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Ten Leiden researchers awarded ERC Starting Grants
Ten scientists from Leiden University will receive a Starting Grant from the European Research Council. This will allow them to launch their own project, form their own research team and implement their best ideas.
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded 780 million euros of grants. Fifty-one researchers in the Netherlands have received a Starting Grant. The Leiden laureates are:
Marta Artola Perez de Azanza, Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC)
The SWEET DEGRADATION project aims to develop a groundbreaking therapeutic strategy to degrade proteins in the Golgi apparatus, a key cellular component involved in protein processing within cells. Current methods cannot target some relevant proteins in the Golgi apparatus in a specific and controlled manner, limiting treatment options for certain diseases. Marta Artola and her team will create special molecules designed to selectively target disease-related proteins in the Golgi and transport them to the lysosome for degradation. Several carbohydrate-processing enzymes in the Golgi apparatus play a role in diseases such as cancer and rare metabolic disorders. This research could lead to new treatments for these diseases.
Sarah Cramsey, Institute for Area Studies
How have care practices changed across different peoples, states and political economies during the dynamic 20th century? And how did caretakers rooted in families, communities and broader societies nurture very young children during their earliest and most precarious months? The CARECENTURY project answers these entangled questions with a comparative study of early childcare in central and eastern Europe during the period 1905-2004.
Maartje Huijbers, LUMC
Autoimmune diseases can be caused by antibodies that attack and destroy a part the body. Humans have five types of antibodies, the most common of which is IgG, which has four subtypes (IgG1, IgG2, IgG3 and IgG4). The type of antibody is relevant to how autoimmune disease is caused and how it responds to certain treatments. Maartje Huijbers is interested in autoimmune diseases with a dominant IgG4 response. This is interesting because IgG4 is associated with an immunosuppressive response. IgG4 can also function as a blocking antibody. Huijbers wants to investigate why the IgG4 response dominates in some autoimmune diseases. It is important to know how IgG4 responses arise because they have beneficial effects. For example, they can inhibit allergic reactions. However, IgG4 responses are unfavourable in some cancers, in vaccination and in IgG4-dominated autoimmune diseases. Huijbers will therefore also investigate how to switch IgG4 responses on or off. It is hope this will lead to new therapies for these conditions.
Corinna Jentzsch, Political Science
Violence by jihadist armed groups poses a threat to social, political and economic gains in many African countries, with worldwide repercussions. Research has focused on international responses to ‘violent extremism’, but international actors do not operate in a vacuum and interact with responses on the ground. Corinna Jentzsch will provide a thorough analysis of when, how and why domestic actors repress and resist jihadi insurgents and reorder security. This is essential as domestic and international actors need to coordinate and adjust their responses accordingly to benefit from local knowledge and prevent further conflict escalation.
Andrew Littlejohn, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology
Climate citizenship explores how adapting environments to climate change can change the way people interact with each other and with government. It focuses on nature-based or ‘green’climate infrastructure projects that make use of natural entities or dynamics. With his ERC grant, anthropologist Andrew Littlejohn will investigate how our notions of citizenship are disrupted, made and remade in the process of adapting local environments to global climate change.
Ili Ma, Psychology
Teenagers are growing up in a digital world where misinformation and disinformation are a growing problem. Using a combination of experimental and qualitative methods, this research programme will investigate the factors that make young people susceptible to misleading information and how this changes as they grow older. This will be in collaboration with young people, parents, schools and professionals such as digital neighbourhood police officers and counter-terrorism experts. Ultimately, the aim is to develop interventions that fit in with teenagers’ lives and needs in order to make them more resilient to misinformation and disinformation.
Carwyn Morris, Institute for Area Studies
This ERC project, CHINA.EU, will examine the role that capital, digital technologies and social media from the People’s Republic of China play in European cultural spaces, with a focus on cultural spaces in Paris, Dusseldorf and Athens. In Paris, the project will focuse on the fashion industry, the restaurant industry and historic Chinatowns. In Dusseldorf, the project will study the restaurant industry, Manifesta art biennale and the cultural spheres emerging around multinational corporations. Finally, in Athens, the project will look to understand the ways in which so-called ‘Golden Visa’ schemes, alongside Piraeus Port adjacent investments, influence Athens’ cultural geography. This research will help us understand how Chinese capital holders imagine and interact with European cities, the role that Chinese digital technologies and social media play in European urban life and new trends in Europe’s cultural geography.
Sara Polak, Centre for the Arts in Society
Play is everywhere. People try things out by playing, imagining things, making rules and rituals. Play invites people to join in; it enables things people wouldn’t otherwise do; it can be violent and destabilizing. Play conjures up worlds. This project uses play as a key concept to understand how the American ‘world’ was made. Images of cowboys and Indians suggest that the colonization of the West was child’s play; it seems innocent and adventurous. But in reality, making the New World involved a genocide of Native Americans: overwhelming violence that has been made palatable by framing it as frivolous and playful. The January 6th Capitol Insurrection in Washington can be seen as an example of a disruptive and dangerous game that tried to play into existence a new world. Through social-media platforms the threshold to join the game is now relatively low, but in the past too, new media made possible new forms of political play. This project compares different historical case studies to discover to what extent play has always been a driving force in making America, and how the game has fundamentally changed in recent years through social media.
Jasmijn Rana, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology
In Europe, people from minoritised communities are often less involved in outdoor activities such as hiking and camping. However, identity-based groups are reclaiming their place in these spaces and challenging their sense of not belonging outdoors. With her ERC grant, anthropologist Jasmijn Rana will explore how these movements address the lack of diversity and how ethno-racial inequalities are experienced and resisted in Europe’s outdoor spaces. The research project Diversity Outdoors: Embodied Ethnoracial Inequalities and Outdoor Recreation in Europe, will explore how identities are shaped by both physical bodies and societal labels, with a focus on sport and recreation as key areas of study.
Joanne Stolk, Centre for the Arts in Society
This project will look at the Ancient Greek language from the perspective of the ordinary writer. A large corpus of more than 60,000 Greek texts on papyrus, from private letters to petitions and contracts, offers an excellent opportunity to study the Greek language as written by non-literary writers in antiquity (between 300 BCE and 800 CE). What did these writers perceive as a mistake? What did they regard as ‘correct’ Greek? How did they compose their texts? In order to answer these questions this project will collect and employ an new resource: the corrections to the texts made by the ancient writers themselves.