Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SCARCE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1403898.0 €

Early modern mining often played out as a drama in three acts: I. Ores are Discovered, II. Communities Flourish, III. The Mines Collapse. Across Central Europe, however, this drama took an unusual turn: emerging territorial states stepped in to reorganise the sector and suspended the collapse of mining for years, decades, and centuries.  Understanding why and how state-employed administrators prolonged the lifespan of mines has great potential to advance debates in economic history, history of science and technology, and environmental history. The principal aim of this project is to open up the history of resource management as a field of study whose questions and results are equally well integrated in these three fields. It will use Central European mining as a high-stakes case to prove the viability of such a history. By doing so, it will provide  (1) a new account of capitalist development by showing how an industry in seemingly underdeveloped Central Europe shaped two important building blocks of modern economies: the rationalisation of labour, and the accumulation of capital. (2) a new understanding of technoscientific innovation in proto-industrial settings by showing how administrative procedures (accounting, reporting) shaped scientists/technicians’ understanding of natural processes. (3) a new genealogy for modern sustainability by focusing attention on the contradictions that shaped the extraction of non-renewable resources.  To achieve these aims, four researchers (1 PI, 1 Postdoc, 2 PhD) will analyse thousands of administrative reports from across Central Europe, using a new method, history of bureaucratic knowledge, based on recent advances in the history of science. They will work on four processes through which administrators made mining a long-term enterprise: (a) rationalising labour, (b) managing health and pollution, (c) sustaining investment, and (d) long-term planning.

Mots-clés : environmental history,mining history
Projet ERC : RELIC (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1120755.0 €

From the 10th c. onwards, new polities emerged on the periphery of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), the new centre of Christendom. Endowing Christianity as an institutional system was integral to the emperor’s power, expanding his influence and securing his rule in the new kingdoms. Previous narratives have been generally constructed on the basis of limited written accounts, which mainly concern the higher echelons of society, emphasising the role of secular and ecclesiastical elites. However, the ecclesiastical and secular administrative organisation of the rural population could not be reconstructed satisfactorily from these sources, despite their importance for the stability of both State and Church. RELIC proposes a complex, comparative analysis and contextualisation of archaeological and historical remains of the rural population living on the eastern fringes of the HRE during the Ottonian and Salian periods (10th -12th c.), exploring the influences of centres and networks of secular and ecclesiastical lords, of the natural environment, and of the economic infrastructure. Investigating this often-overlooked segment of the population, its hitherto unexplored or neglected role allows us to study how (top-level) changes in political and ecclesiastical organisations can be reflected in the evidence concerning the lower levels of society and of the local church network; how different strategies worked in different political settings, and what role local initiatives/agencies could have played in religious and political shifts. The religiopolitics of the HRE is a well-researched topic. Still, investigating the involvement of the rural population in these processes is a new approach, and so is the applied methodology and primary data: proximity, network and catchment analysis on archival archaeological data and historical evidence. Individually, such evidence provides little information, but together it forms a significant and unexplored dataset of the rural population.

Mots-clés : social archaeology,modelling religious processes in archaeology and history,gis analysis and big data in archaeology and history
Projet ERC : ReMedY (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Palerme — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498828.0 €

ReMedY addresses the metaphysical, logical and epistemological implications of late medieval pharmacological classifications. Medieval pharmacology was often divided into a rational and a practical part. Rational pharmacology dealt with the theories of drug classification, explaining how to recognise the substance and the qualities of a drug and how to differentiate it from other drugs. Rational pharmacology was thoroughly re-systematised during the 14th century in various university milieus, having been influenced by scholastic philosophy. It is generally acknowledged that the faculty of medicine at Bologna played a central role in this process, due to its strong connection with the philosophical tradition. It is clear that some Bolognese masters were influenced by French modism, which based logic on ontology, dividing reality into the three 'modi' of being, knowledge and meaning. Yet, it has never been investigated how this philosophical debate has influenced rational pharmacology or how it has provided it with indispensable theoretical tools. And this is exactly where this project comes into the picture: ReMedY’s unconventional and cross-disciplinary approach connects modist doctrines and pharmacological theories, providing an innovative interpretative key regarding the correlation between rational pharmacology and philosophy during the Middle Ages. The hypothesis of the project, namely that modist theories influenced a distinct tradition of late medieval rational pharmacology is entirely original. My team and I will link research fields that have been kept apart, but whose organic connections provide a new perspective on medieval philosophy. Combining philological, editorial, historical and epistemological approaches, the ReMedY team will deal with pharmacological texts from different geographical areas and provide access to previously unedited sources of historical scientifical value through critical (and digital) editions and doctrinal studies.

Mots-clés : history of medieval medicine history of medieval pharmacology digital approaches to philosophy
Projet ERC : BROADCAST (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499403.29 €

Genome engineering has transformed life science research and enabled revolutionary applications in biotechnology and medicine. Despite recent advances brought by the development of CRISPR-associated genome editing nucleases, a universal strategy for efficient site-specific gene editing and insertion in a range of organisms or cell types is currently unavailable. Transposons are natural genome remodelers and gene delivery vectors that modify and transfer genetic information across the tree of life by moving within and between their host genomes. To this end, they encode a vast and diverse reservoir of nucleic acid-targeting and -processing enzymes, whose molecular mechanisms are yet mostly unexplored. Building on our recent structural and biochemical studies, the goal of this project is to advance our mechanistic knowledge of RNA-guided DNA transposons in order to understand their biology and guide their repurposing as next-generation genetic tools. Specifically, the proposed studies will investigate (i) the mechanisms of RNA-directed DNA mobilization of CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs), aiming not only to provide insights into their molecular function but also to inform their technological development, (ii) the molecular activities and architectures of TnpB-like transposon proteins, recently identified putative RNA-guided endonucleases of prokaryotic and eukaryotic origin, with the ultimate goal of supporting their application as ultra-compact, broadly applicable genome editors, and (iii) the translation of designer CASTs into a novel programmable DNA insertion technology for precision genomic profiling and engineering. Altogether, the proposed studies will not only make key contributions to the molecular understanding and harnessing of RNA-guided transposons in nature and technologies, but hold the long-term potential to address current challenges in genome editing, biotechnologies and precision medicine.

Mots-clés : mobile genetic elements,crispr cas systems,genome editing,cryo electron microscopy,x ray crystallography
Projet ERC : NanoEat (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Université d'Aalborg — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1455274.0 €

MicMicrobial communities play a vital role in most processes in the biosphere and are essential for solving present and future environmental challenges. Examples include the impact of the human microbiome on health and disease, the discovery of new antibiotics, and turning waste products into valuables. In the past 10 years, new DNA sequencing-based methods have revolutionized our access to the genomes of microbial communities and have sparked an explosion of new fundamental discoveries based on genomic evidence.  However, despite the fundamental discoveries enabled by new methods in the past decade, we are far from having a meaningful genomic representation of the tree of life - and we are even further away from understanding how microbes realize their genomic potential in complex environments. This is underlined by the fact that the current microbial genome databases contain genomic information on 47,894 prokaryotic species, while the most conservative analysis estimates millions of different species in nature.  The NanoEat project will enable the next generation of large-scale studies in microbial communities to answer the fundamental questions of who is there and what do they eat. In nature, most microbes modify their DNA in highly specific combinations, either as a defense system against viruses or to regulate activity. In NanoEat we will exploit this feature using the raw Nanopore sequencing signal that, in principle, enables discovery of any type of modified DNA. By developing new machine learning frameworks that can identify these species-specific modification patterns we can utilize this novel feature to supercharge recovery of individual microbial genomes from complex communities. Furthermore, by supplying synthetic nucleotides, that can be detected by Nanopore sequencing, we hypothesize that it is possible to estimate how microbes grow, by using the incorporation rate of these synthetic nucleotides to estimate replication in complex communities at scale.
Projet ERC : DEMOTRADEOFF (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université autonome de Barcelone — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499967.5 €

Democracies involve tradeoffs since all their desirable qualities cannot be simultaneously maximized. Hard choices must be made in order to balance democratic principles such as popular sovereignty and the rule of law, or freedom and political equality.  These tradeoffs would not be problematic as long as citizens and political leaders were open to compromise and accept that democracy requires a delicate balancing of virtues. The politicization of these tradeoffs in recent events such as Brexit or Poland’s judicial reform suggests that this is likely not the case. However, we still know very little about the positions of citizens and parties regarding democratic tradeoffs; how these contribute to citizens’ increasing discontent with democracy; how the rising politicization of the tradeoffs of democracy might exacerbate these dynamics; and whether it is possible to curb this process.  To investigate these questions this project: (1) elaborates a conceptual map of democratic tradeoffs and empirically examines citizens’ preferences and parties’ positions on them; (2) analyzes the determinants of citizens’ democratic tradeoff preferences, and how the interplay between these preferences and parties’ politicization of these tradeoffs affects individuals’ support and satisfaction with democracy; (3) examines how citizens can be reconciled with the idea that some democratic qualities cannot be simultaneously maximized. The empirical analysis focuses on 15 European countries and implements an integrative multi-method approach combining cross-sectional and panel surveys, content analysis, and experiments.  The proposed project breaks new theoretical and methodological ground in the study of political culture. It brings the inherent tensions of democracy to the forefront and develops new tools for the measurement of tradeoff preferences and their consequences.

Mots-clés : political culture democracy political attitudes public opinion politicization tradeoff political support satisfaction with democracy surveys experiments
Projet ERC : TWISTION (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université de Tampere — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499905.0 €

One of the most fundamental principles of quantum physics, the so-called wave-particle dualism of quantum objects, is at the heart of a recently developed research field: twisted matter waves. Similar to their well-established photonic counterparts, coherent beams of massive particles can exhibit a screw-like phase front, which causes an orbital angular momentum. Contrary to photons, however, massive quantum systems can be charged, which results in an additional magnetic moment related to the beams’ twist. So far, this unique feature has only been studied using electrons, with immediate impact on fundamental studies and applications in quantum-enhanced microscopy schemes as a magnetic nano-sensor.  TWISTION will harness these latest developments but redirects the focus on coherent matter waves of ions. Not only are ionic systems heavier than electrons, importantly they have an internal structure due to bound electrons. This feature, exclusive to composite systems, makes twisted ions especially intriguing as it opens the door to yet unexplored quantum mechanical effects on the internal states, e.g. through a magnetic interaction caused by the magnetic moment induced by the external twist. With these promising prospects in mind, TWISTION will set out to demonstrate the first twisted ion beam, thereby also delivering the first unambiguous result of a coherent ionic matter wave. More importantly, TWISTION intends to explore and reveal in theory as well as in an experiment the effect of an external twist on the internal structure, thereby establishing twisted ions as a novel tool for quantum science. In turn, TWISTION will deliver the first experiment that is exclusively built for the investigation of structured matter waves, whose setup can be fully adjusted to any task-specific requirement for both, electrons and ions. As such, TWISTION aims at redefining the state-of-the-art of this novel branch of quantum science at the interface between optics and atom physics.

Mots-clés : matter waves,quantum optics,twisted electrons,structured matter waves,wave particle duality
Projet ERC : I-C-GloRI (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université de Birmingham — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499256.0 €

The ionosphere, a layer of plasma in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, has traditionally been modelled by the International Standards Organization (ISO)-recognized International Reference Ionosphere (IRI); however, this model is made up of several sub-models, many of which have not been updated since the 50s and 70s. Since the creation of those models, our understanding of the ionosphere has evolved considerably, more diverse observations have become available, and many of the drivers, upon which these models rely, are no longer available, forcing the use of stopgap drivers whose temporary application has become more than just temporary. Here we propose to redevelop the IRI using novel empirical methods that can make use of nonlinear and indirect measurements that could not be incorporated in the IRI’s present form. We will, furthermore, include a parameterization of the climate change impacts on the ionosphere, which are now expected to have considerable impacts on the future structure of the ionosphere, and will avoid the explicit dependence of the model on driving indices that are no longer being updated. Using this model, we will here also assess the impacts of lower atmospheric forcing and climate change on the ionosphere on a global scale and characterize the implications of these results for radio and navigation systems that propagate signals through the ionospheric medium.  As a member of the IRI Working Group, the PI is well positioned to ensure that the model developed here will have a clear pathway to impact. To further ensure take-up of the model, an advisory committee, made up of leading members of the IRI Working Group, ionospheric lower atmospheric coupling, and ionospheric instrument experts, has been assembled and has agreed to support the project. Furthermore, the developed model will be made Open Source and accessible in multiple coding languages.

Mots-clés : ionosphere,space weather,ionospheric climatology,radio propagation,reference atmospheres
Projet ERC : eBioNetAniMat (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Birmingham — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1776727.5 €

Life’s biological materials are animate materials, capable of adapting to their surroundings via actively changing in response to the environment. A key distinguishing feature of animate materials is their ability to autonomously make decisions over how to respond. An example of an animate material is your skin: on cold days the hairs on your skin rise to trap warm air without your conscious thought.  The ability of living materials to make decisions arises from biochemical reaction networks (e.g. protein signalling) in the material. The networks process environmental information and decide how to adapt the material in response. Artificial animate materials promise to be superior for many applications (e.g. soft robots, MedTech) compared to their inert counterparts as their decision-making abilities will enable them to leverage advantageous events into better outcomes and limit the damage from disadvantageous ones. However, currently, there is not a well-established route to fabricate artificial animate materials.  eBioNetAniMat charts a pathway to a new generation of electrochemically programmable artificial animate materials that act as soft actuators capable of autonomously making decisions about their movement. Novel, protein-based chemical reaction networks integrated into the actuators will process electrochemical stimuli and make decisions over how to generate chemo-mechanical motion, e.g. peristalsis, rotation. I will develop a method for electrochemically controlling protein-activity and use this to construct a series of novel, electrochemically programmable protein networks of increasing complexity. I will develop a new method for electrochemical fabrication of patterned hydrogels with new protein redox-binding tools. Finally, I will unite the new protein networks and gels together to make novel artificial animate actuators, that will be biocompatible, integrable with electronic devices and have potentially transformative impacts in MedTech + soft robots.

Mots-clés : systems chemistry,chemical reaction networks,reaction kinetics,hydrogels,actuators,chemo mechanical motion
Projet ERC : SOC-MISC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université de St Andrews — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 167198.75 €

One in four women experience a miscarriage. Loss of pregnancy may affect fertility intentions and lead to adverse mental and physical health. Yet, we know little about how social inequalities affect the risk of miscarriage; how miscarriages may exacerbate existing social inequalities in population health; or how context shapes these experiences. One reason for this is poor quality of data, as miscarriages are often either underreported in surveys or only included in health registers if they require hospital care. Moreover, to date, sexual and reproductive health has often been ignored in life course epidemiology.  This proposal goes beyond the state-of-the-art by being the first comprehensive study of the patterns of social inequality in miscarriage and its outcomes. It reaches this goal by assessing the patterns of miscarriage underreporting in surveys before obtaining its estimates. It will make ground-breaking contributions by:  1) Analysing underreporting patterns of miscarriage and using this in further analyses to obtain more reliable results than before. 2) Showing how individual and family-level social inequalities affect miscarriage risk over the life course. 3) Establishing how mental and physical health consequences of miscarriage depend on one’s social background and may widen social inequalities in health. 4) Uncovering the role of national and sub-national context in social inequalities in miscarriage.  Unlike many previous studies based on small and outdated samples, I use longitudinal population registers and large representative surveys in Finland, France and the UK that are exceptionally rich in miscarriage, socioeconomic, other reproductive and health data, and can be triangulated to obtain more reliable results.  The project will lead to a significantly better understanding of a common reproductive experience affecting mental and physical wellbeing, and can help policy makers improve reproductive and population health.

Mots-clés : miscarriage,sexual and reproductive health,social demography,sociology,social epidemiology,pregnancy,social inequalities in health