The DFG’s Emmy Noether Programme offers exceptionally qualified researchers in the early years of their career (usually up to four years into their post-doc phase) the opportunity to lead an independent junior research group for a period of six years in order to gain qualification for a potential professorship.
Funding Period
2024–2027
Abstract
The temperature patterns of the last 1,000 years - as reconstructed from historical sources, dendrochronological and palaeobotanical data, sediment analyses and ice cores - show that the warming of the climate that began with the start of the industrial age was preceded by a long cold phase: the so-called 'Little Ice Age' (ca. 1350-1850). While the temperature patterns and historical consequences of the 'Little Ice Age' have already been extensively explored, research into ist cultural impact remains a desideratum. Within the framework of the project, which can be classified as part of the Environmental Humanities, we want to use both contextualizing-interpretative methods and technically supported analyses to find out whether and to what extent the adverse climatic conditions of the 'Little Ice Age' had an impact on the development of literature as well as on the genres and themes of texts between the second half of the 16th century and the second half of the 18th century. In addition, workshops and a colloquium in cooperation with the interdisciplinary project partners will expand into the late Middle Ages and the early 19th century. The project is based on the peak phases of the 'Little Ice Age', i.e. it uses an intense cold period determined by climate historians as the basis for dating. The literary interpretations, however, also include examples from times of better environmental conditions in order to make differences and continuities visible. Since knowledge about the mutability of climate is a recent development, the weather, which has always been experienced by humans and documented in texts, lends itself as the primary object of investigation. In the project, weather is not considered as an isolated phenomenon but is always placed in a larger discursive context of weather justifications and weather consequences. The diachronic approach is intended to reveal discursive changes, such as the influence of a measuring meteorology emerging in the late 17th century as well as the persistence of 'disaster memories' and possible habituation and resilience effects during the investigated period. The project thus contributes to research on cultural coping and adaptation strategies when dealing with climate-related extreme events and prolonged adverse environmental conditions. In addition to the work on three monographs and accompanying articles, the project plan includes the indexing and presentation of texts within a database. On the one hand, this database serves to compare the literary texts with the historical weather data; on the other hand, it gathers a first corpus of early modern literature, which is to be examined by digital methods and will be made accessible to the scientific community.
Funding Period
2024–2029
Abstract
Cells sense their environment, receive, and process a diverse set of chemical and mechanical signals through transmembrane receptors. The way how receptors sense and integrate these signals to orchestrate a wide variety of physiological processes remains one of the biggest questions in biology. Plexins function as receptors for semaphorins, molecules acting as cell guidance cues. Plexins thus regulate the shape and motility of cells during the development of the nervous and cardiovascular systems, and play important roles in many pathophysiological processes, including cancer, immunological and neurological diseases. However, it remains elusive how plexin oligomerization modulates downstream signaling. In particular, there is a lack of connection between the size and distribution of plexin clusters, mechanical signals, and the impact on the cellular activity. To bridge this gap, the proposed project will enable to interconnect these aspects via new multidisciplinary approaches to understand critical functions of plexin-semaphorin signaling. This multi-pronged project is focused towards creating an innovative toolset that will transform the current biotechnological landscape. I will develop a suite of nanotechnological matrices to mimic cell-cell interfaces. These matrices will allow high spatial control of the number of ligands, and also display 3D nanotopographies. Using these matrices as counterparts, I will unravel early downstream signaling events upon in situ receptor activation in engineered cells expressing photo-controlled plexins. My group will use modern techniques ranging from 3D microprinting, DNA-origami, and optogenetics to live-cell microscopy. The knowledge and tools designed in this project will advance the state-of-the-art and bring unprecedented insights in plexin signaling and mechanosensing.
Funding Period
2024–2027
Abstract
Crimes against persons based on certain identity characteristics, such as sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion, are not a new phenomenon. However, they are gaining increasing public awareness and have also attracted heightened attention from criminal legislators in recent years. These crimes have so far been subsumed under the term hate crime. Yet, this term raises numerous unanswered questions from a functional, conceptual and criminal law dogmatic perspective. The research project intends to re-evaluate and model the relationships between identity, violence, hate, and criminal law on the basis of an examination of these deficits. The aim of the project is to develop a theoretical concept of identity-based crimes in order to better grasp the phenomenon from a criminological and criminal law dogmatic perspective. On the basis of this concept, criminal law reform issues will be identified and corresponding proposals will be developed.
Funding Period
2022–2028
Abstract
The Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal (HPG) axis governs reproductive function including sexual maturation in humans. The neuroendocrine axis undergoes periods of changing activity throughout life reflecting periods of growth and maturation, reproduction and senescence. During the transient postnatal activation of the axis, the so-called minipuberty, infants reach adult levels of sex-hormones before the system is silenced again after several months. The axis then remains in a state of relative quiescence for around a decade until its reactivation promotes the transition from childhood to adulthood, i.e. puberty. In boys, minipuberty - in contrast to puberty - does neither lead to the development of secondary sexual characteristics nor to the attainment of full reproductive function as silencing of its activity prevents the maturation to fully functional gonads. However, it is crucial for the physiological testicular position, virilization as well as priming of gonadal cell types for subsequent growth and maturation in puberty and adulthood. Hence, it lays the foundation for male reproductive function and fertility potential while the role of minipuberty in girls seems to be dispensable for fertility. Disordered male minipuberty, e.g. in male preterm newborns, is associated with severe short-and long-term consequences, e.g. failure of the testes to descent (undescended testes) and increased risk of infertility. Despite the lifelong impact of minipuberty on male reproductive health, the neuroendocrine regulation of its activation and silencing, its impact on early gonadal maturation as well as determinants and limits of its maturational capacity are grossly understudied. This project aims to investigate both the regulation of minipuberty in the central nervous system as well as the effect on male reproductive organs at single-cell level in an animal model, the compensatory mechanism of the system in disordered minipuberty in male preterm newborns and the overlap in the genetic etiology of undescended testes, androgen levels and birth characteristics. The project lays the foundation for the use of minipuberty as window of opportunity for early diagnosis of HPG axis related disorders and for a potential intervention in disturbed minipuberty with the aim to improve long-term reproductive function and health.
Funding Period
2022–2028
Abstract
Translations played a crucial role in the making of the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period. As a transregional transfer of knowledge, translation processes were intertwined with the increasing religious and political polarisation between the Sunni Ottomans and the Shiite Safavids in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the junior research group will analyse translation as a concept, product, and process in a central region of the Islamicate world for the first time. By examining works that were widely read, translated and commented upon between 1400 and 1750, the project aims at contextualising translations from Arabic and Persian into Ottoman-Turkish with coeval trends of intellectual history. In merging approaches developed in the fields of Middle Eastern studies, translation studies, and material philology, the group can fill the gaps of previous research and replace reductive conceptualisations of translation with a novel understanding grounded in the sociocultural history of the region and period. This applies especially to translators, patrons and readership negotiating imperial identity, demarcating confessional boundaries, and adapting literary norms. Four research projects will examine translations pertaining to historiographical, biographical, encyclopaedic, and exegetic genres. Focusing on manuscripts as material objects, the projects will analyse the transmission and readership of the texts. Taking into account the content as well as paratextual elements such as ownership statements, seals, layout and illuminations, the junior research group will investigate translations as nexus between texts, translators (as authoritative actors) and literary practices. With this comprehensive approach, the group will shed light on networks of early modern knowledge production in the Eastern Mediterranean. By scrutinising prefaces, postscripts, ownership statements, and visual characteristics, it will trace individual mechanisms of knowledge transfer within broader confessional, political, and literary trends. Contextualising translation processes and relating them to tendencies in early modern intellectual history constitutes a genuine contribution to the field of intellectual history of the Islamicate world. To grant future research access to the collected data, the project will migrate it into the Bibliotheca Arabica project (Saxon Academy of Sciences, Leipzig) through a bio-bibliographical research platform.
Funding Period
2022–2026
Abstract
Climate-driven alterations in soil abiotic conditions can directly affect microbial communities and thereby carbon and greenhouse-gas (GHG) fluxes to the atmosphere. In addition to direct climate-change effects (CCEs) on soil microbial carbon cycling, plant responses to climate change can act as a strong –sometimes overriding– mediator of CCEs on soil microbial communities. These plant-mediated effects are most pronounced in the rhizosphere and are determined by plant physiological and morphological trait expressions. However, the link between plant traits, soil microbial functioning, and carbon fluxes is poorly developed, which represents a key knowledge gap in informing models of ecosystem-climate feedbacks. I argue that plant-mediated effects on soil microbial carbon cycling are particularly important in wetland ecosystems because here plants not only control the microbial substrate supply, they also regulate the availability of electron acceptors by providing oxygen to an reducing soil system. At the same time, wetland soil microbial carbon cycling plays a disproportionately large role in the climate system, because low rates of microbial activity have caused wetlands to sequester the largest soil organic carbon (SOC) stock in the biosphere, representing a vast potential source of GHG to the atmosphere if unlocked by climate change. The central objective of this Emmy Noether project is to understand the mechanisms by which plants mediate CCEs on wetland SOC stock stability and GHG emissions through investigations of plant-trait responses and their interactions with soil microbial communities. Studies will be focused on tidal wetlands, semi-terrestrial ecosystems at the interface of land and sea that have been increasingly recognized for their outsized leverage over the global carbon cycle under the term ‘blue carbon’. The work comprises four complementary subprojects (SPs) that assess soil microbial carbon cycling from a plant-trait perspective. SP1 will provide the mechanistic basis by identifying the plant traits that control wetland SOC decomposition via rhizosphere priming effects, and determine how priming effects relate to overall wetland GHG emissions. This knowledge will be applied to address the project’s central question in SP2: How do plants mediate the effects of climate change on wetland SOC stock stability and GHG emissions? SP2 will quantify the interactions between plant traits and microbial carbon cycling along climate-sensitive environmental gradients, focusing on individual plant-level responses (i.e. phenotypic plasticity) and community-level responses. SP3 will complement this work by exploring population-level responses (i.e. intraspecific genotypic variation) as a yet overlooked additional level of plant-mediated CCEs on soil microbial carbon cycling. The synthesis, SP4, will compare and summarize the findings of the experimental SPs and advance their future integration into numerical models on wetland carbon cycling.
Funding Period
2016–2024
Abstract
Latitudinal patterns in biodiversity have fascinated some of the most celebrated minds of ecology and evolutionary theory. With increasing evidence from the fossil record, even greater-scale latitudinal patterns have begun to emerge in relation to the origination, diversification, and extinction of evolutionary lineages through geologic time. The fossil record highlights low-latitude regions as nurseries for the radiation of key plant evolutionary lineages and architectural novelties. For example, past studies have identified the palaeoequatorial regions as hosting the earliest occurrences of flowering plants. By contrast, during times of global warmth, high-latitude regions appear to act as refugia for groups that have long disappeared from lower latitudes. These regions furthermore appear to act as important sources of biodiversity for re-radiation in the wake of biotic crises. The Triassic greenhouse period is a particularly interesting interval in this respect, as it is bounded by two of the most severe mass extinction events of Earth history and is characterized by an unprecedented radiation of seed plants. This project aims to utilize the exceptional early Mesozoic plant-fossil record of Gondwana, analysed using a battery of novel techniques, to resolve the latitudinal patterns of plant-group origination and extinction and their implications for plant evolution during the heyday of the gymnosperms.
Funding Period
2016–2024
Abstract
In its past years of funding within the Emmy Noether programme, the research project was very successful. The research on active colloidal particles and suspensions of active colloidal particles including active colloidal liquid crystals, how their dynamics is affected by external fields, and how such fields can be used to control their dynamics, has already resulted in several publications, comprising articles and software, as well as a patent application. Some publications appeared in high-impact journals and resulted in large press coverage. A few of our results open up important new directions of research that should be further pursued by separate projects in the future. These new directions include the investigation of colloidal particles with orientation-dependent motility.This writing proposes an additional subproject for a 6th year of funding that aims at pursuing one of the new directions of research that arose during the previous research on the original project. In the 6th year of funding, active colloidal liquid crystals with orientation-dependent motility shall be investigated. The new subproject aims at studying the collective dynamics of active colloidal liquid crystals and mixtures of different types of active colloidal liquid crystals with an orientation-dependent motility, the effect of external fields on their collective dynamics, and how such fields can be used to control the dynamics. The research will be performed by applying analytical methods of theoretical physics as well as computer simulations.