Biopsy, the Region Dim Cerveau and the
three participating laboratories.
36
AFrique Australe: Dr. Loïc Segalen is a member of the group
© UPMC-Pierre Kitmacher
« Biominéralisation et environnements
Transitions sédimentaires at the Paris Earth Sciences

Institute (Institut des Sciences de la Terre de
Environnementales
Paris). His research interests are mainly fo-
cused on a multidisciplinary approach (geo-
chemistry, sedimentology) of the Neogene
palaeoenvironments and palaeoclimate in
continental domains. The research team
The Neogene of Africa is particularly interes- the last 12 million years in southern Africa, integrate specialist in sedimentology
ting for human paleontology, because it is du- targeting new sites allowing comparisons (Dr Alain Person, UPMC), paleontology and
ring this period that the human lineage and with known data obtained from sites in human evolution from the MNHN and the
that of African apes diverged. Major climate sub-Saharan Africa. It fills a gap in the study CNRS (Pr Brigitte Senut, Dr Martin Pick-
changes that occurred during this time had a of environments and therefore climates from ford, Dr Dominique Gommery, Dr Sénégas)
strong effect on the pale environments, fau- a period where the first representatives of our
nas and floras across the globe. Africa being family emerged. Since the mid-1920s, the
centered on the equator underwent major trend has been to focus on the same sites. We Project details
changes during this period, with significant are trying to understand if there was a local
displacement of biogeographic boundaries, evolution in the south between non-human
The Sorbonne University project started
phytochores and species distributions. In hominoids and the first Australopithecus.
in March 2014 and will run for two
addition, climate change has led to a very Recent discoveries of Miocene and Pliocene
years, funding by the Sorbonne Univer-
important evolutionary activity, especially in sites in Etosha park in Namibia and Pliocene/ sities Convergence Program” Environ-
plants and mammals. The vast majority of the Early Pleistocene at Bolt’s Farm in the Cradle ment & Society” (75 000euros).
assumptions about the evolution of hominids of Humankind in South Africa, represent new
and their environments are focused in eastern research potential in southern Africa, because In Etosha, the project was initiated
Africa. However, pale environmental and they are located at a key chronological turn- in 2006 with the first discoveries of
paleontological data also indicates that sou- ing point for understanding human origins. Mio-Pliocene fossils in the Etosha area
thern Africa is a region not to be overlooked. during a short reconnaisance. Two trips
in Namibia have been then supported in
The project is characterized by its multidis- 2007, 2009 by CNRS, French Embassy in
Windhoek and the Geological Survey of
ciplinary approach (geochemistry, sedimen-
Namibia (logistics and administration)
tology and palaeontology) to study the past
under the auspices the National Heritage
environments. It focuses on the studies over
Council of Namibia. Some results are
already accessible in the Communications
of the Geological Survey of Namibia (2014).
In South Africa, the project focuses on

sites at Bolts Farm excavated by the
team of the CNRS LIA n°1041 HOMEN
(Hominids and Environments: Evolu-
tion of Plio-Pleistocene Biodiversity)
in association with the Plio-Pleis-
tocene section of the Ditsong National
Museum of Natural History since 2011.
The researches have been supported
by CNRS UPR 2147 and the French
Embassy in Pretoria under the auspices
of the South African Heritage Resour-
ces Agency. http://www.afrique-australe.
aird.fr/les-activites/projets-de-recherche/
la-biodiversite-au-plio-pleistocene-dans-
le-cradle-of-humankind-en-afrique-du-
sud-homen
37
Université Paris-Sud
COMPARSE
Study of the relationships between cognition, motivation, and
personality, for emotional adaptation and regulation, using em-
pathic virtual simulation
Principal investigator: The project investigates the links between adaptation facilitates performance. Beside
Michel-Ange Amorim is Professor in emotions, cognition and behaviour in terms healthy individuals, participants, the project
Cognitive neuropsychology at University of performance facilitation, protection, and also includes patients suffering from mood
Paris-Sud. He became head of the CIAMS vulnerability as a function of empathetic and/or social cognitive disorders (schizophr-
(Complexity, Innovation, Motors and emotional contexts. The main hypothesis enia, bipolar disorders).
Sports activities) in January 2014. is that the emotional context’s effect on
perceptive, executive, motor performances, The applied consequences of the present
as well as social cognition, varies according project are turned towards e-learning as well
to (1) temperamental factors (personality as the cognitive remediation of altered func-
traits) and (2) the type of empathic adapta- tions when working with patients presenting
tion (pre-reflexive vs reflexive ; virtuous vs a dysfunction of the emotion-cognition
prejudicial). The groundbreaking nature of links. The project hopes to assist protocol
this project stems, on the one hand, from definition with regards to the investigation
an interdisciplinary exploration of the links of links between emotions, cognitions and
between emotion and cognition (differen- behaviours; to develop multimodal bodies of
Other researchers tial psychology, psychopathology, cognitive knowledge on spontaneous complex emoti-
• Christine Le Scanff neuropsychology, computer science, human onal expression behaviours; and to generate
Professor of Psychology (Univ Pa- movement sciences), and, on the other hand, an adapted experimental platform integrating
ris-Sud). She is also the Dean of the from the will to understand emotional regula- various existing tools towards the study of the
Sport Sciences Faculty and the director tion and its mechanisms, not only in terms of affective interaction between users and virtual
of the PhD School. emotional induction, but on how empathetic characters.
• Brice Isableu is Assistant Professor
Psychology and Neurosciences
(Univ Paris-sud)
• Jean-Claude Martin and Project details
Laurence Devillers are both Professor in
Computer Science at Paris-Sud Univer- The project began in January 2012 for
sity JC Martin is also Head of the Group 36 months. The total funding was EUR
“Cognition, Perception and Usability” at 410.479 from the National Agency of
LIMSI-CNRS. Research in France (ANR).
• Christine Passerieux and Eric Brunet
are both Professor – Psychiatrist at the The main partner is the CIAMS
University of Versailles. They are in (EA4532) of Paris-Sud
charge of the pathology application of
the model.
• Edith Filaire is Professor of Physiology at
the University of Orleans.
38
Cloud Business Ahmed Bounfour is Professor at University

Paris-Sud, Holder of the European Chair
Organisational on Intellectual capital and Director for

the Networking and Innovation Group of
Design (CBOD)
RITM, the research Institute in economics
and Management of University Paris Sud.
He is also co-leader of the digital modelling
research field, Digital society Institute ,
University Paris Saclay and Editor of Sprin-
This project, inscribed in fundamental rese- • Elaborate different means to model and gerBriefs in Digital Spaces.
arch, but with applicability in real world set- simulate cloud-based design in organizati-
tings, aims at developing the management, ons enabling a more active and intelligent Research team
economics and IT community knowledge exploration of Cloud-based solutions from • Emmanuel Waller, Associate Professor,
on cloud computing, from an organizational an organizational and business point of Informatics, University Paris Sud
and business point of view. view. The means considered include ap- • Bogdan Cautis , Professor, Informatics,
proaches such agent-based modelling, sys- University Paris Sud
Although Cloud Computing appears as a per- tem dynamics, equation-based modelling, • Mélanie Herschel , Associate Professor,
vasive and disruptive technology promising to ontology modelling, and associated tools, Informatics, University Paris Sud
have a major impact on information systems in with a particular interest to solutions that • Nicole Bidoit, Professor, Informatics,
organizations, this topic has scantly been ana- are very comprehensible (both in exploring University Paris Sud
lysed in information systems research until and designing the models) • Alain Rallet, Professor , Economics,
now and mainly from a technical perspective. • Provide a techno-economic model of cloud University Paris-Sud
Given the importance and the depth of chan- technology in relation to their dimensio- • Florence Durieux, Professor, Manage-
ges brought by this trend of “cloudification” ning, and cost models, so as to inform the ment Science, University Paris-Sud
of information systems in organizations, it selection of the way services are offered • Serge Pajak, Associate Professor, Univer-
seems important for both managers , decision and charged to the “customers”, and for sity Paris Sud
makers and IT /IS researchers to increase their instance to guide the choice of the most • Ioana Manolescu-Goujot, Director ,
understanding of this phenomenon, in order effective business models INRIA
to help organizations benefit from this new • Investigate issues related to Cloud Compu- • Valérie Fernandez, Professor, Telecom
technological trend, and in particular com- ting solutions adoption by organizations Paris Tech
prehend in a more holistic way the different • Build a set of cases and scenario able to • Laure Muselli, Associate Professor,
dimensions that are involved in the design and reflect the diversity of issues, situation and Telecom Paris Tech
the operation of cloud-based IS. perspective of Cloud-based information • Valérie Fautero, Associate Professor,
systems (e.g. business models, resistance Telecom ParisTech
This project will consist in elaborating a to change, national specificities and inter-
variety of means that will make significantly national comparison, etc.), that will be also
simpler the elaboration, the decision and the used to validate the approach Project details
evaluation of cloud-based solutions from in-
formation system management and business The projects addresses key societal challen- The project started in February 2014 ,
point of view, and able to accommodate the ges, especially by considering how ICT and and will end Mid 2016
need for an holistic approach. cloudification impact innovative capabili- The funding is provided by the National
ties of European firms and industries. The Agency of Research in France (ANR).
More specifically this project will: project, which takes an interdisciplinary TOTAL BUDGET : 335000 Euros.
• Make an inventory of cloud-based research approach, articulates different perspectives : The project is also supported by a
and approaches in the domain of mana- ICT hard technology, economics, organisa- complementary fund (30 K Euros) from
ging information systems. tion science and management science. It will CNRS for developing interdiscipli-
• Elaborate a conceptual and analytical contribute to the emerging field of organisa- nary research under the PEPS- Projets
holistic framework of cloud computing tional design by assessing how the cloudifi- Exploratoires Premier Soutien for Saclay
for organizations. A particular attention cation of organisations design might be an University- action line
will be given at articulating the different important perspective in innovation. WEBSITE : http://www.ritm.u-psud.fr/
dimensions, rather than considering each
of them separately.
39
University of Strasbourg
Strasbourg School of
European Studies
The Strasbourg School of European Stu- The current political and economic turmoil the transformations of politics. Based
dies is headed by Jay Rowell, CNRS rese- and the EU’s crisis of intelligibility raises on historical, sociological and political
arch director in political sociology and the an important scientific challenge making it research on the space of European actors
steering committee is comprised of Amélie necessary to move beyond the prevailing in- (in a broad sense, including institutional
Barbier-Gauchard, Senior lecturer in Eco- stitutional and mono-disciplinary approaches actors, interest groups, professionals of
nomics, William Gasparini, Professor of in European studies to produce new insights European, national and local policy, Coun-
Sociology, Elisabeth Lambert-Adelgawad, on the new boundaries of European demo- cil of Europe…), the study of the changing
CNRS research director in law and Sylvain cracy, integration and policy. The Strasbourg configurations of the national, European
Schirmann, Professor of contemporary School of European Studies intends to deve- and international fields of power will shed
history. lop original investigative methods to analyze light on the crisis of the European project.
the competing historical, political, social,
The interdisciplinary research team economic, scientific and legal dynamics at 2. The relationships between the transna-
includes professors, lecturers, CNRS play in the definition of the European project tional circulation of public policy norms
researchers and PhD students from the and the way in which it impacts on European and instruments and the production of the
Society, Actors and Government in Europe societies. European societal space. This innovative
research centre (http://sage.unistra.fr/) and approach to the analysis of Europeanizati-
confirmed or promising young researchers The project focuses on the central question of on processes and European public policy
in economics, history and sociology from the nexus between European institutions and will focus on the circulation of regulatory
other research centres at the University of societies around two research themes: instruments and on the appropriation of
Strasbourg. these instruments by the diverse audiences
1. The relationships between the transna- that make up the European societal space.
tionalization of the fields of power and
Project details
The project began in September 2012

and will run to September 2015 with a
total budget of €300.000. It was funded
by the University of Strasbourg’s Ex-
cellence initiative funded by the French
Government’s future investments
program. Further details on specific
aspects of the project and related publi-
cations can be found on the homepage
of the Strasbourg School of European
Studies.
http://projexeurope.misha.fr/
40
ArkeoGIS, archéologie et
géographie antiques entre
Vosges et Forêt-Noire
The project ArkeoGIS is an online free-wa- community of research has the opportunity Principal investigator
re that aggregates databases produced by to develop new trans-boundary research pro- and the research team
French and German archaeologists and jects, moreover, public and private operators
geographers. Over 25 different datasets share their results, spare time and money, Loup Bernard, french archaeologist,
are offered to the participants, giving them university teachers can provide direct access studied in Aix-en-Provence and Tübingen,
access to metadatas concerning both ar- to literature to their advanced students, in the research team integrates geographers
chaeological and geographical objects -sites, french or german language. Rescue archae- from Strasbourg (D. Ertlen, D. Schwartz)
artefacts, analysis...- With this new tool, the ologists are aware of the state of art in the working on holocene soil use, german
neighbour country, and geographers can use archaeologists (University Freiburg),
archaeological data in they research. archaeological public services (DRAC-
SRA, Landesamt fuer Dernkmalpflege)
Project details Sharing those data is also important outside and rescue archaelogists (INRAP, PAIR,
the research, when we want to present our ANTEA). This community gains of sharing
The project was initially a MISHA juni- work to the public. Museums, schools, data : new work and analyses are planned
or-project, then became an INTERREG tourism and cultural resources management with the knowledge of what the neighbour
with EU (ERDF) money. but also urban planners are interested in our already did, so the costs are lowered, more
results. Having trans-boundary mappings of trans-boundary projects appear and the
Complete history, some articles, where the Romans did settle, or information language barrier is lowered.
posters, presentations and partners are of the ecological impact of overexploitation
listed on the website (in French and of forest or the floodplains over the last 5000
German) www.arkeogis.org (http://ar- years are results that concern both SSH rese-
keogis.org/page/documentation) arch and the actual society.
The project has managed to aggregate

around 100 searchers of different insti-
tutions, over 25 databases and several
10 000 sites and analysis in the upper
Rhine valley
INTERREG IV Rhin supérieur, “Faire de

l’espace du Rhin supérieur une region
intégrée en matière de formation,
de travail et d’habitat”, project B27,
« ArkeoGIS Entre Vosges et Forêt-Noire,
archéologie et géographies antiques »
from 1/6/2011 to 31/5/2014, 276 856 €.
PARTNERS : Université de Strasbourg,
Universität Freiburg, UMR 7044, ERL
7230, MISHA, DRAC –Service Régional
de l’Archéologie, Regierungspräsidien
Freiburg & Karlsruhe, INRAP, PAIR,
HUMA-NUM, CRESAT-UHA.
41
Utrecht University
Investments in a sustainable
workforce in Europe:
causes and consequences in
comparative perspective
Tanja van der Lippe is a Professor of So- This project addresses one of the major chal- whether organizational investments contribute
ciology at Utrecht University and Principal lenges for European societies and the well- to better performance by the employee, the organi-
Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant being of European citizens as well as a major zation and the country. Revising theoretical me-
‘Investments in a Sustainable Workforce’. challenge for SSH research: How to foster a chanisms, we formulate original hypotheses
She is an elected member of the Royal sustainable European workforce? Economic based on the idea that interdependencies between
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and demographic trends are impelling the organizations and employees and related mu-
the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and need for a sustainable European workforce, tual risks and norms influence investments and
Humanities and the European Academy consisting of productive, satisfied employees their utilization by employees.
of Sociology. Her research interests are in (micro level), profitable organizations and
the area of work-family linkages in Dutch cohesive workplaces (meso level) and a high A unique feature of this ambitious program is
and other societies, for which she received employment rate and flourishing economy its multi-level design. Data will be gathered on
a number of large scale grants from Dutch (macro level). So far comparative research 30 organizations and their employees in nine
and European Science Foundations. Her re- has focused on the micro and macro level. Little countries (Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hun-
search has gained international recognition is known about the role of organizations and gary, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
and she has published in leading journals their investments in a sustainable workforce. UK) representing different types of welfare
such as Annual Review of Sociology, Jour- regime with ample variation in macrolevel
nal of Marriage and the Family, and Journal This research programme introduces the conditions. The applicant’s longstanding
of Management. Collaborators include organizational level and its interaction with the data-gathering experience and cooperation
Prof. Suzan Lewis (UK), Dr. Anja Abendroth country and employee levels into research on with researchers in these countries makes data
(Germany), Prof. Eva Fodor (Hungary), the sustainable workforce. First, it examines collection feasible. The data will permit in-
Prof. Maria das Dores Guerreiro (Portugal), organizational investments in (1) human and depth examination of all three levels and of mi-
Prof. Margareta Bäck-Wiklund (Sweden), social capital, (2) work-life policies, (3) work cro-meso relationships. The European Founda-
Prof. Siyka Kovacheva (Bulgaria), flexibility, (4) long-term employability of older tion’s European Company Survey will be used
Prof. Jouko Nätti (Finland) and workers, and (5) flexicurity. Second, it explains to test meso-macro hypotheses. The project
Prof. Steven Poelmans (Spain). differences in such investments and their is truly interdisciplinary, on the interface of
Furthermore, the project team includes utilization by employees based on micro, meso sociology, economics, and psychology, using
three PhD students and two Postdocs. and macro characteristics, including interacti- insights from and contributing to the growth
ons between the three levels. Third, it analyzes of knowledge in each of these disciplines.
© Jeroen Wandemaker
Project details
This is an ERC Advanced Grant project

with Tanja van der Lippe as applicant
and Principal Investigator. The project
has been granted by the ERC in 2013,
with a total budget of 2250 k€ Euro.
For more details see:
http://www.sustainableworkforce.eu/
42
Institutions
Bas van Bavel (1964) is a distinguished

Faculty Professor of socio-economic
history. In 2007 he was asked to coordi-
nate the university focus area Origins and
Institutions is one of the four Strategic Themes Impacts of Institutions. By bringing together
of Utrecht University. It starts from the the best researchers of the departments
insight that a crucial determinant of the of history, sociology, economics, law and
ability of societies to deal with challenges is public administration, this research area
their institutional infrastructure. To adapt developed into a thriving, interdisciplinary
and innovate traditional institutions, and research community, combining academic
to develop new ones for dealing with new quality with societal relevance. The results
challenges, is not easy and straightforward, are endorsed by Utrecht University as one
however. It requires a deeper knowledge of the four strategic themes of Utrecht
of how institutions are formed, how they University, with Bas van Bavel acting as the
function and how they shape outcomes. To academic director.
this end, scholars from economics, history,
public administration, law, sociology, ethics, The programme team consists of Mark Bo-
innovation studies and geography have joined vens (professor of Public Administration),
forces to improve the understanding of the Vincent Buskens (professor of Theoretical
formation and effects of institutions and how Sociology), Marcus Düwell (professor
they contribute to the construction of open of Philosophical Ethics), Marko Hekkert
and sustainable societies. The programme is (professor of Dynamics of Innovation
organized around five concrete themes: clusive democratic institutions, based on the Systems), Tanja van der Lippe (professor
rule of law, at various geographical scales. of Sociology of Households and Employ-
Cooperation, self-regulation, collective acti- Equality, inclusion, social mobility focuses on ment Relations) and Erik Stam (professor
on considers how to ensure cooperative equal opportunities for people in our society: of Economics of Entrepreneurship and
behaviour among groups of citizens using how to achieve a broad distribution of politi- Innovation).
modes of voluntary human behaviour and cal and economic resources, avoid inequality
interaction, as well as effective regulation. and related tensions.
Democratic governance, citizenship, trust concerns Innovation and economic growth, investigates
sustainable democratic governance: how to how innovation should be managed and
create and reinforce robust, resilient, and in- regulated to improve economic and societal
performance.
Social sustainability and resilience deals with
Project details the question how to organize our society so
that economic development is not hampered
The research programme started in while at the same time the basis for future
2013, has a five year budget of 1 million development is not eroded, economically,
euro’s, funded by the university and the ecologically and socially.
participating faculties. For more details
see: http://www.uu.nl/university/rese-
arch/EN/strategic-themes/instituties.
43
University of Zurich
Project details
Dynamics of The project is part of a long-standing

strategic initiative of UZH to support
Healthy Aging innovative and user-oriented ageing rese-

arch. Starting in 2002 with the strategic
hiring of new positions in gerontology
and psychology of ageing, it strengthened
Lutz Jäncke Mike Martin
the interdisciplinary Gerontology Centre.
Principal investigators The vision of the project is an evidence-base This served as a bottom-up incubator for
and the research team for individualized quality-of-life-stabilizing the further development towards healthy
interventions that work in the real life of ageing research as a University Research
Mike Martin and Lutz Jäncke have initiated ageing individuals. The project takes four Priority Programme “Dynamics of Healt-
the effort to focus modern ageing research new approaches: It examines the deter- hy Ageing” and the coordination with
on examining how healthy ageing indivi- minants of healthy instead of ill ageing, it other ageing research groups at UZH and
duals manage to stabilize their quality of examines the factors stabilizing instead of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
life and health in real life – not what makes declining health, it uses an evidence standard in Zurich (ETHZ). The Philosophical Fa-
them ill. This is a true interdisciplinary for real life instead of laboratory outcomes, culty has supported the strategic initiative
challenge, requiring new theoretical and and it aggregates results on the level of indivi- with matching funds for competence
dynamic concepts of health, new methods duals instead of populations. centres in the field such as the Geronto-
to measure health behaviours in real life, logy Centre and the International Normal
and new analytical tools to study stabili- Current approaches to clinical ageing Ageing and Plasticity Imaging Centre
zation outcomes. The cross-faculty and research focus on illness detection and (INAPIC). Locally, the project coordinates
interdisciplinary effort currently includes prevention, use population data to examine over 15 research groups with over 100
and coordinates 15 research groups, and the effects of health behaviours, and examine researchers on all qualification levels.
multiple extensions are in preparation. The untypical ageing populations of single-di- Nationally, national centre grants and
project benefits from a concentration of sease individuals. This project uses a new several national research programmes
methods specialists from different fields paradigm on healthy ageing research: It takes have been informed by the project, and
and an outreach programme establishing a contextualized and self-regulated individual recently the Swiss Academies of Sciences
a common methodological language development approach, and systematically have put “real life health outcome measu-
of all groups involved. This serves as a examines pathways of dynamic health-stabi- rement” on the national research agenda.
catalyst for healthy aging research across lization within individuals. The advantages Internationally, the recent founding of the
an increasing number of researchers and of this paradigm are: It allows to systema- European Cognitive Aging Society (EU-
disciplines. tically determine and substantially increase CAS) including several LERU universities
the effects of environmental contexts on the has demonstrated the large potential for
Current collaborators at the University of maintenance of cognitive, physical or social international collaborations.
Zurich (UZH): Martin (Gerontology), Jänc- health, to include individual need measures
ke (Neurosciences), Battegay (Internal Me- when deciding between treatments, to install In the last five years (2010-2014), the Facul-
dicine & Multimorbidity), Bischoff-Ferrari aging individuals as decision-makers in their ty of Arts and Social Sciences and the UZH
(Geriatrics), Ehlert (Clinical Psychology), own health affairs, to measure the effects of have invested CHF 3.3 Mio (EUR 2.7 Mio)
Flitsch (Ethnology), Freund (Lifespan treatments in real life, and to develop and use into the project. By now, the project has
Development), Hengartner (European modern portable technology to determine attracted funding from the Swiss National
Ethnology), Kunz (Theology), Maercker health outcomes in real life. Science Foundation and private foundati-
(Psychotherapy), Oberauer (Experimental ons of CHF 10 Mio (EUR 8.17 Mio).
Psychology), Riener (Robotics), Scholz Establishing the approaches of the project
(Health Psychology), Steineck (Japano- in healthy ageing research, thus, is suppor- LINKS TO PROJECT:
logy), Weibel (Geographic Information ting the development of innovative theories, University Research Priority Programme
Systems). methodology, and technology. With its focus “Dynamics of Healthy Aging”
on individual health in real life, it is neces- http://www.dynage.uzh.ch/index.html
sarily interdisciplinary, and with its practical Gerontology Centre
applications it can contribute enormously http://www.zfg.uzh.ch/index.html
to a productively ageing society and vital International Normal Aging and Plasti-
longevity. city Imaging Centre (INAPIC)
http://www.inapic.uzh.ch/index.html
44
Language and Space
Elvira Glaser Heiko Hausendorf
In highly mobile societies, language plays variety, language users identify with or distin- Principal investigators
an essential role in maintaining and under- guish themselves from others. Speakers also and the research team
standing identities across space and cultures. use language to establish social categoriza-
However, very little is known about language tions and positioning. So far, little is known Elvira Glaser and Heiko Hausendorf, the
in real-life contexts and the links between about the relations between language areas directors of the project “Language and
language, physical space and social contexts. and everyday interaction spaces. Space”, decided to combine their research
By choosing a particular language or regional interests in language areas and interactio-
The project “Language and Space” closes nal spaces. By now, many research fellows
these knowledge gaps using cutting-edge joined in, and the research team currently
technology and innovative methodology, consists of 19 research groups (collabo-
combining insights from dialectology with rators) covering several language families
language typology, interactional linguistics, and specializations, while belonging to
and social sciences. Methodologically, the different disciplines and faculties – namely
individual projects within the cluster use and Linguistics (Comparative Linguistics, In-
Project details develop new technologies: (1) geocomputa- do-European Studies, Romance Languages,
tional techniques to explore the spread and Slavic Languages, German Studies, English
What started in 2008 with an initiative pattern of linguistic features in a language Studies, East Asian Studies), Computatio-
on “Language and Space” (National Sci- area, (2) eye-tracking technology to investi- nal Linguistics, Geography/Geocomputa-
ence Foundation), in its next step beca- gate the role of the gaze as a part of human tion, and Popular Culture Studies. There
me the foundation of the “Zurich Center spatial interaction based on and supported are a large number of committed assistant
for Linguistics” 2010. Since then, the by language, and (3) linguistic engineering professors and doctoral candidates within
UZH has systematically supported and to analyse corpora of less commonly taught the project (in the research groups as well
reinforced collaborative research in languages lacking standardization. as in the three laboratories: GIScience-Lab,
the field of linguistics. The University VideoLab, CorpusLab). The group mana-
Research Priority Programme “Langua- The interdisciplinary project cluster also deals ged to strategically staff vacancies within
ge and Space” started on 1 January 2013 with how people describe the world around the Faculty of Arts, and the integration of
and combines linguistic research in the them and seeks to develop methods that projects fostered further collaborations,
fields of language areas and multimodal link computational representations to these especially between young academics.
interaction. The project “Language and descriptions. Thus it explores and provides
Space” is assigned to the Faculty of Arts principles contributing to the understanding Current UZH collaborators: Glaser (Germa-
and Social Sciences, and is part of a of how cultural heritage emerges and how it nic Philology), Hausendorf (German Lin-
long-standing strategic initiative of UZH is transmitted. The results will certainly lead guistics), Behr (Sinology), Bickel (General
to support innovative and interdiscipli- to applied research and, in consideration of Linguistics), Dürscheid (German Langua-
nary research in linguistics. By the end the facts concerning the social mobility of ge), Glessgen (Romance Philology), Hundt
of 2016, the Faculty of Arts, the UZH and multilingual groups, the implementation of (English Linguistics), Jucker (English Lin-
the SNF will have supported linguistic processes and measures in public education. guistics), Kabatek (Romance Linguistics),
projects with EUR 12.5 Mio. Linke (German Linguistics), Loporcaro
(Romance Linguistics), Purves (Geocompu-
LINKS TO PROJECT: tation), Schreier (English Linguistics), Stark
University Research Priority Program- (Romance Linguistics), Tschofen (Popular
me “Language and Space” Culture Studies), Volk (Computational Lin-
http://www.spur.uzh.ch/index_en.html guistics), Weibel (Geographic Information
Zurich Center for Linguistics Science), Weiss (Slavic Linguistics), Widmer
http://www.linguistik.uzh.ch/index_ (Indo-European Linguistics).
en.html
45
EDINBURGH
LUND
CA
CAMBRIDGE
C
CAMBRID
A DGE
D
OXFORD
LONDON AMSTERDAM
LEIDEN
L N UTRECHT
LEUVEN
HEIDELBERG
PARIS
ST
STRASBOURG MÜNCHEN
FREIBURG
ZÜRICH
ZÜ
ÜRICH
Ü
GENEVE
MILANO
BARCELONA
46
ABOUT LERU
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) is an association of twenty-
one leading research-intensive universities that share the values of high-quality
teaching within an environment of internationally competitive research.
Founded in 2002, LERU advocates:

HELSINKI • education through an awareness of the frontiers of human understanding;
• the creation of new knowledge through basic research, which is the ultimate
source of innovation in society;
• and the promotion of research across a broad front in partnership with
industry and society at large.
The purpose of the League is to advocate these values, to influence policy in

Europe and to develop best practice through mutual exchange of experience.
Facts and figures
Together LERU member universities account for more than:

• 550,000 students, including 50,000 PhD candidates.
• Each year about 55,000 master’s degrees and 12,000 doctorates
are awarded at LERU universities.
• The total research budget of LERU’s members exceeds €5 billion.
• More than €1 billion is granted by research councils, while over
€1.25 billion comes from contract research.
• The total sum of research grants from EU projects to LERU universities is
approximately €300 million.
• More than 20% of ERC grants have been awarded to researchers at
LERU universities.
• Over 230 Nobel Prize and Field Medal winners have studied or worked at
LERU universities.
• 55,000 academic staff and 55,000 non-academic staff work at the member
institutions (hospital-only staff not included).
47
University
League of European Research Universities
University of Amsterdam
Universitat de Barcelona
University of Cambridge
University of Edinburgh
University of Freiburg
Université de Genève
Universität Heidelberg
University of Helsinki
Universiteit Leiden
KU Leuven
Imperial College London
University College London
Lund University
University of Milan
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
University of Oxford
Pierre & Marie Curie University
Université Paris-Sud
University of Strasbourg
Utrecht University
University of Zurich
LERU Office
Minderbroedersstraat 8 Project details

B-3000 Leuven
Tel: + 32 16 32 99 71
[email protected]
www.leru.org
@LERUnews
48

Social Sciences Humanities and Interdisciplinary Research Full Paper

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Sciences Humanities and Interdisciplinary Research Full Paper

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Sciences Humanities and Interdisciplinary Research Full Paper

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SOCIAL SCIENCES,

LERU aims at furthering the understanding and

LERU is dedicated to continuing this through direct

Wim van den Doel

© Veerle Van Kerckhove

Henkjan Honing is a precious multi

While it recently became quite popular to Project details

and Global Health experience leading ambitious multi-site and

Since 2010, SSGH has been supported

Trajectories of modernity (TRAMOD) Peter Wagner is a ICREA Re-

Comparing non-European and search Professor; Department

The project is led by Professor Martin

The research team includes:

The project, which is funded by an ERC

The link to the project web-site is:

www.citsee.eu (this is our project web

A feature of the project has been the use

Other team members include Jonathan

STARTING DATE: January 2014

The Maoist Legacy:

The research group currently consists of 5

Co-hosted by the University of Geneva

From a socio-economic and a political point

The project has started in 2008;

Funding source: German Ministry for

The Centre of Excellence is the largest

The project research team is a multi-disci-

Corinne L. Hofman is Corresponding

a Globalized World: Dr Mirabelle Muûls is a Junior Research

UCL Lancet Commission on

Budget around £50,000, provided by

Currently it has 756 citations

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Budget around £50,000, provided by

UCL Wilkins Building from Quad 27

The project was funded within the 7th

The project was started on August 1,

Hans-Bernd Brosius Thomas Hess

The project started in October 2013 and

IMPacts and Risks from high-

START DATE: Sept 2011

The project started in June 2014 and is

The project is financed by Sorbonne

AFrique Australe: Dr. Loïc Segalen is a member of the group

Transitions sédimentaires at the Paris Earth Sciences

In South Africa, the project focuses on

Cloud Business Ahmed Bounfour is Professor at University

Organisational on Intellectual capital and Director for

The project began in September 2012

The project has managed to aggregate

INTERREG IV Rhin supérieur, “Faire de

This is an ERC Advanced Grant project

Bas van Bavel (1964) is a distinguished

Dynamics of The project is part of a long-standing

Healthy Aging innovative and user-oriented ageing rese-

Elvira Glaser Heiko Hausendorf

Founded in 2002, LERU advocates:

The purpose of the League is to advocate these values, to influence policy in

Facts and figures

Together LERU member universities account for more than:

Transitions sédimentaires at the Paris Earth Sciences