Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : FragMent (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research — Pays : Luxembourg — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LISER
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1496821.0 €

Stress is nearly ubiquitous in everyday life, and imposes a tremendous burden worldwide by acting as a major risk factor of mental disorders, autoimmune, infectious and cardiovascular diseases, and some cancers. The aim of the FragMent project is to evaluate to which extent the spatial and temporal fragmentation of exposures to environments in daily life influences physiological and psychological stress, as well as social inequalities in stress. Some evidence shows that exposures to daily environments may either act as a stress contributor or provide some stress restorative qualities. While the protective effect of greenness has been clearly established, strong uncertainties remain regarding the effects of urban environments. FragMent starts from this premise to investigate the environmental determinants of momentary, daily and chronic stress in relation with immediate, daily and regular environmental exposures. The project uncovers the role of spatiality and temporality in exposure effects on stress. It further builds on the concept of space-time activity fragmentation, to contextualize patterns of exposure within activity patterns. Finally, it analyses how differences in space-time exposures and activity patterns across social groups may lead to social inequalities in stress. An observational cohort study will be used to evaluate momentary, daily and chronic stress in daily life, using a combination of traditional web-survey, map-based questionnaires, smartphone tracking and Geographic Ecological Momentary Assessment. A series of lab-based experiments, combining Immersive Virtual Environments with a walking simulator, will assess the effect of urban environmental characteristics and the temporality of exposures on momentary physiological and psychological stress. Bridging knowledge from epidemiology and time geography, FragMent will provide critical evidence to equitably reduce exposure to environmental stressors in outdoor space in everyday life.

Mots-clés : stress environmental exposure neighborhood effects activity space concept of fragmentation activity patterns daily mobility
Projet ERC : MACBeh (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Salzbourg — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : PLUS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499687.0 €

Is there a common ground between the behavior of a flock of starlings and the polarization of opinions within human communities? Can we represent traders in a financial market just like spins in a magnet? For years, scientists have conjectured that a certain type of collective behavior ubiquitous in nature adhere to common principles, which can be captured by the physics of criticality. Originally, this idea was largely speculative, but the last three decades have witnessed an increase in the number of concrete approaches to biological and socioeconomic modelling inspired by the physics of criticality. Although plenty of resources are currently spent with the hope that physics can help us prevent unwanted coordinated events, such as population collapse or political radicalization, the foundations for extrapolating the physics of criticality into other sciences remain unclear. MACBeh’s ambition is to tackle this timely challenge by addressing three outstanding questions: (Q1) What is transferred from physics to other sciences in the case of criticality? (Q2) What explains the predictive and explanatory power of some models of criticality outside of physics? (Q3) How can we improve the practice of model building in the study of criticality? We will address these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective, by connecting relevant debates in philosophy of science with a systematic study of existing models of criticality in biology and socioeconomics. The underlying thesis is that models of criticality outside of physics are cases of “model adaptation,’’ a powerful new framework stating that successful models in the new domain are constructed based on universal properties and causal mechanisms borrowed from physics plus the incorporation of domain dependent properties, which have no analog in the original physical models. Our results will lead to a step change in our understanding of cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer for the case of critical behavior and beyond.

Mots-clés : knowledge transfer criticality idealizations model building phase transitions
Projet ERC : DEDUCE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université de Pise — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 345000.0 €

Online platforms apply moderation interventions (MIs) to mitigate misbehavior. Today, MIs are one-size-fits-all, meaning that each intervention is applied in the same way for all users. However, not all users are the same, as they have diverse demographics, ideologies, and personalities. This naive approach to content moderation is platform-centered and neglects user differences. Moreover, content moderation resembles art more than science. The design of MIs is based on common sense and intuition, and progress is sought via trial-and-error rather than via a rigorous scientific process. The inevitable consequence is that current MIs have variable effectiveness, are highly unreliable, and fall short of the moderation needs. The ambitious goal of DEDUCE is to initiate a paradigm-shift in content moderation, by building the theoretical and methodological foundations to move from intuition-driven approaches enforced via one-size-fits-all MIs, to science-driven strategies grounded on personalized moderation interventions (PMIs). We will develop causal methods and indicators to evaluate the effectiveness and fairness of current content moderation practices. Then, we will study how user characteristics influence the outcomes of moderation. Finally, we will leverage the acquired knowledge to design and evaluate PMIs, a first-of-its-kind endeavor. Our data-driven approach will enable us to evaluate in advance the effects of many MIs (what-if analyses) and to plan ahead their application, rather than to assess and correct afterwards. The high-gain nature of DEDUCE is evident, as it will open new directions of research (e.g., the design of PMIs), while also providing major practical and social benefits. Our results will yield groundbreaking advancements in the theory and practice of content moderation, and will be embodied in (i) practical guidelines for moderators and policymakers and (ii) an open-source proof-of-concept system to support both human and automated moderation.

Mots-clés : content moderation,toxic behavior,personalization,personality profile,online platforms
Projet ERC : PAY4PLAY (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université d'Aarhus — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Digital platforms increasingly integrate financial transactions into social interactions, facilitating new ways of coming together and creating value. PAY4PLAY sets out to develop a new theory of organizing that grapples with the intersection of sociotechnical systems and socioeconomic relations that characterizes public life in the platform society. I focus on creator communities, defined as primarily platform-based associations formed around media personas with (1) hierarchal structures, (2) monetized interactions, and (3) asymmetrical relationships. I approach the project’s overarching question—How do people form communities around media personas and with what consequences?—from three perspectives: culture, infrastructure, and policy. Across each perspective, I compare three types of creators (gamers, VTubers, and adult content creators) working in three languages (English, Spanish, and Japanese) to understand how factors such as occupational stigma, gender, technology, and geography shape opportunities for organizing. PAY4PLAY employs distinct methodological approaches and disciplinary toolkits drawn from media and communication, information science, and economic sociology best suited to engage with each perspective, investigating culture with multi-sited ethnography, infrastructure with digital methods, and policy with controversy mapping and stakeholder interviews. Through an integrative analysis of these methods, this project will conceptualize creator communities on their own terms, mapping the value they provide to those involved and their broader influence. PAY4PLAY will thus offer the first large-scale comparison of the industry conditions of monetized content creation, develop a new theory of organizing and platform power, create methodological tools for future comparative research within the creator economy, and offer new policy recommendations for integrating creators into platform governance at the state and corporate levels.

Mots-clés : creator economy cultural production digital labor livestreaming media industries monetization platform governance platform studies online communities organizing pornography relational work social media user generated content valuation video games vtubers
Projet ERC : BRIDGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université d'Aarhus — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1459998.0 €

Creative problem-solving in face-to-face collaboration relies on spatiality, which is lacking in current distributed collaboration tools. What if distributed groups could blend their physical spaces to collaborate as if they were face-to-face? Mixed Reality (MR) offers this potential by arranging collaborators’ avatars around shared physical surfaces like desks and whiteboards. Proxemics theory highlights that this spatial arrangement makes collaboration effective. But when distributed space arrangements are dissimilar, it causes spatial incongruencies in collaboration cues, such as pointing gestures. To address this challenge, BRIDGE will develop a novel approach to distributed MR collaboration – Blended Proxemics – that blends people’s real physical surface interactions into a dynamic environment for group collaboration. By supporting MR users in adapting the mapping between surfaces, solutions will be able to scale beyond two users across similar spaces, to groups across dissimilar spaces. Additionally, BRIDGE will address a timely paradox: despite the hype on MR collaboration, we still have no lived experience with how it might change distributed collaboration practices. BRIDGE will establish a novel MR Living Lab to validate the effectiveness of solutions against real work environments with stakeholders. Achieving the goals of BRIDGE requires taking the risk to change both the conceptual, technical, and methodological foundations of the field. Therefore, BRIDGE will (1) develop Blended Proxemics as a new theory for spatial congruency in blended collaboration, providing a taxonomy for researchers to explore solutions, (2) invent new adaptive space mapping techniques and validate their effectiveness for group creativity, and (3) identify real-world barriers to collaborative MR adoption through the Living Lab. BRIDGE results will radically change how we approach distributed MR collaboration research, paving the way for adoption in real-world distributed teamwork.

Mots-clés : mixed reality,computer supported collaborative work,proxemics
Projet ERC : MemoPlasticGenomics (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université d'Aarhus — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499948.0 €

Neuroplasticity underlies learning and memory formation, which allows for accumulation of knowledge. There is an emerging view that a sparse ensemble of neurons, termed as engram cells, represent memory substrate and explain how memory is formed and retrieved. Extensive studies have been carried out to reveal molecular mechanisms regulating structural and synaptic plasticity of memory engram cells. However, there are still fundamental questions remaining to be solved regarding epigenetic and transcriptional basis of recent and remote memory formation, and heterogeneous identity specification of engram cells.  To address these issues, I will carry out state-of-the-art genomics/epigenomics analysis of engram cells that are permanently labelled during recent and remote fear memory consolidation. Firstly I will reveal epigenetic and transcriptional mechanisms regulating active-silent state shifts of engram cells during systems memory consolidation in the hippocampus and neocortical regions. Next I will address heterogeneity of engram cells and reveal how a subset of engram cells may become functionally relevant during memory consolidation and retrieval. To particularly address the latter issue, on top of existing sequencing technologies, I will also apply a novel “time machine”-like retrospective whole-genome history tracing approach to obtain molecular profiles of a given timepoint in the past, and overcome the critical limitation of current snapshot-type technologies. To validate relevance of my findings, I will also carry out functional analysis including gene knocking-down and optogenetics approaches.  My interdisciplinary research program will shed new light on how environmental cues, including cell-to-cell interaction mediated by neuronal activity and signalling molecules, can be integrated with intrinsic cellular states at the chromatin epigenetic level to regulate neuroplasticity underlying memory engram cell state and/or identity specification.

Mots-clés : plasticity,learning,memory,engram,neuronal identity,genomics,epigenetics,gene regulation,new sequencing technology
Projet ERC : POLICITY (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université d'Aarhus — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1455684.0 €

A central conflict in urban politics lie between those who want cities to change, physically, by embracing ambitious urban development projects, and urban conservationists who oppose such changes. The outcome of this struggle has important implications for some of the most contentious issues and concerning developments in contemporary politics. Since urban planning is often under local democratic control, local public opinion plays a central role in determining whether cities embrace or reject urban development. However, while we know much about what makes particular urban development project more or less popular, we do not have a theory that can explain why opposition to urban development varies across individuals or cities.  This project advances a new research agenda to study public opinion on urban development. The project breaks new ground by developing a novel theoretical model which argues that when housing prices in an area increase, so does opposition to urban development among its residents. The project is also pioneering methodologically, combining quasi-experimental and survey-experimental research designs with cross-city surveys that explore and explain public opinion on urban development.  As key empirical contributions the project develops a new survey instrument that quantifies opposition to urban development; implements this instrument in a survey of citizens in 200 cities across Western Europe and the US; and connect these survey responses to a series of innovative causally credible research designs that provide evidence on how the housing market shape citizen opposition to urban development across cities, residences and individuals.  The project will significantly improve our understanding of a salient conflict in urban politics that shape the future of cities. Timely and innovative, the project will help us understand how and why current political conflicts over urban development will be settled differently in different cities.

Mots-clés : public opinion urban politics urban development housing markets comparative political behavior quasi experiments survey experiments
Projet ERC : TheModelCity (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université d'Aarhus — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498511.0 €

The past provides the most extensive and comprehensive record of the spectrum of human behaviours, adaptations and responses to change available to us. Its potential as an enormous body of comparative material, however, has yet to be fully realised. The Model City aims to understand the drivers and mechanisms of long-term urban evolution through the study of the historical trajectories of past cities. Focusing on the question of urban resilience, “why do some cities thrive while others fail?”, it will identify factors that predict city persistence over decades and centuries and evaluate social, environmental and economic mechanisms that increase or erode urban resilience. The Model City will aggregate and synthesize large amounts of Deep Past Urban Data and apply analytical methods developed in urban studies to investigate fundamental forces governing the long-term dynamics of urban systems. By deploying a swath of formal methods such as time-series analysis, ecological measures of resilience, network science, and agent-based modelling on a large and diverse sample of past cities for which we have full evolutionary trajectories, the project will identify factors, their interactions and processes that impact urban resilience. In looking for universals, The Model City will compare three very distinctive but data-rich research areas from across the spectrum of past urban systems: Roman Empire - the first large highly integrated socio-political body in human history; Classic Mesoamerica - one of the earliest urbanised systems in tropical environments and Medieval Northern Europe - an early example of increasing globalisation driving urbanisation. This comparative study will capture past urban variability to identify the most common causes of urban collapse as well as mechanisms that enabled past cities to survive for millennia and will unlock vast amounts of Deep Past Data to scholars across urban studies thus creating a new interdisciplinary research line.

Mots-clés : urban resilience,deep past urban data,complex systems simulation
Projet ERC : TARGETS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Institut universitaire européen de Florence — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EUI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1184500.0 €

Despite progressive anti-discrimination legislation and the popularity of diversity policies touted as the key to a culturally diverse workplace, discrimination of ethnic minorities in the labor market is remarkably persistent and pervasive. TARGETS integrates literature from sociology, social psychology, organization and sociolegal studies into a novel multi-actor and dynamic theoretical framework to examine what makes people targets of ethnic discrimination. Both conceptually and empirically, the key contribution of our approach is that we define and operationalize discrimination claims as, inherently, relational. We test the core proposition that relational claims-making is the key mechanism through which discrimination is perceived, legitimated or contested by multiple actors. We develop and test this theory at two levels of analysis. At the macro level, we map how structures and practices, such as anti-discrimination laws and diversity management policies, can confer or deny legitimacy to discrimination claims, in the workplace and courtroom. These structures may create an 'illusion of fairness' that reproduce durable inequalities in the distribution of organizational resources, such as access to jobs and career opportunities. We then zoom in on the micro-foundations of the claims-making process, focusing on its relational and dynamic nature, respectively. First, using an innovative research design, we pioneer the use of linked, multi-actor factorial survey experiments to capture the discrimination attributions made by multiple actors (targets, perpetrators, allies and bystanders), simultaneously. Second, we collect real-time longitudinal data on the job search strategies that ethnic minorities adopt to avoid becoming targets. Our dynamic approach improves on existing accounts that all too often treat them as passive labor market agents, and contributes to theory development on how supply-side behavior can counteract labor market inequalities.

Mots-clés : employers,hiring and organizations factorial surveys ethnic inequality labour markets