Professor Genia Schönbaumsfeld has been awarded a €2.5 million European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for her five-year project: ‘The Ethics of Doubt – Kierkegaard, Scepticism and Conspiracy Theory.’
The ERC Advanced Grant is Horizon Europe’s flagship programme, it is aimed at established, leading principal investigators (PI) who want long-term funding to pursue a ground-breaking, high-risk project. Excellence of the PI and the proposed research is the sole criterion for evaluation. Genia’s was the only award granted to the University of Southampton in the ERC 2022 call and the only UK ERC awarded project in Philosophy.
The project represents an innovative and important intervention in a timely debate. Professor Schönbaumsfeld explains: “I am absolutely thrilled to be awarded this major grant. It will enable me to devote the next five years to an incredibly exciting project that seeks to unify the theoretical and practical dimensions of debates concerning knowledge scepticism, both in epistemology (the theory of knowledge) as well as in the wider culture, where we are witnessing the burgeoning of misinformation, ‘fake news’ and global conspiracy theories.”
Genia’s award reinforces the University’s message that funding from Europe is very much open for business and Raquel Meco-Melguizo, EU Research Funding Manager in Research & Innovation Services (RIS) encourages all academics to consider applying: “There are some fantastic opportunities for research funding from Horizon Europe and while the UK makes steps to associate to the EU’s flagship funding programme, we would encourage all academics to seek them out and apply like Genia did. We have a team of EU funding experts in RIS and Finance who can assist at all stages so we really would urge colleagues to get in touch.”
Contact the EU funding support team on [email protected].
