Five EUI researchers receive ERC advanced grants

The successful projects exemplify the quality of research at the EUI, which contributes to answering some of today’s most pressing questions

European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grants are highly-competitive grants enabling senior scientists to explore their most daring research ideas. On 31 March 2020, the ERC announced the 185 winners of its annual advanced grants competition. EUI researchers Youssef Cassis, Laura Lee Downs, Anton Hemerijck, Liesbet Hooghe and Glenda Sluga were among the researchers who were awarded five-year grants. Their projects address topics ranging from the memory of financial crises, the history and future of welfare, to polarisation and the economic ideas behind globalisation. 

The EUI achieved a 100% success rate in the latest ERC call, with all five research proposals being funded. This success confirms the quality of research performed at the Institute, which contributes to answering some of today’s most pressing questions.

The five EUI projects in a nutshell:

• Professor Youssef Cassis will examine how financial actors remember financial crises, looking for a missing link in the understanding of their recurrence.  
• Professor Laura Lee Downs seeks to reframe the history of welfare by examining the contribution of families and voluntary welfare associations to shaping welfare systems in border regions from the 1870s till the 1990s.
• Conversely, Professor Anton Hemerijck looks at the future of welfare in knowledge economies and ageing societies.
• Professor Liesbet Hooghe seeks to explain the intensity of polarisation on the issues of immigration, Europe, and climate change.
• Professor Glenda Sluga will study the economic ideas —and their often invisible authors— that have fashioned alternative paths to globalisation.