Dr hab. Karolina Kremens, a professor at the University of Wrocław, has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for the most ambitious and groundbreaking projects.
Dr hab. Karolina Kremens, prof. UWr, photo by Dominika Hull
The call is aimed at established, experienced researchers with an outstanding scientific track record and experience in leading a team. Successful applicants can receive funding of up to EUR 2.5 million over five years to carry out the most ambitious and groundbreaking research projects. The call has no thematic restrictions: projects may address any field of knowledge, but they must be carried out at an institution located in a European Union Member State or a country associated with the Horizon Europe programme.
The grant awarded to Dr hab. Karolina Kremens is the first ERC grant in the history of the University of Wrocław and the only grant for Poland in this year's Advanced Grants round.
Dr hab. Karolina Kremens heads the Scientific Excellence Incubator – Digital Justice at the Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics of the University of Wrocław, which studies the impact of new technologies on criminal proceedings. Her research interests focus on comparative and international criminal procedure, the organisation and functioning of the public prosecution service, the role of gender in the criminal process, and the impact of new technologies on criminal proceedings. She has won several NCN calls: she has led SONATA, SONATA BIS and PRELUDIUM BIS grants and currently runs two OPUS projects. She has also served as the research mentor for two PRELUDIUM grants.
Through the Advanced Grant, she will carry out a project entitled “crimPROfem: Reimagining the Criminal Process from a Feminist Perspective in the Digital Era”, which aims to rethink the principles of the criminal process from a feminist perspective. For decades, feminist legal theory has pointed out that the law, like all social structures, was historically built solely on male experience. The project asks what the criminal process would look like if it were rethought using the tools of feminist legal theory from an intersectional perspective, taking the experiences of marginalised people as its starting point. Reaching beyond traditional forms of feminist engagement with criminal law and seizing the opportunity offered by technological transformation, crimPROfem sets out to reconstruct the criminal process and develop a concept of feminist proceduralism that incorporates previously overlooked perspectives.
2025 ERC Advanced Grant Call Statistics
In the recently concluded edition of the Advanced Grant call, the ERC received a record 3,329 proposals – over 30% more than the previous year. Funding went to 319 projects worth a total of EUR 838 million. The grantees come from 24 countries. The success rate in the call was 9.6%.
In previous editions of the call, researchers working at Polish research institutions have received a total of 17 ERC Advanced Grants. The next call is open, and proposals can be submitted until 27 August.
Previous ERC Advanced Grant results
A list of all ERC grantees from Poland, including previous editions of the call