ERC funded projects

The ERC grants fall under the category of excellent research in the EU's framework program for research and innovation.

The ERC has several funding schemes: Starting Grants (StG) for early-career researchers, Consolidator Grants (CoG) for mid-career researchers, Advanced Grants (AdG) for senior researchers, and Synergy Grants (SyG) for collaboration between two to four principal investigators.

ACCESS: Market Access and Economic Development

A huge challenge for research and policy efforts to accelerate economic development is that firms in poor countries grow surprisingly slowly, making job creation in the “Global South” difficult to achieve.  ACCESS puts the causes and consequences of market access in poor countries at the center of inquiry for the first time.

ACCESS is an ERC Consolidator Grant awarded to Jonas Hjort at the Department of Economics in 2022.

AMBER: Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene

Amber offers a unique entry point to interrogate the current moment characterised by growing extractivism, trade, environmental crises, and conflict. Through amber, this project further aims to pay closer ethnographic attention to the geological, to what continues to be understood as inert, passive, lifeless - and thus to address some of the key empirical and theoretical challenges posed by the Anthropocene. 

AMBER is an ERC Starting Grant awarded to Alessandro Rippa at the Department of Social Anthropology in 2023.

COORDINATE: Which building blocks for coordinating resource distribution are so basic that they manifest even in infancy?

Which building blocks for coordinating resource distribution are so basic that they manifest even in infancy? COORDINATE will do political psychology with infants to reveal meaningful mechanisms for coordinating resource distribution so basic that they manifest even in the preverbal mind.

COORDINATE is an ERC Starting Grant awarded to Lotte Thomsen at the Department of Psychology in 2022.

CRISPOL: Systemic Effects of Crises on Policy-Making in Modern Democracies

The project will take a closer look at crises and, in particular, situations that arise in the wake of political decisions made in response to crisis events, as well as how crises affect governments' capacity for problem-solving in sectors both close to and distant from the crisis itself.

CRISPOL is an ERC Advanced Grant awarded in 2024, lead by Christoph Knill at LMU Munich, where Yves Steinebach at the Department of Political Science is a partner.

ELDAR: The Emergence, Life, and Demise of Autocratic Regimes

ELDAR will investigate three aspects of autocratic politics: how autocracies emerge; policymaking (“life”) in autocracies; and how autocratic regimes break down. A novel feature of the project is that it offers a comprehensive perspective that highlights connections between these three aspects and studies them jointly in one integrated framework.

ELDAR is an ERC Consolidator Grant awarded to Carl Henrik Knutsen at the Department of Political Science in 2020.

EXPLOIT: Environmental Exploitation of Political Economics

We need a theory to explain why society has so far failed to address climate change and other environmental problems. After all, it has been able to deal with other challenges, ranging from wars to trade barriers and, most recently, Covid-19.

EXPLOIT is an ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Bård Harstad at the Department of Economics in 2023.

GeoGen: The PsychoGeography of Intergenerational Mobility: Early life socioeconomic position, mental health, and educational performance

This research project will investigate how and why early life socioeconomic status is linked to mental health and educational performance. We want to investigate how and why children from so-called low socioeconomic status have poorer mental health and school performance, as well as how neighborhoods and schools contribute to environmental impacts on mental health and educational attainment.

GeoGen is an ERC Consolidator Grant awarded to Eivind Ystrøm at the Department of Psychology in 2022.

GETGOV: Governing elites since the dawn of modern democracy

Does democracy open the corridors of power to the people, or do the same individuals remain in control, despite a formal change in governance? GETGOV will examine political elites throughout history, from their emergence during the French Revolution to newborn democracies today.

GETGOV is an ERC Starting Grant awarded to Jacob Nyrup at the Department of Political Science in 2025.

HeaLS: Effects of the implementation of the interdisciplinary topic “Health and Life Skills” in schools

This interdisciplinary study aims to evaluate how variations in the implementation of "Health and Life Skills" relate to the intervention’s effect on pupils' mental health, quality of life, school environment, academic performance, and dropout.

HeaLS is an ERC Consolidator Grant awarded to Egil Nygaard at the Department of Psychology in 2023.

HOMME: Health, cognition, family, and employment among men

Men are more likely than women to die prematurely, and a great deal of men’s excess mortality is preventable. Improving men’s health and cognition is not only critical for achieving gender equality, but also for enhancing and extending men’s potential to contribute to their families, the labour market and society as populations grow older. HOMME will examine men’s family, work, health and cognition in Norway, particularly during the life period most characterized by family transitions and work experiences.

HOMME is an ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Vegard Fykse Skirbekk at the Department of Psychology in 2024.

LABFLEX: Causes and Consequences of Labor Market Flexibility

 Globalization and technological change have transformed the workplace and the organization of labor. Alternative work arrangements, e.g., outsourcing, sub-contracting, flexible scheduling, and flexible pay jobs have become a common feature of labor markets across the globe. LABFLEX is motivated by these developments and seeks to investigate the causes and consequences of labor market flexibility.         

LABFLEX is an ERC Starting Grant awarded to Manudeep Bhuller at the Department of Economics in 2022.

SpectrO: The full spectrum of opioid effects

The project addresses how people respond to strong pain medications. It will also investigate the variation in how people react when they receive strong opioids. Why do some people not get pain relief from these medications, while others experience great effects? And why do some feel discomfort, while others feel that the world falls into place, perhaps for the very first time?

SpectrO is an ERC Consolidator Grant awarded to Siri Leknes at the Department of Psychology in 2024. 

UNRULY: Unruly entanglements of sociomaterial change, knowledge, and power in energy frontiers

The project focuses on renewable energy projects and how they reshape people’s relationships with their lands, each other and the state. Hydropower energy projects are a crucial part of society’s efforts to both adapt to and prevent (mitigate) climate change, but clean power plants alone are insufficient to ensure just, sustainable transformation. The energy sector is influenced by geopolitics, injustices, environmental changes, and development efforts, making research on socio-material change essential. The project aims to develop a new analytical framework that integrates social and material aspects to better understand change and address justice issues.

UNRULY is an ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Andrea Joslyn Nightingale at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography in 2024. 

WAGE: Egalitarian but not Equal: Sectoral Wage Formation and Gendered Wage Differentials

The overarching goal of WAGE is to theorize the gendered nature of collective bargaining by examining the past, the unruly present, and the possible future of regulated, collective bargaining processes in three key countries: Germany, Norway, and Sweden.

WAGE is an ERC Starting Grant awarded to Ines Alisa Wagner at ARENA Centre for European Studies in 2024. 

WoW: Waging of War

WoW will research how internal organization affects the waging of war, and how the wars, in turn, impact the organizations involved. The projects seeks to create a more comprehensive picture of the dynamics of warfare, partly by researching a wide range of conflicts.

WoW is an ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Scott Gates at the Department of Political Science in 2025.