Researchers funded for collaborative projects that cross boundaries
2 May 2014 03:35 PM
€15 million has
been awarded to fifteen research projects that will allow academics in Europe
and the United States to collaborate on a range of exciting projects that will
push the boundaries of our understanding of individual and social behaviour and
influence policy
The grant has come from the Open
Research Area Scheme (ORA). National funding organisations from across the
continent and the US fund the ORA plus programme in order to strengthen
international cooperation in the social sciences. The scheme was set up in
order to minimise bureaucratic obstacles and restrictions usually associated
with international funding.
This is the third round since
the scheme launched in 2010 and the first round with the US as a
partner.
Funded
projects
The following projects will be
funded for three years:
Tracing the template:
Investigating the representation of perceptual relevance
M Eimer: Birkbeck College,
University of London (UK); CNL Olivers, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL); S
Pollmann, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg (D)
Discipline: Psychology
This project seeks to identify
the nature of attentional preferences of cognitive behaviour, in terms of
function (how it affects our behaviour), physiology (how it is implemented in
the brain), and time (how it is affected by learning/selection history).
Specifically, what preferences can it hold, how do these change as a function
of experience, and what are the neural codes underlying these
representations?
Political party database
project: How parties shape democracy in parliamentary
democracies
S Scarrow, University of Houston
(US); T Poguntke, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (D); PD Webb,
University of Essex (UK)
Discipline: Political Science
The Political Party Database
Project aims to further develop our understanding of how political
parties’ structures and resources shape democratic life. Through
collecting data on 138 parties in 19 countries, the project seeks to address
the lack of systematically-collected cross-national data, as well as the lack
of standard vocabulary for conceptualising and testing the impact of party
resources and structures, in order to conduct theory-driven tests of competing
scholarly claims about the impact of party organisational
variation.
Modelling and supporting web
search and navigation by older adults
A Chevalier, Université
Toulouse 2 (F); WT Fu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (US); H van
Oostendorp, Universiteit Utrecht (NL)
Disciplines: Psychology and Science and Technology Studies
This project is aimed at better understanding how age influences the strategies
people use for accessing information online. Retrieving information on the
World Wide Web can be an important activity for older people as it can help in
fostering independence, reducing isolation, and increasing communication and
wellbeing. The goal of the project is to conduct empirical studies to
systematically understand age-related differences in finding and processing
information online. Key outcomes will be a suite of interface tools that are
optimised for older Web users and theory-based guidelines for Web designs that
are sensitive to age-related individual differences.
Self-regulation when out of
work
UC Klehe,
Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen (D); AEM van Vianen, Universiteit van
Amsterdam (NL); CR Wanberg, University of Minnesota (US)
Discipline: Social and Organisational Psychology
Unemployment represents one of
the most significant stressors that people can encounter in their working
lives. Previous research has shown that unemployment can have a serious impact
on an individual's physical and mental well-being. However, there are
significant differences from one individual to the next with respect to coping
strategies during job loss. A related strand of research has looked at what
aspects of searching for employment are most difficult and what intervention
strategies are most useful for individuals seeking new employment
opportunities. In this project, the researchers will bring together these
different strands of inquiry to develop a cross-national investigation of the
key determinants, processes, and outcomes of self-regulation during
unemployment.
Communicating appraisals and
social motives: Interpersonal effects of regulated and unregulated emotion
expression
AH Fischer, Universiteit van
Amsterdam (NL); J Gratch, University of Southern California (US); B Parkinson,
University of Oxford (UK)
Discipline: Social and Organisational Psychology
This project aims to bridge the
metaphorical chasms between individuals and groups by providing insights into
the role of regulated and unregulated emotional expression in mutual
understanding and misunderstanding. In particular, it focuses on how social
interactions are affected by perceptions of other people’s expression and
regulation of emotion.
The international cognitive
ability resource
Ph Doebler, Westfälische
Wilhelms Universität Münster (D); W Revelle, Northwestern University
(US); J Rust, University of Cambridge (UK)
Discipline: Psychology
The over-arching aim for the
International Cognitive Ability Resource project is to integrate recent
innovations in test construction, large-scale data collection, and statistical
methodology for the purpose of improving the measurement of ability around the
world.
Pathways to power: The political
representation of citizens of immigrant origin in seven European
democracies
M Cinalli, Sciences Po (F); L
Morales, University of Leicester (UK); Th Saalfeld, Universität Bamberg (D);
JN Tillie, Universiteit van Amsterdam (NL)
Disciplines: Political Science and Sociology
This project seeks to advance
knowledge in the descriptive representation of citizens of immigrant origin
(CIO) in the legislative assemblies of seven European countries at the national
and regional levels, as well as the parliamentary activities of representatives
of immigrant origin. The central aim of this project therefore is to understand
the barriers to, and drivers of, the recruitment of CIOs to elective office and
the dynamics of the substantive representation to CIOs'
concerns.
Slum tourism in the Americas:
Commodifying urban poverty and violence
E Dürr, Ludwig-Maximilians
Universität München (D); RK Jaffe, Universiteit van Amsterdam (NL);
GA Jones, London School of Economics (UK)
Disciplines: Urban Studies, Social Anthropology, and Cultural
Geography
This project aims to theorise
the commodification of urban poverty and violence in the context of global
mobility and the shifts towards urban political economies of spectacle.
Focusing on four sites, this comparative ethnographic project will explore how
globally circulating representations of poverty and violence both reproduce and
challenge urban inequalities. It will investigate how the urban poor, tourists,
tour operators and state actors participate in the unequal encounters involved
in slum tourism, bringing an actor-focused, on-the-ground and longitudinal
approach to the encounters.
Structure and organisation of
government project
P Bezes, Université
Panthéon-Assas Paris II/CNRS (F); O James, University of Exeter (UK); W
Jann, University of Potsdam (D); AK Yesilkagit, Universiteit Utrecht
(NL)
Discipline: Public Administration
The research asks why some
administrative organisations are created then reorganised, merged or
terminated, whereas others are seemingly ‘immortal’ and can become
even more powerful than the elected politicians that created and control them?
It will develop and apply a novel framework that will systematically map and
explain organisational changes within central government cross-nationally in
four European parliamentary democracies, France, Germany, the Netherlands and
the UK, over the last three decades, the period following the initiation of New
Public Management reforms in certain advanced economies. The project will build
upon the influential "theory of the politics of structural choice"
and develop a comparative quantitative dataset of organizational changes within
the central governments of these four countries. It will also examine changes
in the structure and organization of government across four selected policy
areas in these countries.
Understanding and preventing
youth crime: A comparative study in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK
and the US
JCJ Boutellier, Vrije
Universiteit (NL); D Enzmann, Universität Hamburg (D); M Hough, University
of London (UK); I Marshall, NorthEastern University (US); G Roux, Institut
d'Etudes Politiques de Grenoble (F)
Disciplines: Criminal Law and Criminology and Sociology
This project is a theory-testing
comparative survey of schoolchildren's experience of, and attitudes to,
crime and substance use, covering France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and
the USA. The study forms part of the International Self-Report Delinquency
Study, covering some 25 to 30 countries, mainly in Europe but also from other
continents. The overall aims are to chart variations in self-reported offending
and experience of crime as victims, to test the relative value of different
theoretical perspectives for explaining these variations, and to draw out the
implications for youth justice policy in the five countries. The study will
contribute to the development of an integrated theory of youth offending, and
will trace the implications of this for youth justice policy.
International rural
gentrification
M Phillips, University of
Leicester (UK); F Richard, Université de Limoges (F); PB Nelson,
Middlebury College (US)
Disciplines: Human Geography, Sociology, and Urban Studies
This project will deliver the
first in-depth examination of the cross-national rural geographies of both the
concept and phenomenon of gentrification, through an integrated comparative
study of the theory, forms and dynamics of gentrification across rural France,
UK and USA. The project aims to investigate the salience of rural
gentrification as a concept that is capable of explaining rural change in
France, the UK and the USA.
Origins of early individual
differences in self-regulation: A multi-method study involving mothers, fathers
and infants in the UK, the Netherlands and the USA
C Blair, New York University,
NYU Steinhardt (US); C Hughes, University of Cambridge (UK); J Mesman,
Universiteit Leiden (NL)
Disciplines: Psychology, Neuroscience, Psychiatry
Building on the PI’s previous work, this project analyses early childhood
conduct problems that are both very common and predict multiple adverse
life-course outcomes, such that understanding their origins is an urgent
challenge. Building on the rapid growth of studies that highlight variation in
children's susceptibility to environmental influences, the proposed study
will explore contrasts in the nature and magnitude of family predictors of
infant adjustment that relate to characteristics of the infant (eg stress
reactivity), the parent (eg parenting style) and the culture (eg level of
societal support for individuals making the transition to
parenthood).
Partner relationships,
residential relocations and housing in the life course
H Kulu, University of Liverpool
(UK); CH Mulder, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (NL); M Wagner, Universität
zu Köln (D)
Disciplines: Demography and Sociology
The aim of this project is to
gain insight into the interactions between partner relationships on the one
hand, and housing and residential relocations on the other, as they develop
through people's life courses and as they are situated in the social and
institutional contexts of Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.
Motor skill learning in older
adults: neurocognitive correlates, individual differences, and interventions to
enable healthy aging
R Seidler, University of
Michigan (US); WB Verwey, Universiteit Twente (NL); C Voelcker-Rehage, Jacobs
University Bremen (D)
Discipline: Psychology
There is an increasing concern
about the societal impact of the growing proportion of older adults. The
proposed research addresses the effect of age on the basic capacity to develop
new motor skills. This is an important issue since motor skills can determine
to which degree a person can live independently and participate in modern
society. In this project, the researchers will develop a series of motor skills
tasks to determine the contribution of various cognitive processes using
performance measures and EEG in middle-aged and older adults. They will then
investigate how differences in individual learning relate to lifestyle factors
such as physical activity, and the prevalence of engaging in motor skills
earlier in life like touch typing, playing instruments, and handcrafting. The
third part of the study will be to determine whether behavioural and
physiological interventions increase the capacity of older individuals to
develop new motor skills.
Moving to see: the benefits of
self-motion for visual perception
EM Brenner, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam (NL); M Rucci, Boston University (US); SK Rushton, Cardiff University
(UK)
Discipline: Psychology
The primary objective of this
grant is to understand vision during movement. Is movement a source of noise
and complication that must be compensated for, or is it a source of additional
information that may simplify the problem and improve performance? A vast
amount has been learnt about vision based on considering the problem of vision
for a stationary observer. In this grant we will examine vision in its natural
context - when the observer is moving.