Back Eight researchers obtain Marie Curie grants to promote their research at Pompeu Fabra

Eight researchers obtain Marie Curie grants to promote their research at Pompeu Fabra

They will be able to carry out their social impact projects for two years in four different departments of the University. The grants are part of the 2018 call for individual Marie Curie Sklodovska grants, in the framework of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme to promote research and innovation.

20.02.2019

 

Eight highly talented researchers capable of having a significant impact on society and the economy will be able to carry out their research for two years shared among various departments of the University: Humanities (4), Political and Social Sciences (2), Law (1) and Information and Communication Technologies (1), under the supervision of established UPF researchers, many of whom coordinate research groups within their respective departments.

The eight projects to be carried out at UPF will be shared among the departments of Humanities (4), Political and Social Sciences (2), Law(1) and the DTIC (1)

In this call, which comes under the EU’s Marie Curie Sklodovska Actions Programme, the persons joining UPF receive grants endowed with approximately 173,000 euros each (except one project, with 161,000 euros). The sum of the eight projects amounts to a total of 1.37 million euros of funding. The overall figure for the call for individual Marie Curie grants in 2018 was 273 million euros, which will benefit 1,351 researchers in the European Research Area.

Half of the projects to be carried out at UPF are in the Department of Humanities

ArCarib - Archaeology of Informal Maritime Commerce in the Colonial Caribbean” is an interdisciplinary historical archaeological project with Konrad Antczak as its principal investigator, supervised by Sandra Montón-Subías, ICREA-UPF research professor at the Department of Humanities and coordinator of the Research Group in Colonialism, Gender and Materialities (CGiM).

The project’s pivotal question is the study of how informal maritime trade in ceramics in the south-eastern Caribbean, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, affected the daily life of the communities in the islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire and the Venezuelan coast. “I will especially be studying how this trade affected the processes of identity formation and gender relations”, stated Konrad Antczak.

EXPAND - Examining pan-neotropical diasporas”, will be carried out by Jonas Gregoria de Souza, and his supervisor will be Marco Madella, ICREA-UPF research professor with the Department of Humanities and coordinator of the Complexity and Socio-Ecological Dynamics (CaSEs) Research Group. The project will involve archaeology, paleoecology and computer modelling to address crucial issues on migration, at the forefront of the debate on climate change and the dynamics of human populations.

It will specifically analyse the data for the period of the Holocene in the lowlands of South America and will involve state-of-the-art computational modelling techniques. “I will be verifying the role that was played by environmental factors in cultural diasporas in the late Holocene”, highlighted Jonas Gregoria de Souza.

NucSat – Satellites and nuclear information. Production, communication and reception of nuclear-related information generated with satellites” is a project that will be carried out by the researcher Gemma Cirac, under the supervision of Albert Presas i Puig, professor with the Department of Humanities, coordinator of the Nexus between Science, Culture, Politics, Religion and Society Research Group (NEXUS) and of the European project Honest, which is nearing completion.

The project will use data generated by satellites and will examine how this information is turned into knowledge through its analysis, evidence, dissemination and consumption, after two nuclear accidents (Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011). “It is a comparative historical study to observe the evolution of the production, circulation and reception of satellite data and its real impact on political action and on the development of public opinion regarding nuclear issues”, stated Gemma Cirac.

REVERE - Revisiting the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters” is a project developed by Esther Villegas de la Torre, supervised by Maria Morrás Ruiz-Falcó, professor at the Department of Humanities and coordinator of the History of Literary Creation Research Group. The project will examine the role of gender in the construction of academic and commercial authorship in Spanish and in English.

It will elucidate the national character of publishing practices and authors of printed works during the marketing of the literary product in the seventeenth century, in order to make an original contribution to the history of the book and gender studies. “This research is aligned with the desire to improve our understanding of the authorship of women within the court and convents in the seventeenth century Spain”, stressed Esther Villegas de la Torre.

How can technology help the legislative process, and the effects of homicides in Latin America, the two Social and Political Sciences projects

CrowdLawLab – CrowdLaw: Towards a More Inclusive Law-making Through Technology” is the project that involves Victòria Alsina as its principal investigator under the supervision of Carles Ramió, full professor of Political Sciences and Public Administration and coordinator of the Research Group on Governance, Public Policy and Management (Smart Government).

The project will focus on the use of technology to engage citizens in the stages of the legislative process, from the identification of problems to the identification of the solution, the drafting of proposals, ratification, implementation and evaluation. It also aims to help understand the impact of technology on legislative institutions and public and political culture. “The goal of this research is to support the legislative bodies, particularly town and city councils, in the design of more participatory legislative practices”, revealed Victòria Alsina.

HomicidesLACcities – Understanding the drivers and impacts of homicides in 4 major Latin American cities” will be conducted by Emmanuel Letouzé and supervised by Jorge Rodríguez Menes, a Serra Hunter researcher with the Department of Political and Social Sciences and member of the Sociodemography Research Group (DemoSoc).

The project will analyse what causes and which are the effects of homicides in four major Latin American cities (Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Mexico City) and will focus on the differential impacts on various vulnerable groups, especially women. The study will use “big data” sources to analyse the information. “In the medium term, HomicidesLACcities will attempt to create a network of European regional urban laboratories to make for safer and fairer cities”, said Emmanuel Letouzé.

The ethics of migration and the creation of prototypes to help visually impaired people, the projects of the Departments of Law and TIC

Migration Ethics” is a project involving Kieran Oberman as its principal investigator and will be supervised by Paula Casal, ICREA-UPF research professor at the Department of Law. This research project will be the first to address the ethics of migration in the context of the Mediterranean crisis, from the standpoint of ethical theory.

The project aims to assess how the EU states should respond to these great waves of migration and will focus on several questions: which immigrants are entitled to protection? Where should those who are entitled to protection be protected? And if it is permitted to exclude certain immigrants, how should this be done? “We want to explore different methods of restricting the mobility of immigrants to see (if there are any) those that are ethically defendable and in accordance with the current regulatory framework, if they are legally feasible”, stated Kieran Oberman.

HAFI – Haptic-Flexible Interfaces for Document Navigation and the Visually Impaired” will be carried out by the researcher and supervised by Josep Blat, full professor of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) and coordinator of the Interactive Technologies Research Group (GTI). This research project will enable designing, building and evaluating a prototype to help visually impaired people navigate through mobile applications.

This prototype is based on haptic-flexible interfaces (HAFI), flexible mobile devices equipped with a broad bandwidth vibrotactile actuator that can stimulate the mechanical sensors we have in the skin and joints. The aim is to provide the user with similar interactive experiences to those they would have when browsing through paper documents that cannot be recreated using typical mobile devices. “I think that the learning outcomes of this research will have the potential to facilitate the digital lives of millions of visually impaired users”, said de researcher.

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