Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet VAMP (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The aim of the project is to develop an innovative framework for a better understanding of ecological crisis. The current approach is based on the idea that we are going through a global crisis of nature. However, the Anthropocene hypothesis, a geological epoch marked by industrial activities, shows that what we are facing is not a crisis of "natural entities", but a crisis of the concept of nature. Accounting for this semantic instability in ecological controversies allows us to see conflicts of representations where different social groups "give voice" to non-human entities. Our aim is to provide a transferable protocol to deal with that, consisting in i) deconstructing non-transformative rhetoric on environment; ii) rearrange human and non-human assemblages in sustainable ways; iii) rethinking "environment" as the effect of a ployphony resonating simoultanously in the technosphere, the biosphere and the infosphere. To that end, our approach intertwines political ecology, anthropology of nature, Science and Technology Studies and eco-feminism in a semiotic oriented theory of enunciation. This approach will be tested through two crucial cases of "voice giving" to non-humans: i) the battles for the conservation of Amazonian Forest, recently exposed to further extractivist attacks by Bolsonaro's Government; ii) and the struggle against high impact railroad linking Turin, in Italy, and Lyon, in France. Our transferable protocol, taking into account gender, social and cultural differences that ecological controversies manifest, will provide a comprehensive cartography of "forms of belonging". That reshape entirely the theoretical space of politics, making room for a better representation of ecological redirection challenges. The methodological tools for this are those of semiotics of culture and ethnography. We will put them to use for a comparative study on how non-humans are given a voice by political, mediatic, scientific, grassroots and administrative discourse.

Mots clés : environmental literacy, ecological controversy, political ecology, cognitive sciences, semiotics

Participants :
- Universidade Paulista (Brésil) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Origens media lab (France) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Bologne (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 243641.28 €
Projet FooDIS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Iron deficiency is a known public health concern, particularly for vulnerable groups (children and pregnant women), affecting around 1.62 billion people worldwide. In plant-based diets, the sources of iron are non-heme, less bioaccessible compared to the iron (heme iron) found in animal products. Despite its prevalence, effective dietary interventions focused on micronutrients deficiencies remain limited, mostly due to a lack of understanding of the fate of iron carriers during digestion of complex foods. The objective of FooDIS is to fill this research gap, focus on the fate of bioavailable iron during in vitro digestion and adsorption, to assist in the design of sustainable and innovative iron-rich foods. FooDIS will explore the potential of phytoferritins, plant iron-binding proteins, as effective carriers of bioavailable non-heme iron in plant-based foods. The hypothesis is that phytoferritins can be used as iron carriers, by creating specific interactions with other food components. By testing this hypothesis, we will learn how to enhance the bioavailability of non-heme iron in plant-based foods. The objectives of FooDIS will be achieved through a multidisciplinary approach, integrating the study of phytoferritins digestion in food using INFOGEST-standardized protocol, advanced spectroscopy (synchrotron) and ICP-MS analyses, and in vitro absorption models containing mucus-producing cells (Caco2/HT29MTX). The study, starting with simple and moving to complex model systems, will bring detailed insights of the fate of iron during digestion and its absorption, but also analyze iron speciation and interaction with other food components, leading to new, important discoveries on the mechanism of gut iron absorption. The outcomes will have societal and scientific impact, providing knowledge for the design of novel plant-based iron delivery systems, not only contributing to address the nutritional needs of more sustainable diets but to improve global health outcomes.

Mots clés : iron, complexes, digestion, delivery systems, matrix, plant based, micronutrients, deficiency

Participants :
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 247553.28 €
Projet NET (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The debate on Nietzsche and environmental ethics was started by Max O. Hallman in 1991. Despite underlining Nietzsche’s affinities to ecological thought, he maintained that we cannot infer any environmental ethics from Nietzsche’s philosophy. Most scholars agree with Hallman. By contrast, the main objective of this project is to demonstrate for the first time that Nietzsche’s thought provides a coherent environmental ethics based on the notion of metabolism. This environmental ethics may pave the way for a new paradigm of sustainability at the intersection between diverse disciplines such as philosophy and sociology which can mitigate the impact of the Anthropocene. In his intellectual autobiography Ecce Homo (1888), Nietzsche affirms that the issues of nutrition, place, and climate must be placed at the centre of philosophy. For Nietzsche, ‘"spirit" itself is just a type of metabolism’, and I aim to demonstrate that he considered humans parts of nature’s metabolism. With this view, Nietzsche, I shall argue, responded to the physiology debate of his time. In the light of this, I will address the following questions: What are the most recent contributions in the field of environmental ethics? What are the main positions on metabolism within the 19th-century physiology debate? What are Nietzsche’s stances on nutrition? How does Nietzsche elaborate an ethics of place? And how does Nietzsche respond to the physiology debate of his time? I will analyse Nietzsche’s works chronologically in order to show the development of Nietzsche’s ecological thinking. I will use Martin Muslow’s method of the Konstellationsforschung which examines the perspectives of the various thinkers who addressed the same problem in the same historical period, regardless of whether they were familiar with similar ideas of other philosophers or not. Following this method, I will reconstruct the debate on metabolism at Nietzsche’s time and put it into dialogue with Nietzsche’s works.

Mots clés : nietzsche, environmental ethics, nature, metabolism

Participants :
- Université de Vérone (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 172750.08 €
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet JANUSHOPE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Since the 1990s and the commercialization of global football, an increasing number of young people in countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon have aspired to play football as a career, a strategy to migrate abroad (ideally Europe), and an opportunity for social and class mobility. For the majority, however, the dream does not come true. International media and human rights organizations regularly report about thousands of young West Africans victimized by deceitful agents, stranded as undocumented migrants, and playing for clubs under exploitative conditions. And yet, young people continue to train to migrate and play. Scholars have studied these football-related migrations, but they have overlooked the fact that religions, especially Pentecostal Christianity and Islam, play a central role in migrants’ hopeful journeys. This project investigates the intersection of football, migration, and religion among African migrants in Europe in order to study hope, conceptualized as a belief that something desired may occur in the future. It makes a crucial critical intervention: while many interdisciplinary studies assume a depoliticized notion of hope and romanticize its positive and constructive qualities, JANUSHOPE also examines the dark side of hope that perpetuates inequality and exploitation. It turns to African “irregular” football migrants in Europe to understand how a critique of the global industry’s dark side of hope might co-exist with hopes for “making it” in the industry. It investigates how their faith-based narratives of hope might both critique and reproduce inequalities of global capitalism and transnational migration. The key research methods are semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with “irregular” African football migrants in Europe. The results will be disseminated through refereed articles and communicated to a wide global audience interested in football and to key European policy makers in fields of migration and human rights.

Mots clés : hope, migration, religion, football, europe, africa

Participants :
- Université de Groningue (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203464.32 €
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet IndiPsych-TRAC (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

This proposal addresses fundamental open questions about how language processing uses basic cognitive resources like memory and planning/attentional space. It does so by drawing two languages which are almost completely new to psycholinguistics, Shipibo and Cuzco Quechua, and through them, a new construction, switch-reference, which is also largely unexplored. Although switch-reference is under-explored, it is of interest because current models of linguistic memory and sentence planning suggest that it should be incredibly difficult, and yet it is used productively by speakers of languages throughout the Americas and Oceania. This research therefore moves the needle forward on fundamental questions that address cognitive abilities beyond just language processing, while simultaneously broadening the sample on which psycholinguistic theories are based.  While all languages have essentially the same cognitive resources, the different grammatical forms from language to language imply different strategies to use those resources efficiently. If one of the goals of psycholinguistics is to understand the cognitive resources that are available, and how they can be deployed, this degree of systematic flexibility between the world’s languages is a tremendous scientific resource. Yet the vast majority of psycholinguistics typically only studies a handful of the largest East Asian languages and a few closely-related European ones, i.e., those that are already in close proximity to scientific laboratories. This problem is a subset of the one at work throughout psychology: an over-reliance on WEIRD societies (Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). This creates a heavily skewed sample, both in terms of linguistic variety and populations. Therefore, psycholinguistic studies of switch-reference in Shipibo have value beyond the specific language. The project will provide unique new data to address current theoretical issues.


Participants :
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 260347.92 €
Projet SPoTIP (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Abnormal post-translational modifications (PTMs) can lead to the aggregation of Tau proteins, which characterize a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases known as tauopathies. Some abnormal Tau proteins will be released into biological fluids, providing a chance for minimally- or non-invasive diagnosis. For Alzheimer's Disease (AD), site-specific phosphorylations and truncations are representative PTMs that have been proved as biomarkers for its early diagnosis and progression monitoring. To detect and quantify these abnormal Tau proteoforms, two methodologies—immunoassays and mass spectrometry (MS)—are frequently employed. However, both of them encounter significant challenges in clinical trials; immunoassays suffer from limited epitopes and false positive results, while MS involves a complicated and time-consuming workflow. Nanopore technology, distinguished by its capability of real-time single-molecule sensing, has shown great prospects in polypeptide analysis, potentially offering distinct advantages over the forementioned methods in clinical trials. Recent progress has been made to sense PTMs deep within full-length polypeptides. By leveraging the recent advances in nanopore technology and the development of numerous site-specific anti-Tau binders, this project aims to exploit a single-molecule toolkit for detecting Tau of varying lengths and clinically relevant phosphorylations across full-length Tau proteoforms. To achieve that, we will leverage engineered nanopores developed by the host lab to facilitate translocation of intact Tau proteoforms, alongside a binder-assisted strategy to amplify the signals of targeted truncations and phosphorylations while minimizing interference from non-target backgrounds. Should our goal accomplished, it could provide a sensitive and robust diagnostic tool for the assessment and monitoring of tauopathies, as well as contribute to the advancement of tauopathies research to single-molecular resolution.

Mots clés : tau, single molecule, truncation, phosphorylation, nanopore, binder

Participants :
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 260347.92 €
Projet STRESS-PV (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

To reach net zero by 2050 a 30-fold expansion in solar energy capacity is required, necessitating cheaper alternatives to Si semiconductors. Perovskite solar cells have power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) equivalent to the best Si cells and are inherently defect tolerant, meaning they are cheaper to manufacture than Si. Early perovskite technology was restricted by short operating lifetimes with most cells lasting only a few weeks rather than the 25 years required for commercial application. Recent advances have produced perovskite cells with negligible degradation after a year in the field, however. Thus researchers are turning to accelerated testing to quantify lifetimes and speed up stability improvements. Current accelerated testing uses 1-sun illumination and increased temperature to estimate lifetimes under normal conditions. Even under extreme temperatures this procedure requires several months to approximate 5 years in the field. To further speed up this process and expedite stability improvements I shall combine accelerated thermal degradation with accelerated photodegradation to reduce testing timescales to a matter of days. To achieve this, I will describe the decay modes of illumination based on spectral intensity and shape, and derive from them acceleration factors which relate back to outdoor testing results, thus deriving a protocol which mimics a decade of operation in only one week. Not only will this work expedite stability testing, but it will also explain how cells are damaged by light and which wavelengths. I will use these photo/thermal degradation insights to advance techniques for improved stability under light and heat. The project will conclude with an accelerated aging protocol used to demonstrate reproducible fabrication of > 20% PCE perovskite solar cells with estimated lifetimes of 10 years.


Participants :
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 260347.92 €
Projet TADF-PDT (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) is a non-invasive cancer treatment that uses light-activated, photosensitising dyes to generate highly reactive oxygen species (ROS) within a localised biological environment, leading to the destruction of cancer cells, while sparing surrounding healthy tissue. The PDT process comprises two stages: administration of a dye, followed by irradiation with light. Since ROS is only generated at the light-activated sites, tissue destruction is highly localised and side effects are significantly reduced. The potential for PDT is clear. However, for all this potential, widespread adoption has stagnated: only three dyes have been approved for cancer treatment globally, while the dye most commonly studied in clinical trials - Photofrin - is a statistical mixture of oligomeric porphyrins. Dye design for many years has focussed on porphyrins derived from Photofrin, and more recently phosphorescent ruthenium(II) polypyridyl complexes. However, in this proposal, a new design strategy is proposed: thermally-activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) dyes are the targets of interest. These are all-organic compounds that have small singlet-triplet energy gaps, which causes them to undergo rapid intersystem crossing and reverse intersystem crossing between the singlet and triplet states. By accessing the triplet state, they can readily generate singlet oxygen, which is one form of ROS, marking their potential for PDT. These compounds have been widely used organic device applications, but their uses in biological applications such as imaging and particularly PDT are much less. This proposal addresses this gap, using novel, cationic, near-IR emitting, TADF dyes. Their delivery to cells will be achieved using biocompatible, Extracellular Vesicles (EVs), which have been shown to be improved PDT delivery agents over other methods.

Mots clés : chemistry, luminescence, nanomaterials, therapeutics

Participants :
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 260347.92 €
Projet SAHUD (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Project SAHUD uses a regional case study to advance the global understanding of small-scale image-making societies. The rich and mutually illuminating relationships between ethnographic, rock art and excavated archaeological data in southern Africa are unavailable to rock art researchers in most other contexts, such as the European Upper Palaeolithic, where analogies often employ southern African ethnographies. However, despite the potential offered by this wealth of data, previous southern African archaeological research has focused on an overly small sample of local ethnographies to interpret inter-group differences in technological and subsistence adaptations to a range of environments and wild plants and animals. Simultaneously, ethnographic and rock art evidence has been used to emphasise practices and beliefs that transcend multiple hunter-gatherer groups across time and space. A novel, holistic integration is needed that is sensitive to all the available evidence and varied theoretical frameworks. The project’s key question is: does the evidence for diversity across ethnographic and mid- to late Holocene archaeological hunter-gatherers in southern Africa eclipse the widespread parallels and continuities in beliefs and practices? This question will be addressed in three interrelated ‘work packages’ that draw on published literature and archives in the United Kingdom and South Africa. The project uniquely analyses diversity across three traditionally independent research fields. The outcomes — including a novel database of ethnographic southern African hunter-gatherer diversity for archaeological investigations, and testing its potential for guiding studies of rock art diversity and for enriching discussion of archaeological diversity among southern African hunter-gatherers — will collectively constitute a new integrated synthesis of southern African hunter-gatherers between ~8,000 and 2,000 years ago.

Mots clés : archaeology hunter gatherers rock art diversity ethnography southern africa

Participants :
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 276187.92 €
Projet IMUCCA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Social scientists have generally treated climate change (CC) vulnerability as homogeneous across social space, underestimating the serious social distortions and conflicts it produces. Previous research conducted by the Fellow suggests that CC impact is unevenly distributed, even within small social units such as Indian villages, West African towns, or Fijian islands. This project is guided by a hypothesis derived from Fellow's earlier work: economic and social relations (class, gender, ethnicity, religion, caste) have an overwhelming impact on CC vulnerability and adaptation practices. Examining one of the regions where the impact of CC is most advanced – rural India – the project aims to generate detailed empirical data for tracing the connections between CC and existing forms of social stratification. Under the supervision of leading experts in agrarian studies, environment, and modelling, the project result will be turned into a generalisable model that can be used to understand and predict other agrarian societies’ experiences of CC, and their differential modes of adaptation. Drawing on economic sociology, socioecology and environmental economics, the project's empirical research will take place in two villages in Maharashtra, India, where agriculture is in the midst of an ongoing crisis caused by biophysical processes. The Fellow will employ mixed methods, using quantitative household surveys and semi-structured qualitative interviews, which will be collected during two research visits to India. The development of an evidence-based framework will make a pioneering contribution to our ability to address the differing ways in which different members of a society are impacted by, and respond to, CC. The project addresses core EU objectives, such as “preparedness for the impact of climate change to protect lives and assets,” so helping confirm the EU as leading developer of knowledge solutions for the most pressing problems of humanity.

Mots clés : climate change, climate change adaptation, climate change vulnerability, agrarian societies, rural india, climate change perception

Participants :
- Université Ca' Foscari de Venise (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 265099.2 €
- Université Yale (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université d'Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €