From mapping the Vikings to new technology for breast cancer survivors, six Irish-based projects have won €12 million in research funding from the EU.
The funding, announced by the European Research Council (ERC), is to help scientists and academics put together teams to take forward their research.
The ERC says it has chosen projects with the “most promising scientific ideas” in Europe.
Dr Tom Birkett is a lecturer in Old English and Old Norse at University College Cork, Ireland. He is passionate about researching the Vikings.
His pitch to the European Research Council was to take forward work on “mapping the reception and legacy of the Vikings in Europe.”
He will now be able to build on his existing work with the new funding.
The other five projects awarded to Ireland, totalling €10 million, will all go to academics at University College Dublin (UCD).
Professor Kate Robson Brown, UCD’s Vice-President for Research said the university’s success “reflects the breadth of expertise across disciplines at UCD and the quality of world-class research being carried out here.”
The five projects at UCD will look at:
- Women philosophers in 18th century Britain with the aim to gain a “deeper understanding of how male and female philosophers interacted and influenced each other’s writings.”
- A study into the workings and effectiveness of International Refugee Law
- An assessment of parenthood with a a view to “reassessing the very basis of family law”. Researchers aim to expose regulatory gaps in the concept of legal parenthood.
- Research itself. How “standards, geopolitics and transnational knowledge flows”. It will also consider the boundaries and obstacles to open research.
- A non-invasive way of monitoring breast reconstruction after cancer.
This last project, entitled ‘BreastRecon’ is being led by Associate Professor Aisling Ní Annaidh.
“This project will initially develop a tool to monitor tissue growth in vivo [within the body], offering valuable fundamental insights into growth and remodelling processes”, she said.
“Using this new methodology, BreastRecon will ultimately advance patient-specific tissue expansions by designing optimum surgical protocols, offering a disruptive breakthrough in reconstructive surgeries.”
In all, the European Research Council today announced grants for 328 researchers across Europe, dishing out a total of €678 million. The funding is being provided through the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme.