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Project acronym AfricanNeo
Project The African Neolithic: A genetic perspective
Researcher (PI) Carina SCHLEBUSCH
Host Institution (HI) UPPSALA UNIVERSITET
Summary The spread of farming practices in various parts of the world had a marked influence on how humans live today and how we are distributed around the globe. Around 10,000 years ago, warmer conditions lead to population increases, coinciding with the invention of farming in several places around the world. Archaeological evidence attest to the spread of these practices to neighboring regions. In many cases this lead to whole continents being converted from hunter-gatherer to farming societies. It is however difficult to see from archaeological records if only the farming culture spread to other places or whether the farming people themselves migrated. Investigating patterns of genetic variation for farming populations and for remaining hunter-gatherer groups can help to resolve questions on population movements co-occurring with the spread of farming practices. It can further shed light on the routes of migration and dates when migrants arrived. The spread of farming to Europe has been thoroughly investigated in the fields of archaeology, linguistics and genetics, while on other continents these events have been less investigated. In Africa, mainly linguistic and archaeological studies have attempted to elucidate the spread of farming and herding practices. I propose to investigate the movement of farmer and pastoral groups in Africa, by typing densely spaced genome-wide variant positions in a large number of African populations. The data will be used to infer how farming and pastoralism was introduced to various regions, where the incoming people originated from and when these (potential) population movements occurred. Through this study, the Holocene history of Africa will be revealed and placed into a global context of migration, mobility and cultural transitions. Additionally the study will give due credence to one of the largest Neolithic expansion events, the Bantu-expansion, which caused a pronounced change in the demographic landscape of the African continent
The spread of farming practices in various parts of the world had a marked influence on how humans live today and how we are distributed around the globe. Around 10,000 years ago, warmer conditions lead to population increases, coinciding with the invention of farming in several places around the world. Archaeological evidence attest to the spread of these practices to neighboring regions. In many cases this lead to whole continents being converted from hunter-gatherer to farming societies. It is however difficult to see from archaeological records if only the farming culture spread to other places or whether the farming people themselves migrated. Investigating patterns of genetic variation for farming populations and for remaining hunter-gatherer groups can help to resolve questions on population movements co-occurring with the spread of farming practices. It can further shed light on the routes of migration and dates when migrants arrived. The spread of farming to Europe has been thoroughly investigated in the fields of archaeology, linguistics and genetics, while on other continents these events have been less investigated. In Africa, mainly linguistic and archaeological studies have attempted to elucidate the spread of farming and herding practices. I propose to investigate the movement of farmer and pastoral groups in Africa, by typing densely spaced genome-wide variant positions in a large number of African populations. The data will be used to infer how farming and pastoralism was introduced to various regions, where the incoming people originated from and when these (potential) population movements occurred. Through this study, the Holocene history of Africa will be revealed and placed into a global context of migration, mobility and cultural transitions. Additionally the study will give due credence to one of the largest Neolithic expansion events, the Bantu-expansion, which caused a pronounced change in the demographic landscape of the African continent
Project acronym BabyRhythm
Project Tuned to the Rhythm: How Prenatally and Postnatally Heard Speech Prosody Lays the Foundations for Language Learning
Researcher (PI) Judit Gervain
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2017-COG
Summary The role of experience in language acquisition has been the focus of heated theoretical debates, between proponents of nativist views according to whom experience plays a minimal role and advocates of empiricist positions holding that experience, be it linguistic, social or other, is sufficient to account for language acquisition. Despite more than a half century of dedicated research efforts, the problem is not solved. The present project brings a novel perspective to this debate, combining hitherto unconnected research in language acquisition with recent advances in the neurophysiology of hearing and speech processing. Specifically, it claims that prenatal experience with speech, which mainly consists of prosody due to the filtering effects of the womb, is what shapes the speech perception system, laying the foundations of subsequent language learning. Prosody is thus the cue that links genetically endowed predispositions present in the initial state with language experience. The proposal links the behavioral and neural levels, arguing that the hierarchy of the neural oscillations corresponds to a unique developmental chronology in human infants' experience with speech and language. The project uses state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, EEG & NIRS, with monolingual full term newborns, as well as full-term bilingual, preterm and deaf newborns to investigate the link between prenatal experience and subsequent language acquisition. It proposes to follow the developmental trajectories of these four populations from birth to 6 and 9 months of age.
The role of experience in language acquisition has been the focus of heated theoretical debates, between proponents of nativist views according to whom experience plays a minimal role and advocates of empiricist positions holding that experience, be it linguistic, social or other, is sufficient to account for language acquisition. Despite more than a half century of dedicated research efforts, the problem is not solved. The present project brings a novel perspective to this debate, combining hitherto unconnected research in language acquisition with recent advances in the neurophysiology of hearing and speech processing. Specifically, it claims that prenatal experience with speech, which mainly consists of prosody due to the filtering effects of the womb, is what shapes the speech perception system, laying the foundations of subsequent language learning. Prosody is thus the cue that links genetically endowed predispositions present in the initial state with language experience. The proposal links the behavioral and neural levels, arguing that the hierarchy of the neural oscillations corresponds to a unique developmental chronology in human infants' experience with speech and language. The project uses state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, EEG & NIRS, with monolingual full term newborns, as well as full-term bilingual, preterm and deaf newborns to investigate the link between prenatal experience and subsequent language acquisition. It proposes to follow the developmental trajectories of these four populations from birth to 6 and 9 months of age.
Project acronym CCC
Project Context, Content, and Compositionality
Researcher (PI) François Recanati
Summary Over the past fifteen years, I have argued that the effects of context on content go well beyond what is standardly acknowledged in semantics. This view is sometimes referred to as Contextualism or (more technically) Truth-Conditional Pragmatics (TCP). The key idea is that the effects of context on content need not be traceable to the linguistic material in the uttered sentence. Some effects are due to the linguistic material (e.g. to context-sensitive words or morphemes which trigger the search for contextual values), but others result from top-down or free pragmatic processes that take place not because the linguistic material demands it, but because the literal meaning of the sentence requires adjustment or elaboration ( modulation ) in order to determine a contextually admissible content for the speaker s utterance. In the literature, one often finds arguments to the effect that, if Contextualism is right, then systematic semantics becomes impossible. More precisely, the claim that is often made is that TCP is incompatible with the Principle of Compositionality, upon which any systematic semantics must be based. The aim of this project is to defend Contextualism/TCP by demonstrating that it is not incompatible with the project of constructing a systematic, compositional semantics for natural language. This demonstration is of importance given the current predicament in the philosophy of language. We are, as it were, caught in a dilemma : formal semanticists provide compelling arguments that natural language must be compositional, but contextualists offer no less compelling arguments to the effect that « sense modulation is essential to speech, because we use a (mor or less) fixed stock of lexemes to talk about an indefinite variety of things, situations, and experiences » (Recanati 2004 : 131). What are we to do, if modulation is incompatible with compositionality? Our aim is to show that it is not, and thereby to dissolve the alleged dilemma.
Over the past fifteen years, I have argued that the effects of context on content go well beyond what is standardly acknowledged in semantics. This view is sometimes referred to as Contextualism or (more technically) Truth-Conditional Pragmatics (TCP). The key idea is that the effects of context on content need not be traceable to the linguistic material in the uttered sentence. Some effects are due to the linguistic material (e.g. to context-sensitive words or morphemes which trigger the search for contextual values), but others result from top-down or free pragmatic processes that take place not because the linguistic material demands it, but because the literal meaning of the sentence requires adjustment or elaboration ( modulation ) in order to determine a contextually admissible content for the speaker s utterance. In the literature, one often finds arguments to the effect that, if Contextualism is right, then systematic semantics becomes impossible. More precisely, the claim that is often made is that TCP is incompatible with the Principle of Compositionality, upon which any systematic semantics must be based. The aim of this project is to defend Contextualism/TCP by demonstrating that it is not incompatible with the project of constructing a systematic, compositional semantics for natural language. This demonstration is of importance given the current predicament in the philosophy of language. We are, as it were, caught in a dilemma : formal semanticists provide compelling arguments that natural language must be compositional, but contextualists offer no less compelling arguments to the effect that « sense modulation is essential to speech, because we use a (mor or less) fixed stock of lexemes to talk about an indefinite variety of things, situations, and experiences » (Recanati 2004 : 131). What are we to do, if modulation is incompatible with compositionality? Our aim is to show that it is not, and thereby to dissolve the alleged dilemma.
Project acronym COSMOS
Project COSMOS: Computational Shaping and Modeling of Musical Structures
Researcher (PI) Elaine Chew
Summary Music performance is considered by many to be one of the most breath taking feats of human intelligence. That music performance is a creative act is no longer a disputed fact, but the very nature of this creative work remains illusive. Taking the view that the creative work of performance is the making and shaping of music structures, and that this creative thinking is a form of problem solving, COSMOS proposes an integrated programme of research to transform our understanding of the human experience of performed music, which is almost all music that we hear, and of the creativity of music performance, which addresses how music is made. The research themes are as follows: i) to find new ways to represent, explore, and talk about performance; ii) to harness volunteer thinking (citizen science) for music performance research by focussing on structures experienced and problem solving; iii) to create sandbox environments to experiment with making performed structures; iv) to create theoretical frameworks to discover the reasoning behind the structures perceived and made; and, v) to foster community engagement by training experts to provide feedback on structure solutions so as to increase public understanding of the creative work in music performance. Analysis of the perceived and designed structures will be based on a novel duality paradigm that turns conventional computational music structure analysis on its head to reverse engineer why a perceiver or a performer chooses a particular structure. Embedded in the approach is the use of computational thinking to optimise representations and theories to ensure accuracy, robustness, efficiency, and scalability. The PI is an established performer and a leading authority in music representation, music information research, and music perception and cognition. The project will have far reaching impact, reconfiguring expert and public views of music performance and time-varying music-like sequences such as cardiac arrhythmia.
Music performance is considered by many to be one of the most breath taking feats of human intelligence. That music performance is a creative act is no longer a disputed fact, but the very nature of this creative work remains illusive. Taking the view that the creative work of performance is the making and shaping of music structures, and that this creative thinking is a form of problem solving, COSMOS proposes an integrated programme of research to transform our understanding of the human experience of performed music, which is almost all music that we hear, and of the creativity of music performance, which addresses how music is made. The research themes are as follows: i) to find new ways to represent, explore, and talk about performance; ii) to harness volunteer thinking (citizen science) for music performance research by focussing on structures experienced and problem solving; iii) to create sandbox environments to experiment with making performed structures; iv) to create theoretical frameworks to discover the reasoning behind the structures perceived and made; and, v) to foster community engagement by training experts to provide feedback on structure solutions so as to increase public understanding of the creative work in music performance. Analysis of the perceived and designed structures will be based on a novel duality paradigm that turns conventional computational music structure analysis on its head to reverse engineer why a perceiver or a performer chooses a particular structure. Embedded in the approach is the use of computational thinking to optimise representations and theories to ensure accuracy, robustness, efficiency, and scalability. The PI is an established performer and a leading authority in music representation, music information research, and music perception and cognition. The project will have far reaching impact, reconfiguring expert and public views of music performance and time-varying music-like sequences such as cardiac arrhythmia.
Project acronym COVOPRIM
Project A Comparative Study of Voice Perception in Primates
Researcher (PI) Pascal Georges BELIN
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE D'AIX MARSEILLE
Summary With COVOPRIM I propose to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of one often overlooked component of speech and language: voice perception. Perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception will be compared between humans, macaques and marmosets –two highly vocal and extensively studied monkey species–to quantify cross-species differences and infer mechanisms potentially inherited from a common ancestor. Two key building blocks of vocal communication detailed in my past research in humans will be compared across species: (1) the sensitivity to conspecific vocalizations, and (2) the processing of speaker/caller identity. COVOPRIM is organized in three workpackages (WPs). WP1 will use large-scale behavioural testing based on ad-lib access of monkeys to automated test systems (following the highly successful model developed locally with baboons). Two main behavioural experiments will establish psychometric response functions for robust cross-species comparison. WP2 will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure cerebral activity during auditory stimulation in the three species. I will compare across brains the organization of what I hypothesize constitutes a "voice patch system" similar to the face patch system of visual cortex and broadly conserved in primates. I will also take advantage of the monkey models and use long-term, subject-specific enrichments of the auditory stimulation to probe the experience-dependence of neural coding in the voice patch system—an outstanding issue in human voice perception. WP3 will use fMRI-guided microstimulation in monkeys and transcranial magnetic stimulation in humans to establish the effective connectivity within the voice patch system and test the causal relation between voice patch neuronal activity and voice perception behaviour. COVOPRIM is expected to generate considerable advances in our understanding of the recent evolution in primates of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception.
With COVOPRIM I propose to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of one often overlooked component of speech and language: voice perception. Perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception will be compared between humans, macaques and marmosets –two highly vocal and extensively studied monkey species–to quantify cross-species differences and infer mechanisms potentially inherited from a common ancestor. Two key building blocks of vocal communication detailed in my past research in humans will be compared across species: (1) the sensitivity to conspecific vocalizations, and (2) the processing of speaker/caller identity. COVOPRIM is organized in three workpackages (WPs). WP1 will use large-scale behavioural testing based on ad-lib access of monkeys to automated test systems (following the highly successful model developed locally with baboons). Two main behavioural experiments will establish psychometric response functions for robust cross-species comparison. WP2 will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure cerebral activity during auditory stimulation in the three species. I will compare across brains the organization of what I hypothesize constitutes a "voice patch system" similar to the face patch system of visual cortex and broadly conserved in primates. I will also take advantage of the monkey models and use long-term, subject-specific enrichments of the auditory stimulation to probe the experience-dependence of neural coding in the voice patch system—an outstanding issue in human voice perception. WP3 will use fMRI-guided microstimulation in monkeys and transcranial magnetic stimulation in humans to establish the effective connectivity within the voice patch system and test the causal relation between voice patch neuronal activity and voice perception behaviour. COVOPRIM is expected to generate considerable advances in our understanding of the recent evolution in primates of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception.
Project acronym DEBATE
Project Debate: Innovation as Performance in Late-Medieval Universities
Researcher (PI) Monica BRINZEI
Summary The switch from parchment to paper had a fundamental impact on later medieval universities, equivalent to the shift to Open Access today, hindering some intellectual practices while encouraging others. The DEBATE project identifies a neglected genre of latin texts that flourished on paper, the Principia, which record the public confrontations between candidates (socii) for the title of doctor. These debates, imposed by university statutes throughout Europe as annual exercises linked to lectures on the Sentences (the medieval parallel to our PhD thesis), forced the candidate to reveal his innovative theories (sheets of papers were exchanged among the socii beforehand), display his erudition and prove his intellectual prowess before a large audience. The futuristic discussion usually exceeded the confines of one discipline and allowed the bachelor to indulge his interdisciplinary interests, employing science, theology, mathematics, politics, literature, and rhetoric in his polemics against his colleagues. Principia thus reveal the cutting edge method of fostering science in later medieval universities. The DEBATE team intends to identify new manuscripts, edit the texts, establish authorship for anonymous fragments and propose an interpretation that will help explain how innovation was a primordial target in medieval academia. Putting together all the surviving texts of Principia produced in various cultural contexts, this project will provide a wealth of material that will bring about a basic change in our understanding of the mechanism of the production of academic knowledge in the early universities all around Europe.The project is designed to promote erudition by combining a palaeographical, codicological, editorial and hermeneutical approach, aiming to open an advanced area of inquiry focusing on an intellectual practice that bound together medieval universities from different geographical and cultural regions: Paris, Bologna, Vienna, Prague, Krakow and Cologne.
The switch from parchment to paper had a fundamental impact on later medieval universities, equivalent to the shift to Open Access today, hindering some intellectual practices while encouraging others. The DEBATE project identifies a neglected genre of latin texts that flourished on paper, the Principia, which record the public confrontations between candidates (socii) for the title of doctor. These debates, imposed by university statutes throughout Europe as annual exercises linked to lectures on the Sentences (the medieval parallel to our PhD thesis), forced the candidate to reveal his innovative theories (sheets of papers were exchanged among the socii beforehand), display his erudition and prove his intellectual prowess before a large audience. The futuristic discussion usually exceeded the confines of one discipline and allowed the bachelor to indulge his interdisciplinary interests, employing science, theology, mathematics, politics, literature, and rhetoric in his polemics against his colleagues. Principia thus reveal the cutting edge method of fostering science in later medieval universities. The DEBATE team intends to identify new manuscripts, edit the texts, establish authorship for anonymous fragments and propose an interpretation that will help explain how innovation was a primordial target in medieval academia. Putting together all the surviving texts of Principia produced in various cultural contexts, this project will provide a wealth of material that will bring about a basic change in our understanding of the mechanism of the production of academic knowledge in the early universities all around Europe.The project is designed to promote erudition by combining a palaeographical, codicological, editorial and hermeneutical approach, aiming to open an advanced area of inquiry focusing on an intellectual practice that bound together medieval universities from different geographical and cultural regions: Paris, Bologna, Vienna, Prague, Krakow and Cologne.
Project acronym Desert Networks
Project Into the Eastern Desert of Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Roman period
Researcher (PI) Bérangère REDON
Summary The desert is a paradox: it is at the same time arid and rich in resources, a margin and an interface. Far from being a no man's land, it is a social space of linked solidarities. The "Desert Networks" project aims to explore the reticular organisation of such a zone by focusing on the southern part of the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Located between the Nile and the Red Sea, it has always been a tantalizing region for Egypt and beyond. Its ancient remains are admirably preserved and ancient sources about and from the region itself are numerous. Yet, the history of its occupation and appropriation remains a static and compartmentalized one. Therefore, the ambition of the project is to cross disciplinary borders and achieve an epistemological break by working for the first time in and on the Eastern desert as a dynamic object, both from a long-term perspective (mid-second millennium BC - late third century AD), and by analysing the patterns and functions of the different networks that linked its various nodes using the connectivity theory that reshaped scholarly paradigms for the Mediterranean in the 2000s. As the head of the French Eastern Desert mission, the PI will co-ordinate a multidisciplinary team. For the first time, the project will gather all the data unearthed in the region over 300 years, as well as the expected data from the excavations conducted by the project, in a database linked with a GIS. A collaborative and online open access map of the Eastern Desert will be created and will serve for the spatial analyses and rendering of the real, economic and social networks in the area. These networks evolved over time and through a shifting geography, as people experienced different perceptions of space. By assessing all these facets and confronting the archaeological material and written evidence, our final objective is to write a new history of the Eastern Desert from Pharaonic to Roman times, focusing on its networks and evaluating their meaning.
The desert is a paradox: it is at the same time arid and rich in resources, a margin and an interface. Far from being a no man's land, it is a social space of linked solidarities. The "Desert Networks" project aims to explore the reticular organisation of such a zone by focusing on the southern part of the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Located between the Nile and the Red Sea, it has always been a tantalizing region for Egypt and beyond. Its ancient remains are admirably preserved and ancient sources about and from the region itself are numerous. Yet, the history of its occupation and appropriation remains a static and compartmentalized one. Therefore, the ambition of the project is to cross disciplinary borders and achieve an epistemological break by working for the first time in and on the Eastern desert as a dynamic object, both from a long-term perspective (mid-second millennium BC - late third century AD), and by analysing the patterns and functions of the different networks that linked its various nodes using the connectivity theory that reshaped scholarly paradigms for the Mediterranean in the 2000s. As the head of the French Eastern Desert mission, the PI will co-ordinate a multidisciplinary team. For the first time, the project will gather all the data unearthed in the region over 300 years, as well as the expected data from the excavations conducted by the project, in a database linked with a GIS. A collaborative and online open access map of the Eastern Desert will be created and will serve for the spatial analyses and rendering of the real, economic and social networks in the area. These networks evolved over time and through a shifting geography, as people experienced different perceptions of space. By assessing all these facets and confronting the archaeological material and written evidence, our final objective is to write a new history of the Eastern Desert from Pharaonic to Roman times, focusing on its networks and evaluating their meaning.
Project acronym DREAM
Project Drafting and Enacting the Revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean.In search of Dignity, from the 1950's until today
Researcher (PI) Leyla DAKHLI
Summary DREAM, Drafting and Enacting the Revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean, seeks to write the history of the revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean since the independences. It aims to write a transnational history of often forgotten struggles, recall facts and original forms of resistance. We know very few about the revolts that occurred in this period, and even less about the memory that they left in the societies, the way these memories circulated. This rediscovery of revolutions in the shadows must be done through the collection of original material, specifically "poor archives" of the ordinary and the production of Archives – through a combination of classical interviews and innovative methods that involve researchers, archivists, artists and the actors themselves. The objective is to write a history that focuses on emotions and paths of revolts, telling us more about the link between all dimensions of human lives in these territories (religion, gender, social positions) and the articulation of these dimensions in the revolutionary projects. DREAM aims to write a history that doesn't produce heroes or big figures, doesn't discuss success or failure, but tries to understand the motivations and the potentialities that were at stake in different episodes and moments, during the uprisings and in between them. It aims to explore the historical signification and the concrete aspects of the call for dignity (Karama/sharaf) in a space that, after liberating itself from the colonial domination, was trapped into the illusion of a common faith (being it the Arab nation or the Islamic umma) and the concrete oppression of authoritarian regimes. This period needs urgently to be explored and history, with its modern tools and patterns, can embrace and trace the particular conditions in which Arab people lived for more than six decades, and specifically the frames of their dreams and projections.
DREAM, Drafting and Enacting the Revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean, seeks to write the history of the revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean since the independences. It aims to write a transnational history of often forgotten struggles, recall facts and original forms of resistance. We know very few about the revolts that occurred in this period, and even less about the memory that they left in the societies, the way these memories circulated. This rediscovery of revolutions in the shadows must be done through the collection of original material, specifically "poor archives" of the ordinary and the production of Archives – through a combination of classical interviews and innovative methods that involve researchers, archivists, artists and the actors themselves. The objective is to write a history that focuses on emotions and paths of revolts, telling us more about the link between all dimensions of human lives in these territories (religion, gender, social positions) and the articulation of these dimensions in the revolutionary projects. DREAM aims to write a history that doesn't produce heroes or big figures, doesn't discuss success or failure, but tries to understand the motivations and the potentialities that were at stake in different episodes and moments, during the uprisings and in between them. It aims to explore the historical signification and the concrete aspects of the call for dignity (Karama/sharaf) in a space that, after liberating itself from the colonial domination, was trapped into the illusion of a common faith (being it the Arab nation or the Islamic umma) and the concrete oppression of authoritarian regimes. This period needs urgently to be explored and history, with its modern tools and patterns, can embrace and trace the particular conditions in which Arab people lived for more than six decades, and specifically the frames of their dreams and projections.
Project acronym EDJ
Project An Etymological Dictionary of the Japonic Languages
Researcher (PI) Alexander VOVIN
Host Institution (HI) ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES
Summary It is a paradoxical situation that with Japan being the third modern economy and Japanese, the main Japonic language, being the 10th in the world in terms of native speakers and the most widely studied Asian language, the Japonic language family still lacks an etymological dictionary. The present research project will rectify this situation. The benefits of an etymological dictionary of Japonic are obvious: not only it will be of a great use to the specialists working on pre-modern Japan and Ryukyuan islands in various disciplines; it will have its impact on modern studies, especially on linguistic identities in East Asia. And offer a new reading of regional linguistic identities The Etymological Dictionary of the Japonic languages has never been compiled, and the time for the realization of such a project is ripe, as it would have been impossible to carry on 30 or 40 years ago, since many important resources available now did not yet exist then such as numerous dictionaries and descriptions of dialects and historical stages of the language development. The same is true regarding the editions of many textual sources and compilation of their indexes. One very important difference with the previous era is also the fact that nowadays many sources are available electronically, which greatly facilitates the search and management of information. This project is highly innovative because it provides a presentation in context based on the extensive use of the IT technology, as compared to the previous research on Japonic etymology which was essentially word-list-oriented. In contrast with the current practice, where only word entries with their translations were provided (and often without any reference to the source), thanks to internet link to database, and cross-referenced entries, the electronic etymological dictionary will present the words in their textual historical and cultural context.
It is a paradoxical situation that with Japan being the third modern economy and Japanese, the main Japonic language, being the 10th in the world in terms of native speakers and the most widely studied Asian language, the Japonic language family still lacks an etymological dictionary. The present research project will rectify this situation. The benefits of an etymological dictionary of Japonic are obvious: not only it will be of a great use to the specialists working on pre-modern Japan and Ryukyuan islands in various disciplines; it will have its impact on modern studies, especially on linguistic identities in East Asia. And offer a new reading of regional linguistic identities The Etymological Dictionary of the Japonic languages has never been compiled, and the time for the realization of such a project is ripe, as it would have been impossible to carry on 30 or 40 years ago, since many important resources available now did not yet exist then such as numerous dictionaries and descriptions of dialects and historical stages of the language development. The same is true regarding the editions of many textual sources and compilation of their indexes. One very important difference with the previous era is also the fact that nowadays many sources are available electronically, which greatly facilitates the search and management of information. This project is highly innovative because it provides a presentation in context based on the extensive use of the IT technology, as compared to the previous research on Japonic etymology which was essentially word-list-oriented. In contrast with the current practice, where only word entries with their translations were provided (and often without any reference to the source), thanks to internet link to database, and cross-referenced entries, the electronic etymological dictionary will present the words in their textual historical and cultural context.
Project acronym ENPMUC
Project Elites, networks, and power in modern urban China (1830-1949).
Researcher (PI) Christian Robert HENRIOT
Summary This project proposes a step-change in the study of modern China reliant upon scalable data-rich history. It will deliver precise historical information at an unprecedented scale from heretofore untapped sources - as well as reshaping the analysis of existing sources - to create a new dimension in the study of the transformation of elites in modern China. It will deploy an array of cutting-edge digital methods — including data mining, sampling, and analysis within an integrated virtual research environment. To establish the validity of this approach, the project focuses on the three urban areas (Shanghai, Beijing/Tianjin, Canton/Hong Kong) that had the most profound impact on the course of modern Chinese history. Starting from the mid-19th century, the narrow elite of Confucian-trained scholar-officials that had ruled the country for a millenium was finally swept away. Power and social prestige shifted to socially more diversified groups of Chinese and foreigners who operated within interlocked transnational networks. The project will challenge the China-centered and group-based approach dominant in the historical literature of the past two decades. The project envisions elites in urban China as actors whose status, position, and practices were shaped by the power configurations that developed over time and whose actions through institutions and informal/formal networks in turn were a determining factor in redrawing social and political boundaries. The project will place the emphasis on the networks through which information, capital, and individuals circulated. It will investigate the transnationalization of elites as a process that overstepped the limits of institutions and nation states. The key issue that the project will address is breaking through existing limits of access to historical information that is embedded in complex sources and its transformation into refined, re-usable and sustainable data for contemporary and future study of modern China.
This project proposes a step-change in the study of modern China reliant upon scalable data-rich history. It will deliver precise historical information at an unprecedented scale from heretofore untapped sources - as well as reshaping the analysis of existing sources - to create a new dimension in the study of the transformation of elites in modern China. It will deploy an array of cutting-edge digital methods — including data mining, sampling, and analysis within an integrated virtual research environment. To establish the validity of this approach, the project focuses on the three urban areas (Shanghai, Beijing/Tianjin, Canton/Hong Kong) that had the most profound impact on the course of modern Chinese history. Starting from the mid-19th century, the narrow elite of Confucian-trained scholar-officials that had ruled the country for a millenium was finally swept away. Power and social prestige shifted to socially more diversified groups of Chinese and foreigners who operated within interlocked transnational networks. The project will challenge the China-centered and group-based approach dominant in the historical literature of the past two decades. The project envisions elites in urban China as actors whose status, position, and practices were shaped by the power configurations that developed over time and whose actions through institutions and informal/formal networks in turn were a determining factor in redrawing social and political boundaries. The project will place the emphasis on the networks through which information, capital, and individuals circulated. It will investigate the transnationalization of elites as a process that overstepped the limits of institutions and nation states. The key issue that the project will address is breaking through existing limits of access to historical information that is embedded in complex sources and its transformation into refined, re-usable and sustainable data for contemporary and future study of modern China.
Project acronym EUROPUBLICISLAM
Project Islam in the Making of a European Public Sphere
Researcher (PI) Nilufer Gole
Summary During the last three decades, Islam has gained visibility in European public spheres through new religious symbols, but as well as new public figures, men and women, pious and secular who carry Islam in European public life. Islamic entry in the public sphere, and the claims for religious visibility provoke a series of debates on gender equality, freedom of expression and cultural (civilisational) differences in European publics. EUROPUBLICISLAM sets itself the intellectual research agenda of bringing together different fields of knowledge and analysis of the transformative forces that appear in the contemporary meeting of Islam and Europe. It proposes to develop an innovative understanding of the sporadic and at times violent ways in which Islam intervenes in the making of the European public sphere. EUROPUBLICISLAM engages with the European scholarly agenda on migration, the construction of a European public sphere, and Islam. It aims at shifting the contemporary theorization of Islam in Europe away from the integration and security paradigms, and towards a new theory of dynamics of interaction and mutual change. A new research field is marked out in combining and transforming the contemporary theorizations of European public sphere and European Islam. EUROPUBLICISLAM proposes to study religious symbols, artistic cultural productions and public figures affecting the everyday politics of cultural discord. It aims to re-conceptualize the place of Islam in the making of a European public sphere. An innovative methodology is proposed to study the constellations , the assemblages that bring together cultural differences in proximity and in confrontation across national public spheres, following a transnational dynamics. EUROPUBLICISLAM will thus contribute to the production of innovative research on the making and imaging a European public sphere where transformative cultural and aesthetic mixes and thus political pluralism are taking place.
During the last three decades, Islam has gained visibility in European public spheres through new religious symbols, but as well as new public figures, men and women, pious and secular who carry Islam in European public life. Islamic entry in the public sphere, and the claims for religious visibility provoke a series of debates on gender equality, freedom of expression and cultural (civilisational) differences in European publics. EUROPUBLICISLAM sets itself the intellectual research agenda of bringing together different fields of knowledge and analysis of the transformative forces that appear in the contemporary meeting of Islam and Europe. It proposes to develop an innovative understanding of the sporadic and at times violent ways in which Islam intervenes in the making of the European public sphere. EUROPUBLICISLAM engages with the European scholarly agenda on migration, the construction of a European public sphere, and Islam. It aims at shifting the contemporary theorization of Islam in Europe away from the integration and security paradigms, and towards a new theory of dynamics of interaction and mutual change. A new research field is marked out in combining and transforming the contemporary theorizations of European public sphere and European Islam. EUROPUBLICISLAM proposes to study religious symbols, artistic cultural productions and public figures affecting the everyday politics of cultural discord. It aims to re-conceptualize the place of Islam in the making of a European public sphere. An innovative methodology is proposed to study the constellations , the assemblages that bring together cultural differences in proximity and in confrontation across national public spheres, following a transnational dynamics. EUROPUBLICISLAM will thus contribute to the production of innovative research on the making and imaging a European public sphere where transformative cultural and aesthetic mixes and thus political pluralism are taking place.
Project acronym EvolvingEconomics
Project Human motivation: evolutionary foundations and their implications for economics
Researcher (PI) Karin Ingela Maria ALGER
Summary Economics provides decision-makers with powerful tools to analyse a wide range of issues. The methodological unity of the discipline and its quest for a general understanding of market as well as non-market interactions have given the discipline great influence on policy. A core component of economics is its assumption that individuals act as if they each had some goal function that they seek to maximise, under the constraints they face and the information they have. Despite significant advances in behavioural economics, there still is no consensus as to whether and why certain preferences are more likely than others. Further progress could be made if the factors that shape human motivation in the first place were understood. The aim of this project is to produce novel insights about such factors, by establishing evolutionary foundations of human motivation.The project's scope is ambitious. First, it will study two large classes of interactions: strategic interactions, and interactions within the realm of the family. Second, to obtain both depth and breadth of insights, it will consist of four different, but inter-related, components (three theoretical and one empirical), the ultimate goal being to significantly enhance our overall understanding of the factors that shape human motivation. The methodology is ground-breaking in that it is strongly interdisciplinary. Parts of the body of knowledge built by biologists and evolutionary anthropologists in the past decades will be combined with state-of-the-art economics to produce insights that cannot be obtained within any single discipline. Focus will nonetheless be on addressing issues of importance for economists.The proposed research builds on extensive work done by the PI in the past decade. It will benefit from the years that the PI has invested in understanding the biology and the evolutionary anthropology literatures, and in contributing towards building an interdisciplinary research ecosystem in Toulouse, France
Economics provides decision-makers with powerful tools to analyse a wide range of issues. The methodological unity of the discipline and its quest for a general understanding of market as well as non-market interactions have given the discipline great influence on policy. A core component of economics is its assumption that individuals act as if they each had some goal function that they seek to maximise, under the constraints they face and the information they have. Despite significant advances in behavioural economics, there still is no consensus as to whether and why certain preferences are more likely than others. Further progress could be made if the factors that shape human motivation in the first place were understood. The aim of this project is to produce novel insights about such factors, by establishing evolutionary foundations of human motivation.The project's scope is ambitious. First, it will study two large classes of interactions: strategic interactions, and interactions within the realm of the family. Second, to obtain both depth and breadth of insights, it will consist of four different, but inter-related, components (three theoretical and one empirical), the ultimate goal being to significantly enhance our overall understanding of the factors that shape human motivation. The methodology is ground-breaking in that it is strongly interdisciplinary. Parts of the body of knowledge built by biologists and evolutionary anthropologists in the past decades will be combined with state-of-the-art economics to produce insights that cannot be obtained within any single discipline. Focus will nonetheless be on addressing issues of importance for economists.The proposed research builds on extensive work done by the PI in the past decade. It will benefit from the years that the PI has invested in understanding the biology and the evolutionary anthropology literatures, and in contributing towards building an interdisciplinary research ecosystem in Toulouse, France
Project acronym GENPARENT
Project Revealing Sources of Gendered Parenthood: A multi-method comparative study of the transition to parenthood in same-sex and different-sex couples
Researcher (PI) Paula Marie Madelén EVERTSSON
Host Institution (HI) STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET
Summary This project is the first to apply an inclusive, internationally comparative, multi-methods approach to families to reveal the complex processes that result in a gendered division of work. We do this by comparing different-sex couples (DSC) to same-sex couples (SSC) focusing on the transition to parenthood and its career related consequences based on unique, population register data, census data and surveys, as well in depth interviews with couples. Three sub-projects emerge. In GENPARENT NORTH, longitudinal analyses of register data for the full population in the Nordic countries enable unique studies of the division of work and care in DSC and female SSC in a most similar-case comparison where the couples are matched on important background characteristics. In GENPARENT REGIME, the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and the US are compared in cross-sectional, quantitative analyses of female and male SSC and DSC with biological or adoptive children, their division of paid/unpaid work and the resulting career trajectories. Preliminary analyses indicate that family leave policies apply to some but not all families and this clearly structures the division of work and earnings in them. In GENPARENT VOICE, in-depth interviews with female and male SSC (planning for or having children) and adoptive DSC parents are carried out in order to explore the reasoning and expectations that precede the realized divisions of child care and paid work. In addition, the legal and social issues facing these families is highlighted. Interviews are conducted in Sweden and the Netherlands and for these countries, we have unique, longitudinal in-depth interviews with DSC expecting and having their first child. By comparing SSC to DSC and combining cross-sectional and longitudinal quantitative analyses with in-depth interviews, the GENPARENT project critically evaluate and develop theories on the gendered transition to parenthood, while expanding on and updating the welfare regime framework.
This project is the first to apply an inclusive, internationally comparative, multi-methods approach to families to reveal the complex processes that result in a gendered division of work. We do this by comparing different-sex couples (DSC) to same-sex couples (SSC) focusing on the transition to parenthood and its career related consequences based on unique, population register data, census data and surveys, as well in depth interviews with couples. Three sub-projects emerge. In GENPARENT NORTH, longitudinal analyses of register data for the full population in the Nordic countries enable unique studies of the division of work and care in DSC and female SSC in a most similar-case comparison where the couples are matched on important background characteristics. In GENPARENT REGIME, the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and the US are compared in cross-sectional, quantitative analyses of female and male SSC and DSC with biological or adoptive children, their division of paid/unpaid work and the resulting career trajectories. Preliminary analyses indicate that family leave policies apply to some but not all families and this clearly structures the division of work and earnings in them. In GENPARENT VOICE, in-depth interviews with female and male SSC (planning for or having children) and adoptive DSC parents are carried out in order to explore the reasoning and expectations that precede the realized divisions of child care and paid work. In addition, the legal and social issues facing these families is highlighted. Interviews are conducted in Sweden and the Netherlands and for these countries, we have unique, longitudinal in-depth interviews with DSC expecting and having their first child. By comparing SSC to DSC and combining cross-sectional and longitudinal quantitative analyses with in-depth interviews, the GENPARENT project critically evaluate and develop theories on the gendered transition to parenthood, while expanding on and updating the welfare regime framework.
Project acronym GESHAEM
Project The Graeco-Egyptian State: Hellenistic Archives from Egyptian Mummies
Researcher (PI) Marie-Pierre Chaufray
Summary The aim of GESHAEM is to investigate economy, fiscality and territorial management in the most important agricultural region of Egypt, the Fayyum, in the first century of the Greek domination (3rd century BCE). For this purpose, a large corpus of administrative and fiscal papyri discovered in Egyptian mummies will be studied: the unpublished Greek and Egyptian papyri of the Jouguet collection of the Sorbonne. Coming from bilingual archives, these documents will change our view of the early Ptolemaic kingdom in the third century BCE. The history of this Hellenistic kingdom has long been described as the history of a Greek kingdom. Recently, however, the native Egyptian contribution in the building of this kingdom has come to the fore: the Ptolemaic administration was in large part made up of people of Egyptian origin who spoke and wrote both Greek and Egyptian, continuing a millennia-old administrative tradition adapted to the new regime. The Jouguet papyri open new perspectives because, unlike most demotic documents of the Graeco-Roman period, these were not written inside temples but for the civil government. Like the Greek ones they are concerned with the agricultural administration of the Fayyum region. The Jouguet texts were written on second-hand papyrus reused to make mummy casing called cartonnage. Most of these decorated mummy cartonnages were destroyed immediately after their discovery at the beginning of the 20th century, but around twenty remain in part of the Jouguet collection that has not yet been inventoried. The extraction of new papyri from the remaining cartonnages will be achieved without destroying the objects themselves, which will be restored and, for the first time, studied in their own right. Thus GESHAEM intends to bring new data both for historians working on the ancient economy and fiscality, as well as for art historians.
The aim of GESHAEM is to investigate economy, fiscality and territorial management in the most important agricultural region of Egypt, the Fayyum, in the first century of the Greek domination (3rd century BCE). For this purpose, a large corpus of administrative and fiscal papyri discovered in Egyptian mummies will be studied: the unpublished Greek and Egyptian papyri of the Jouguet collection of the Sorbonne. Coming from bilingual archives, these documents will change our view of the early Ptolemaic kingdom in the third century BCE. The history of this Hellenistic kingdom has long been described as the history of a Greek kingdom. Recently, however, the native Egyptian contribution in the building of this kingdom has come to the fore: the Ptolemaic administration was in large part made up of people of Egyptian origin who spoke and wrote both Greek and Egyptian, continuing a millennia-old administrative tradition adapted to the new regime. The Jouguet papyri open new perspectives because, unlike most demotic documents of the Graeco-Roman period, these were not written inside temples but for the civil government. Like the Greek ones they are concerned with the agricultural administration of the Fayyum region. The Jouguet texts were written on second-hand papyrus reused to make mummy casing called cartonnage. Most of these decorated mummy cartonnages were destroyed immediately after their discovery at the beginning of the 20th century, but around twenty remain in part of the Jouguet collection that has not yet been inventoried. The extraction of new papyri from the remaining cartonnages will be achieved without destroying the objects themselves, which will be restored and, for the first time, studied in their own right. Thus GESHAEM intends to bring new data both for historians working on the ancient economy and fiscality, as well as for art historians.
Project acronym GLOBEGOV
Project The Rise of Global Environmental Governance:A History of the Contemporary Human-Earth Relationship
Researcher (PI) Sverker SÖRLIN
Host Institution (HI) KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN
Summary GLOBEGOVE is a historical study of humanity's relation to planetary conditions and constraints and how it has become understood as a governance issue. The key argument is that Global Environmental Governance (GEG), which has arisen in response to this issue, is inseparable from the rise of a planetary Earth systems science and a knowledge-informed understanding of global change that has affected broad communities of practice. The overarching objective is to provide a fundamentally new perspective on GEG that challenges both previous linear, progressivist narratives through incremental institutional work and the way contemporary history is written and understood. GLOBEGOVE will be implemented as an expressly global history along four Trajectories, which will ensure both transnational as well as transdisciplinary analysis of GEG as a major contemporary phenomenon. Trajectory I: Formation articulates a proto-history of GEG after 1945 when the concept of 'the environment' in its new integrative meaning was established and a slow formation of policy ideas and institutions could start. Trajectory II: The complicated turning of environmental research into governance investigates the relation between environmental science and environmental governance which GLOBEGOV examines as an open ended historical process. Why was it that high politics and diplomacy came in closer relations with environmental sciences? Trajectory III: Alternative agencies – governance through business and civic society explores corporate responses, including self-regulation through the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, to growing concerns about environmental degradation and pollution, and business-science relations. Trajectory IV: Integrating Earth into History – scaling, mediating, remembering will turn to historiography itself and examine how concepts and ideas from the rising Earth system sciences have been influencing both GEG and the way we think historically about Earth and humanity.
GLOBEGOVE is a historical study of humanity's relation to planetary conditions and constraints and how it has become understood as a governance issue. The key argument is that Global Environmental Governance (GEG), which has arisen in response to this issue, is inseparable from the rise of a planetary Earth systems science and a knowledge-informed understanding of global change that has affected broad communities of practice. The overarching objective is to provide a fundamentally new perspective on GEG that challenges both previous linear, progressivist narratives through incremental institutional work and the way contemporary history is written and understood. GLOBEGOVE will be implemented as an expressly global history along four Trajectories, which will ensure both transnational as well as transdisciplinary analysis of GEG as a major contemporary phenomenon. Trajectory I: Formation articulates a proto-history of GEG after 1945 when the concept of 'the environment' in its new integrative meaning was established and a slow formation of policy ideas and institutions could start. Trajectory II: The complicated turning of environmental research into governance investigates the relation between environmental science and environmental governance which GLOBEGOV examines as an open ended historical process. Why was it that high politics and diplomacy came in closer relations with environmental sciences? Trajectory III: Alternative agencies – governance through business and civic society explores corporate responses, including self-regulation through the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, to growing concerns about environmental degradation and pollution, and business-science relations. Trajectory IV: Integrating Earth into History – scaling, mediating, remembering will turn to historiography itself and examine how concepts and ideas from the rising Earth system sciences have been influencing both GEG and the way we think historically about Earth and humanity.
Project acronym GTAPCL
Project Game Theory and Applications in the Presence of Cognitive Limitations
Researcher (PI) Philippe Jehiel
Host Institution (HI) ECOLE D'ECONOMIE DE PARIS
Summary Game theory has been very successful in shaping modern economic theory over the past fifty years. Yet, the solution concepts developed under the assumption of perfect rationality require a degree of cognitive sophistication on players part that need not be realistic. In this project, I wish to broaden the definitions of equilibrium concepts to take into account the cognitive limitations of players. Armed with these equilibrium concepts, I wish to revisit a number of classic economic applications of game theory and economics in the hope that the proposed approach enhances our economic understanding. I also wish to check whether the proposed concepts are confirmed experimentally. Specifically, the project will rely on three new solution concepts I have recently introduced: the limited foresight equilibrium (Jehiel, 1995) in which players are viewed as knowing only the evolution of moves over the next n periods, the analogy-based expectation equilibrium (Jehiel, 2005) in which players understand only the average behavioural strategy of their opponents over bundles of states, and the valuation equilibrium (Jehiel and Samet, 2007) in which players attach the same valuation to a bundle of moves (possibly corresponding to different decision nodes). In each case, I assume that players choose their strategy based on the simplest representation of their environment that is consistent with their partial understanding. And as in the standard rationality paradigm, I assume that the partial understanding of players as parameterized by their cognitive type is correct. The heart of the project is to show how these approaches can be used to shed new light on major subfields of economic theory such as mechanism design, the theory of reputation, the theory of incomplete contracts and the theory of speculative markets. I also wish to test experimentally the solution concepts so as to check their empirical validity.
Game theory has been very successful in shaping modern economic theory over the past fifty years. Yet, the solution concepts developed under the assumption of perfect rationality require a degree of cognitive sophistication on players part that need not be realistic. In this project, I wish to broaden the definitions of equilibrium concepts to take into account the cognitive limitations of players. Armed with these equilibrium concepts, I wish to revisit a number of classic economic applications of game theory and economics in the hope that the proposed approach enhances our economic understanding. I also wish to check whether the proposed concepts are confirmed experimentally. Specifically, the project will rely on three new solution concepts I have recently introduced: the limited foresight equilibrium (Jehiel, 1995) in which players are viewed as knowing only the evolution of moves over the next n periods, the analogy-based expectation equilibrium (Jehiel, 2005) in which players understand only the average behavioural strategy of their opponents over bundles of states, and the valuation equilibrium (Jehiel and Samet, 2007) in which players attach the same valuation to a bundle of moves (possibly corresponding to different decision nodes). In each case, I assume that players choose their strategy based on the simplest representation of their environment that is consistent with their partial understanding. And as in the standard rationality paradigm, I assume that the partial understanding of players as parameterized by their cognitive type is correct. The heart of the project is to show how these approaches can be used to shed new light on major subfields of economic theory such as mechanism design, the theory of reputation, the theory of incomplete contracts and the theory of speculative markets. I also wish to test experimentally the solution concepts so as to check their empirical validity.
Project acronym Healing Encounters
Project Healing Encounters: Reinventing an indigenous medicine in the clinic and beyond
Researcher (PI) Emilia Irene Gabrielle SANABRIA
Summary What is the difference between healing and curing? What understandings of wellness, illness and bodies underpin different healing practices? How is therapeutic efficacy assessed in a context of competing valuation practices? This project aims to develop a symmetrical, ethnographically grounded theory of what healing entails from the perspective of those who give, receive or evaluate healing. It is designed to break with binary frames that contrast indigenous and biomedical healing, positioning them on a tradition–modernity continuum. To do this, it will study the striking expansion and prolific reinventions of healing practices that make use of the Amazonian herbal brew ayahuasca. The unprecedented globalization of this indigenous medicine provides a unique opportunity to study healing encounters ethnographically. Through participant observation, interviews, ethnography in expert settings, collaborative workshops and the use of digital methods we will study healing across three related sites: Healing in the City will examine the production of neotraditional urban healing forms. Healing in the Laboratory will analyse how ayahuasca is reinvented as a psychiatric tool to treat mental health problems and Healing in the Forest will study the contemporary reconfigurations of indigenous shamanism. These practices are entangled in long histories of postcolonial encounters: they are all – neotraditional, biomedical and indigenous alike – thoroughly modern and mixed. The comparative analysis is structured around three transversal objectives: 1) Material Semiotics: To develop an innovative framework to map the entanglement of biological and symbolic effects. 2) Encounters Beyond-the-Human: To push medical anthropology beyond the human by paying attention to the healing propitiated by more-than-human beings. 3) Radical Alterity in a Common World of Encounters: To develop an anthropological theory that recognises multiple ontologies without needing to posit multiple worlds.
What is the difference between healing and curing? What understandings of wellness, illness and bodies underpin different healing practices? How is therapeutic efficacy assessed in a context of competing valuation practices? This project aims to develop a symmetrical, ethnographically grounded theory of what healing entails from the perspective of those who give, receive or evaluate healing. It is designed to break with binary frames that contrast indigenous and biomedical healing, positioning them on a tradition–modernity continuum. To do this, it will study the striking expansion and prolific reinventions of healing practices that make use of the Amazonian herbal brew ayahuasca. The unprecedented globalization of this indigenous medicine provides a unique opportunity to study healing encounters ethnographically. Through participant observation, interviews, ethnography in expert settings, collaborative workshops and the use of digital methods we will study healing across three related sites: Healing in the City will examine the production of neotraditional urban healing forms. Healing in the Laboratory will analyse how ayahuasca is reinvented as a psychiatric tool to treat mental health problems and Healing in the Forest will study the contemporary reconfigurations of indigenous shamanism. These practices are entangled in long histories of postcolonial encounters: they are all – neotraditional, biomedical and indigenous alike – thoroughly modern and mixed. The comparative analysis is structured around three transversal objectives: 1) Material Semiotics: To develop an innovative framework to map the entanglement of biological and symbolic effects. 2) Encounters Beyond-the-Human: To push medical anthropology beyond the human by paying attention to the healing propitiated by more-than-human beings. 3) Radical Alterity in a Common World of Encounters: To develop an anthropological theory that recognises multiple ontologies without needing to posit multiple worlds.
Project acronym HisTochText
Project History of the Tocharian Texts of the Pelliot Collection
Researcher (PI) Georges-jean PINAULT
Host Institution (HI) ECOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ETUDES
Summary HisTochText addresses written Buddhist culture of the northern Silk Road in an innovative and path-breaking way, by going beyond the frontier of disciplines which have been cultivated separately: philology, digital humanities and in-depth analysis of materials, edition of Tocharian texts and comparative Buddhist literature, Sanskrit poetics and narratology, texts and social contexts. The flourishing Buddhist culture of the northern Silk Road during the 1st millennium CE in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang (NW China) is known by archaeological findings, artifacts and manuscripts in various languages. Since Buddhism was introduced from India, Sanskrit was the dominant religious language. By contrast, Tocharian belongs to the few local languages that are known to us thanks to Buddhist written culture. The two closely related Tocharian languages (Tocharian A and Tocharian B) were deciphered in 1908 on the basis of manuscripts discovered at the beginning of the past century in Buddhist sites of this region, together with Sanskrit manuscripts. The collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France issued from the Pelliot expedition is a major collection of Tocharian manuscripts, counting around 2,000 fragments, second only to the Berlin collection, but in comparison hardly investigated, despite its containing numerous unique masterpieces and the broadest cross-section of manuscript and document styles and types. Only one fourth has been edited, mostly in a provisional manner, without translation nor commentary. Many texts of the Pelliot collection, literary and non-literary, are of the utmost importance because they have no match in any other collection of Tocharian manuscripts, nor in Buddhist corpora in other languages. As most Pelliot manuscripts in Sanskrit and in Tocharian were found in Buddhist sites of the Kucha region, the comprehensive edition and analysis of the texts will provide precious information about an important centre of Central Asian Buddhism.
HisTochText addresses written Buddhist culture of the northern Silk Road in an innovative and path-breaking way, by going beyond the frontier of disciplines which have been cultivated separately: philology, digital humanities and in-depth analysis of materials, edition of Tocharian texts and comparative Buddhist literature, Sanskrit poetics and narratology, texts and social contexts. The flourishing Buddhist culture of the northern Silk Road during the 1st millennium CE in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang (NW China) is known by archaeological findings, artifacts and manuscripts in various languages. Since Buddhism was introduced from India, Sanskrit was the dominant religious language. By contrast, Tocharian belongs to the few local languages that are known to us thanks to Buddhist written culture. The two closely related Tocharian languages (Tocharian A and Tocharian B) were deciphered in 1908 on the basis of manuscripts discovered at the beginning of the past century in Buddhist sites of this region, together with Sanskrit manuscripts. The collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France issued from the Pelliot expedition is a major collection of Tocharian manuscripts, counting around 2,000 fragments, second only to the Berlin collection, but in comparison hardly investigated, despite its containing numerous unique masterpieces and the broadest cross-section of manuscript and document styles and types. Only one fourth has been edited, mostly in a provisional manner, without translation nor commentary. Many texts of the Pelliot collection, literary and non-literary, are of the utmost importance because they have no match in any other collection of Tocharian manuscripts, nor in Buddhist corpora in other languages. As most Pelliot manuscripts in Sanskrit and in Tocharian were found in Buddhist sites of the Kucha region, the comprehensive edition and analysis of the texts will provide precious information about an important centre of Central Asian Buddhism.
Project acronym HydroSocialExtremes
Project Uncovering the Mutual Shaping of Hydrological Extremes and Society
Researcher (PI) Giuliano DI BALDASSARRE
Summary More than 100 million people per year are affected by hydrological extremes, i.e. floods and droughts. Hydrological studies have investigated human impacts on droughts and floods, while conversely social studies have explored human responses to hydrological extremes. Yet, the dynamics resulting from their interplay, i.e. both impacts and responses, have remained poorly understood. Thus, current risk assessment methods do not explicitly account for these dynamics. As a result, while risk reduction strategies built on these methods can work in the short-term, they often lead to unintended consequences in the long-term. As such, this project aims to unravel the mutual shaping of society and hydrological extremes. A combined theoretical and empirical approach will be developed to uncover how the occurrence of hydrological extremes influences society's wealth, institutions and population distribution, while, at the same time, society in turn alters the frequency, magnitude and spatial distribution of hydrological extremes via structural measures of water management and disaster risk reduction. To explore the causal mechanisms underlying this mutual shaping, this project will propose explanatory models as competing hypotheses about the way in which humans drive and respond to droughts and floods. These alternative explanations will be developed and tested through: i) empirical analysis of case studies, and ii) global investigation of numerous sites, taking advantage of the current unprecedented proliferation of worldwide datasets. By combining these different methods, this project is expected to address the gap of fundamental knowledge about the dynamics of risk emerging from the interplay of hydrological extremes and society.
More than 100 million people per year are affected by hydrological extremes, i.e. floods and droughts. Hydrological studies have investigated human impacts on droughts and floods, while conversely social studies have explored human responses to hydrological extremes. Yet, the dynamics resulting from their interplay, i.e. both impacts and responses, have remained poorly understood. Thus, current risk assessment methods do not explicitly account for these dynamics. As a result, while risk reduction strategies built on these methods can work in the short-term, they often lead to unintended consequences in the long-term. As such, this project aims to unravel the mutual shaping of society and hydrological extremes. A combined theoretical and empirical approach will be developed to uncover how the occurrence of hydrological extremes influences society's wealth, institutions and population distribution, while, at the same time, society in turn alters the frequency, magnitude and spatial distribution of hydrological extremes via structural measures of water management and disaster risk reduction. To explore the causal mechanisms underlying this mutual shaping, this project will propose explanatory models as competing hypotheses about the way in which humans drive and respond to droughts and floods. These alternative explanations will be developed and tested through: i) empirical analysis of case studies, and ii) global investigation of numerous sites, taking advantage of the current unprecedented proliferation of worldwide datasets. By combining these different methods, this project is expected to address the gap of fundamental knowledge about the dynamics of risk emerging from the interplay of hydrological extremes and society.
Project acronym IFDG
Project INNOVATION, FIRM DYNAMICS AND GROWTH: what do we learn from French firm-level data?
Researcher (PI) Philippe AGHION
Summary This research project will confort theory and data to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms and policies of innovation, and the relationship between innovation, growth and social mobility. The underlying framework is the Schumpeterian theory of economic growth, where: (i) growth is generated by innovative entrepreneurs; (ii) entrepreneurial investments respond to incentives that are themselves shaped by economic policies and institutions; (iii) new innovations involves creative destruction. This project will explore new extensions of the Schumpeterian growth paradigm together with new firm-level and individual datasets to analyze the following questions : (a) the measurement of productivity growth and the extent to which measured TFP growth factors is correctly accounting for new innovation; (b) the relashionship between innovation and trade and more specifically the causal links from export and import to innovation, and the main channels through wich export and import affect innovation; (c) the effect of fiscal and institutional changes on entrepreneurship: in particular, how recent changes in the French legislation on self-employement have affected individual incentives to become self-employed, and differently so for different social or regional groups of individuals; (d) the relationship between creative destruction, inequality, and wellbeing: in particular, how does creative destruction (mesured by job or firm turnover) impact on social mobility (e.g measured by the probability of making it to top income brackets conditional upon a low initial income or a low parental income) and health. This approach can shed new light on important aspects of the growth process such as: the middle income trap, secular stagnation, the recent rise in top income inequality, and firm dynamics. Moreover, the paradigm can be used to think (or rethink) about growth policy design.
This research project will confort theory and data to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms and policies of innovation, and the relationship between innovation, growth and social mobility. The underlying framework is the Schumpeterian theory of economic growth, where: (i) growth is generated by innovative entrepreneurs; (ii) entrepreneurial investments respond to incentives that are themselves shaped by economic policies and institutions; (iii) new innovations involves creative destruction. This project will explore new extensions of the Schumpeterian growth paradigm together with new firm-level and individual datasets to analyze the following questions : (a) the measurement of productivity growth and the extent to which measured TFP growth factors is correctly accounting for new innovation; (b) the relashionship between innovation and trade and more specifically the causal links from export and import to innovation, and the main channels through wich export and import affect innovation; (c) the effect of fiscal and institutional changes on entrepreneurship: in particular, how recent changes in the French legislation on self-employement have affected individual incentives to become self-employed, and differently so for different social or regional groups of individuals; (d) the relationship between creative destruction, inequality, and wellbeing: in particular, how does creative destruction (mesured by job or firm turnover) impact on social mobility (e.g measured by the probability of making it to top income brackets conditional upon a low initial income or a low parental income) and health. This approach can shed new light on important aspects of the growth process such as: the middle income trap, secular stagnation, the recent rise in top income inequality, and firm dynamics. Moreover, the paradigm can be used to think (or rethink) about growth policy design.


The Department of Public Health Sciences (PHS) Master's programs aim is to teach students skills for a rational and analytic approach to problem solving from both investigative and managerial perspectives.
PHS Research Project is a requirement of all programs. It is an opportunity for students to synthesize knowledge and skills gained during their course work. All students are to design, conduct, and write-up this project under the supervision of an essay chair and committee.
Students are expected to have all required course work completed before beginning their research.
Students with time constraints related to a fellowship or the completion of the program may request an exemption to the requirement by providing justification in writing to the Associate Chair for Education as to why the core courses not yet taken are not necessary for their research project. The Program Director will review the request and notification of decision will be provided to the student in writing.
All students shall consult with their advisor on identification of a topic.
Master's topics are reviewed and approved by the Program Director and must have a public health and/or population relevance.
Use of course assignments to satisfy research topic is prohibited for all students.
Chair: All students should consult with their advisor on identification of a Research Project Chair. This individual must hold a full-time faculty appointment in PHS (see Graduate Student Handbook).
Members: All students should consult with their advisor on identification of committee members. Most committees consist of at least three members. At least one member should have expertise in and commitment to the topic area.
Discuss research project proposal topic/data with Christopher L. Seplaki, Ph.D., Program Director, Masters in Public Health (585) 273-1549, for approval.
Student shall provide an electronic copy of the proposal abstract to Elaine Topeck at least 10 days before scheduled presentation.
An electronic announcement of the presentation with abstract will be disseminated to all department faculty, staff, students and invited guests 1 week prior to presentation as well as posted throughout the department. A reminder notice will be forwarded to the groups previously listed on the morning of the scheduled presentation.