Andrei Terian-Dan, a professor at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (LBUS), won a EUR 1.45 million grant from the European Research Council for the project of a transnational history of Romanian literature.

He is one of the grantees of the latest Consolidator Grant competition for mid-career researchers. The funding is part of the EU’s current research and innovation program, Horizon 2020, and worth in total EUR 655 million. With this support, the new grantees will be able to consolidate their teams and have a far-reaching impact.

Under the research project TRANSHIROL, Terian-Dan and his team will chart the five-century-long history of Romanian literature and the progressive global growth of its network. “The resultant transnational history of Romanian literature strives to ultimately become a history of world literature written from a Romanian perspective.”

The working hypothesis of the TRANSHIROL project is that “national” literature should not be primarily regarded as a system but rather as a network defined by the transnational communities into which it is integrated.

Terian-Dan has been a visiting researcher in the UK, Spain, and Slovenia and is now based at his alma mater, the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu.

In total, 37% of the ERC grants were awarded to female researchers, the highest proportion since the start of the Consolidator grant scheme. Overall, the success rate for women was 14.5%, and for men 12.6%. In the Physical Sciences and Engineering domain, the success rate of women exceeded that of men: it was 16.9% for women and 12% for men. In the Life Sciences domain, women won 15% and men won 12.9% of the grants. 

The grantees will carry out their projects at universities, research centers, and companies in 23 different countries across Europe, with Germany (50 grants), the United Kingdom (50), France (34), and the Netherlands (29) as leading locations. For the first time, a project based in Ukraine, a Horizon 2020 associated country, will also be funded by a Consolidator Grant. 

In this call, researchers of 39 nationalities received Consolidator Grants: the most numerous were Italians (47 grants), Germans (45), French (27), and British (24).

The list of grantees is available here.

(Photo: Elena Krivorotova | Dreamstime.com)

simona@romania-insider.com