ERC grants are awarded to support excellent research across diverse fields, including physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, and social sciences and humanities. The backing will help researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, build research teams and pursue their most promising ideas.
The ERC committee selected 478 researchers across Europe to receive this year’s awards. Of these, 60 grants were made to UK researchers with Bristol-based researchers securing 8% of these.
Bristol researchers will use their funding to explore a number of key challenges including climate change and anti-microbial resistance.
Dr Helen Fewlass, a Lecturer in Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, will lead a project that seeks to explore when our ancestors first arrived in Europe and how they adapted to new and changing climatic conditions.
Around 200 years ago, archaeologists discovered unusual leaf-shaped stone tools in a cave in Devon. For over a century, it was believed these tools were made by some of the last Neanderthals in Europe. But recent research by Dr Helen Fewlass and colleagues suggests a different story: similar tools discovered in Germany were actually made by early Homo sapiens over 45,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought.
These tools could mark the first arrival of modern humans across Northern Europe, a turning point in history that happened just before Neanderthals disappeared. Understanding this moment could help explain what makes us unique, and why Homo sapiens survived while Neanderthals did not.
The ARRIVAL project will dig deeper into this mystery by studying important archaeological sites in the UK and Poland. It will also develop new scientific methods to more accurately date ancient bones. By uncovering how our ancestors survived and thrived during a time of major environmental shifts, ARRIVAL will also offer insights into how we might adapt to today’s climate challenges.
Dr Hannah Griffiths, a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences, will study how different forest creation approaches designed to tackle climate change influence the complex web of soil organisms. Since around 75% of carbon on land is stored in soil, understanding how these underground systems work is critical.
Forests play a vital role in tackling climate change by storing large amounts of carbon in their soils. However, we still know very little about how different ways of creating forests — such as planting large-scale forests versus allowing them to grow back naturally — affect the underground life that supports this carbon storage.
The RECONNECT project aims to uncover how different forest creation approaches influence biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the soil, underground networks include fungi and other microbes that are essential for healthy soil and long-term carbon storage.
To do this, the project will combine large-scale field studies with cutting-edge scientific tools to track how carbon moves through the ecosystem — from when it is absorbed by trees to when it becomes locked into the soil. The project will also investigate how different forest creation methods affect the rebuilding of underground networks, especially mycorrhizal fungi, which connect trees and help move nutrients and carbon through the soil.
The results will provide critical insights into how best to restore forests in ways that maximise biodiversity and long-term carbon storage supporting more effective nature-based solutions to climate change.
Dr Liam Shaw, a Research Fellow in the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, will focus on research to help the fight against antibiotic resistance. Plasmids are small pieces of DNA that can move between bacteria and carry genes that make bacteria resistant to antibiotics. This ability to spread makes plasmids a major concern in the fight against antibiotic resistance. One way to stop this spread could be by using bacteria's own natural defence systems, which are typically used to fight off viruses that infect them.
In recent years, scientists have discovered many new bacterial defence systems, some of which may also help block plasmids from entering in bacterial cells. However, it is hard to test how they all work in the lab.
The PLEIADES project aims to tackle this challenge using advanced computer-based approaches. It will study how plasmids evolve and adapt when faced with these bacterial defence systems, and how this impacts their ability to spread between different types of bacteria. The goal is to better understand the hidden battles between plasmids and bacterial defences, that could eventually help us control the spread of antibiotic resistance.
Dr Rebecca Buxton, a Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, will undertake the LEAD project, which aims to critically develop a refugee-led approach to displacement justice.
Dr Buxton’s project will focus on building a new blueprint for engaged political philosophy, one that meaningfully includes those most effected by injustice. Throughout the five years of the grant, the research team will bring together lessons from political philosophy, social epistemology, and refugee studies to critically interrogate how we think about displacement justice, as well as whose voices are heard in philosophical work. LEAD will explore more inclusive ways to do political philosophy about displacement, working with refugee-led organisations, refugee researchers, and other groups throughout the project.
Dr Patrick Kennedy, a Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences, will undertake research investigating how ecological factors influence the evolution of social life in animals. Dr Kennedy will use a combination of theoretical models, large-scale comparisons across species, and hands-on fieldwork with wasps to better understand the environmental conditions that shape cooperative behaviour. Social wasps are powerful models for understanding cooperation, because they lead dramatic social lives - involving altruistic self-sacrifices, power struggles within the family, and gruelling teamwork in the face of a hostile environment.
Working with colleagues across African universities, Dr Kennedy will explore how these social dramas play out across ecological contexts, from the savannahs of East Africa to the rainforests of the Congo Basin. The team will also explore the ancient evolutionary history of cooperation in ants, bees, and wasps, by developing realistic evolutionary simulations.