Three mid-career researchers at the University of Birmingham have received ERC funding for new research projects.
Researchers in Music, Anthropology, and Theoretical Physics from the University of Birmingham, have received three of this year’s 349 Consolidator Grants from the European Research Council (ERC). The grants aim to ‘enable the researchers to pursue their own ideas in a broad range of disciplines’.
The three grants at the University of Birmingham total more than €5,960,000 (£5,200,000) in funding across arts, humanities and the physical sciences.
Christopher Haworth, Professor of Twenty-First Century Music, has received a grant for his project, After Sampling Culture: Synthetic media as culture in twenty-first century music. This research will explore the concept of ‘synthetic media’ as it has arisen in relation to generative AI, and how music, through its 60+ years of engagement with synthetic sound, can offer a unique and historically grounded insight into synthetic media as culture. Professor Haworth and his team will examine synthesis as both a contemporary and a historical media technique, following it across mathematics, engineering, industry, and law to deliver a new theory of musical imitation and borrowing for twenty-first century music.
This project will allow me to build the interdisciplinary team necessary to meet these challenging new areas of research head on, and through this rethink notions of sampling and remix in contemporary music.
Professor Haworth said: “I am delighted to receive the ERC consolidator grant. Understanding music’s relationship with generative AI requires learning about topics outside of those that musicologists are typically trained in, like signal processing, mathematical modelling, and intellectual property law. This project will allow me to build the interdisciplinary team necessary to meet these challenging new areas of research head on, and through this rethink notions of sampling and remix in contemporary music.”
Dr Marco Di Nunzio, Associate Professor in Urban Anthropology’s project, Blueprints of Change: large-scale demolitions and the search for urban alternatives, will examine why and how large-scale demolition has resurged as a policy of urban development and regeneration globally. This project will focus on Birmingham (UK), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), and Jakarta (Indonesia), where large-scale demolitions have been planned or recently initiated. It will document the policies and narratives of city governments and city builders, and the multiple ways that communities have mounted responses, both to prevent displacement and to articulate longer-term visions for more just futures.
I am incredibly happy and grateful to receive this ERC grant. It will give my team and me the opportunity to experiment with new ways of understanding large-scale urban processes.
Dr Di Nunzio commented: “I am incredibly happy and grateful to receive this ERC grant. It will give my team and me the opportunity to experiment with new ways of understanding large-scale urban processes. I am especially excited about the collaborations it will foster with communities, practitioners, and research partners at the Forum for Social Studies in Addis Ababa, the Rujak Centre for Urban Studies in Jakarta, and with colleagues at the University of Birmingham and beyond.”
Dr Bruno Bertini, Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics’ grant will fund his project, Duality approach to non-equilibrium quantum matter (DREAM). This will aim to deduce the basic organising principles governing the collective behaviour of ‘complex’ quantum systems, such as those with an extremely large number of particles. DREAM will tackle this problem by exploiting a “duality” between space and time, making them easier to describe using equilibrium physics.
I am absolutely over the moon about this grant award, which I view as a strong encouragement to the entire field of non-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics and especially its mathematical physics aspects.
Dr Bertini added: “I am absolutely over the moon about this grant award, which I view as a strong encouragement to the entire field of non-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics and especially its mathematical physics aspects. The field has grown enormously in the last 20 years, and now, with the push coming from the first noisy quantum computers, I expect very exciting days to come."
With funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, at total of €728 million in Consolidator Grants will support cutting-edge research at universities and research centres in 25 EU Member States and associated countries.
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe.
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Associate Professor in Urban Anthropology
Biographical and contact information for Dr Marco Di Nunzio, Associate Professor in African Studies and Anthropology, at the University of Birmingham.
Associate Professor
Staff profile for Dr Bruno Bertini, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham
Professor of Twenty-First Century Music
Biographical and contact information for Professor Christopher Haworth, Professor of Twenty-First Century Music at the University of Birmingham.
