417 projects will be funded under the recently concluded OPUS 21 call. Among these, many set out to study ancient civilizations that have shaped the landscape of our modern world.

The art of debate

Polemics and debates have accompanied humanity from time immemorial; hate and fake news are far from new inventions that just appeared in the digital era. Even the first poets indulged in an occasional verbal skirmish that would probably be labelled as hate speech today. For spectators who watched ancient theatre plays, invective was the order of the day. More interesting still are the disputes that have survived, not only between literary characters, but also actual people, who spoke out in courts and the agora, wrote letters and poems. Importantly, uses of insult and “hate speech” techniques were even taught in schools.

Honoré Daumier – Achilles vs. Agamemnon “Even St. Jerome ridicules the heretic Pelagius, suggesting that he got himself “stuffed with Irish porridge” in his youth, and mocks “Vigilantius” (literally: “awake”), arguing that he is a sleepyhead and a slow thinker and would thus be more fittingly called “Dormitantius” (“asleep/sleepy”)”, says professor Rafał Toczko from the Nicolaus Copernicus University. The scholar will carry out a project entitled “History and rhetoric of the invective in ancient Greek, Roman, and early Christian polemics”, which was awarded nearly PLN 724,000 in funding. He will examine and describe the polemical uses of invective between the 7th century BCE and the 5th century CE. The study is meant to collect and analyse the uses of the device in disputes between living (and not literary) interlocutors. “If the project succeeds, it will be the first such comprehensive study on classical and Christian antiquity. We will use text-search software to look for specific phrases and grammatical forms”, Toczko explains.

The project will help create an online Database of Ancient Invective, containing all the instances of its use in ancient public discourse, i.e. in speeches, letters, pamphlets, treatises, and sermons. “We will be able to look up and compare the kinds of invective used by different authors, search for specific categories, such as animal metaphors or sexual allusions. We will also be able to see who these insults were levelled at and how the portrait was painted”, says professor Toczko. All these resources can later be used by social scientists to draw more general conclusions about the uses of invective in different cultures and periods. This can also be of interest to the general public, especially in our era, where insults, insinuations, and innuendos spread through the public discourse like wildfire.

“Today, politicians do not need to directly slander one another; they will have a crowd of journalists, internet users, and hired trolls to do that for them. In antiquity, the best you could do was publish your particularly scathing invective anonymously, a tack used by Cicero in his political struggle with Marc Anthony. Would the ancients be civilized by observing our current public debate? I doubt that”, speculates Toczko.

Religion and the material world

Map of confirmed temple sites in Mesopotamia Religion has been an important element in all civilizations around the world and the way it is experienced has always aroused wide interest. Dr Christina Tsouparopoulou from the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences studies the phenomenon as it evolved in various communities of historical Mesopotamia (contemporary Iraq, north-eastern Syria, and neighbouring regions) over several millennia. Entitled “Material religion of Mesopotamia: a shifting landscape of relationships between gods and humans in ancient Mesopotamia”, her project was awarded nearly PLN 1.4 million in funding.

Tsouparopoulou emphasizes that “religion is a continuous and evolving process”. “The goal of the project is to take a closer look at how religious practices have changed over centuries. In particular, we will focus on around 3000 years of evolution and change in the religious practices of Mesopotamia”. She plans to combine an innovative theoretical framework with concrete, data-driven analytical methods. This will allow her to recreate the forms of human-divine relationship and cultic practices in the living landscape of the ancient past. Tsouparopoulou’s is the first project thus far to harness digital humanities, archaeology and statistical analysis for the study of cultic practices and attempt to reconstruct the human-divine landscape of Mesopotamia. “We will cooperate with other researchers and employ digital humanities and social network analysis to create models of relations between man and god”, explains Tsouparopoulou. These will not only shed light on the personal religious experiences of ancient Mesopotamians, but also link them to a broader context, which changed in step with the social and political vagaries of local and regional communities.

Tsouparopoulou also puts an emphasis on the role of open access in her research. “It is our duty as researchers to get people involved in what we do. Open access is of key importance for this project and the region it studies, since it helps to preserve an important aspect of the cultural heritage of a region that was under serious threat not so long ago, and makes it accessible to all”, she says.

“Mesopotamia was and continues to be a region with a very diverse population, which has handed down to us countless texts, artefacts, and buildings that paint a fantastic picture of everyday life. This makes it particularly interesting to study”, she sums up.

Heritage on the verge of disappearance

Paintings in Atico recorded in 2019 Successful projects also include one entitled “Atico Valley – Peru before Columbus. Development and intercultural relations between the mountain and desert communities of southern Peru”. Professor Józef Szykulski from the University of Wrocław was awarded nearly PLN 2.7 million in funding and will carry out his research on the northern tip of Peru’s Costa Extremo Sur, an area of intersection between the cultures of Paracas and Nasca in the north and the cultures of the southernmost strip of the coastline, situated south of the Atico Valley. Despite its location, the Atico Basin is still a pristine region in terms of archaeological research. “The project is an interdisciplinary endeavour and brings together a diverse team of specialists. We will have archaeologists of various stripes, experts on ancient DNA or genetic analysis of human remains, physical anthropologists, as well as experts on geology and topography”, the scientist underscores.

Another successful scientist, professor Błażej Stanisławski from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, PAS, will carry out a project entitled “Archaeology of the seascape of the Constantinople port in the Kucukcekmece Basin – land and underwater research, communication and trade networks, mobility”, which was awarded a grant of more than PLN 769,000. The goal is to study the largest port of Constantinople, which operated between the 6th and the 14th centuries. That it was indeed quite big is evidenced by the fact that its size was larger than that of all other known Constantinople ports put together. The study will follow the principles of so-called ‘seascape archaeology’, a field of research that examines relations between humans/culture and the sea. Professor Stanisławski’s project is also important from the point of view of conservation. The scheduled construction of the “Istanbul Canal”, which is to link the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea, means that the research site, which is located in the investment area, will have to be taken down in a few years. As a result, this is the last and only chance to study this amazing relic of civilization.

Dr Anna Józefowska-Domańska from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, PAS, will stay in Poland to conduct her project entitled “Consumption and ritual in the early Iron Age on the example of the settlement of Milejowice and the Domasław necropolis. Between the function and meaning of »ceramic collections«”. The researcher won a grant of PLN 442,000. She will work with a team of researchers specialized in excavations, as well as botanical and chemical analysis, to examine the importance of old ceramics, complementing European studies with new data and innovative guidelines. For this purpose, the team will use artefacts found at Lower Silesian sites during archaeological rescue research conducted along the construction strip of the A-4 highway. Identifying the role of these vessels is an important source of information for the study of customs related to food consumption and processing, as well as relationships between dietary habits, status, and identity within these societies.

Happy Holidays and best wishes for a wonderful New Year 2022!

For this new ERA-Net Cofund Urban Accessibility and Connectivity (EN-UAC) call, JPI Urban Europe network and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) will address the urban mobility, accessibility, and connectivity challenge in the Sino-European cooperation, with a focus on knowledge and impact. The sub-themes of the Call are Sustainable Urban Logistics and Individual Mobility.

This will be a two-step call, expected to be launched in January 2022, with a likely pre-proposal submission deadline in March 2022. Further details will be provided at the launch of the call.

For further detail please visit the JPI Urban Europe website.

Please note that this pre-announcement is for information purposes only. It does not create  any obligation for the JPI Urban Europe network, nor for any of the participating funding organizations. The official call announcement, to be published later, shall prevail.

PRELUDIUM is a call for proposals addressed at early-career researchers who are not PhD holders. In the last edition of the call closed in November 2021, almost 500 researchers from all over Poland received project funding of over 77 million PLN. The grant money will allow them to conduct a thorough investigation of various issues in many domains. 

List of winners

Activities recommended for funding included projects on women’s professional and social activity and women’s health.

Leaders with disabilities

Kamila Albin from the Institute of Applied Social Sciences of the University of Warsaw will analyse individual experiences of women with disabilities in her project “Activists, leaders (self)advocates. Activism experience in autobiographical stories of women with disabilities in Poland”. Kamila Albin will investigate the motives of their social engagement and views on obstacles to the activism of disabled people.

Disabled women are still subject to stereotypes, marginalisation and discrimination as helpless and dependent on others. They are excluded from many areas of life, such as civic and social activities, even motherhood. “For me, it is very important to include the viewpoint of disabled researchers in the academic discourse. In a way, every such action changes our thinking of disabilities and beats stereotypes” she says.

The aim of research is to help shape positive social attitudes towards women with disabilities and join in collaboration, while writing and disseminating stories of female activists with disabilities can inspire disabled women to actively shape the civic society. “Community engagement is often caused by the fact that disability is recognised as a part of one's identity. In my research, I would also like to find women whose social engagement is not related to their disability and is not its consequence” she says.

Women in the European Parliament  

Aleksandra Polak is yet another researcher to investigate women’s activism. She is a PhD student at the Doctoral School of Social Sciences of the University of Warsaw specialising in political science and administration, and expert with the Team Europe network at the European Commission Representation in Poland in the project “Explaining Cross-National Differences in Women's Descriptive Representation in the European Parliament: a Comparative Study”.

The European Parliament is often regarded a gender balance promoter in Europe due to its support for women’s rights and rather equal number of female and male MPs. There is currently a record number of female MPs: 39.3%, while an average percentage of female MP’s in the EU Member States is 32.7%. “There are, however, significant differences between Member States, ranging from completely gender-balanced national representations from Denmark, Latvia, Luxembourg and Slovenia to only 15.2% of Romania MPs and none from Cyprus” says the Aleksandra Polak. 

The aim of the project is to explain the cause of such significant disproportions between Member States in terms of the percentage of women elected to the European Parliament, determine the role of national political parties in the election of women to the European Parliament and verify whether the views and position of the political party in a given country may impact gender balance in the Parliament. “Identifying the reasons for significant disproportions between Member States in terms of the percentage of women elected to the European Parliament seems crucial to effectively create the policy of gender equality in Europe” she says.

More effective breast cancer detection 

Jakub Chłędowski from the Faculty of Mathematics and Information Technologies of the Jagiellonian University will work on the classification and detection of 3D DBT volumes to aid radiologists in breast cancer screening under the PRELUDIUM call. 

Breast cancer is the main cause of cancer deaths in women, with a global mortality rate of 15.5% of all cancers in 2020. Mammography is the most common method of breast cancer detection, however it is not accurate and can increase the number of both false negative and false positive diagnoses. Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) is a three-dimensional equivalent of mammography that allows for more accurate imaging of lesions. “Conventional mammography is limited due to overlapping structures that may obscure suspicious lesions or make normal structures look suspicious. DBT uses multiple low-dose X-ray projections creating a three-dimensional image of the breast and prevents the structures from overlapping which may help overcome such limitations” says Jakub Chłędowski

This is the first type of research allowing multiple DBT surfaces to be combined and all types of tumour lesions to be seen across the tested area. “In my research, I will use the signal from DBT segmentation to improve the quality of classification. First, I will train a neural network that can locate tumours and then use the information from the hidden layers of the network to create a neural network to classify DBT” he says.

Research will be conducted in collaboration with researchers from the New York University. “This collaboration will allow me to be in touch with world-class radiologists and machine learning researchers”.

151 scientists from 41 countries applied in the POLONEZ BIS 1 call to conduct their research projects in host institutions across Poland.

The call attracted 40 (26%) proposals in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 83 (55%) in Physical Sciences and Engineering, and 28 (19%) in Life Sciences. 48 million PLN (around €11 million) from the NCN and European Commission are available under this call to fund researchers’ mobility in all areas of science. 

The proposals will now undergo an eligibility check, after which they will be evaluated by independent international experts and reviewers. The results of the call will be known at the beginning of June 2022.   

We may be contacting the applicants during the eligibility check and at the end of each evaluation stage, so please check your mailboxes for messages from the NCN. 

If you have missed the first call, we encourage you to apply for POLONEZ BIS 2, scheduled to open on 15 March 2022. 

The POLONEZ BIS Coordination Team is at your disposal for any questions: do not hesitate to contact us at polonez@ncn.gov.pl

The National Science Centre and the Copernicus Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Jagiellonian University have organised a number of online lectures under the title „Science at the Centre” during which winners of 2020 and 2021 NCN Awards discussed their research work.

Prof. Yonatan Gutman, winner of the 2021 NCN Award in Physical Science and Engineering will discuss his work on 22 December 2021, at 6 p.m. His lecture is entitled “The reconstruction of a dynamical system based on observations: mathematical approach”.

Prof. Yonatan Gutman works at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Science. His area of expertise is the theory of dynamical systems, in particular topological and ergodic dynamics. He studied at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Stanford University and earned his PhD at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, followed by a postdoctoral degree (habilitation) at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has also completed numerous postdoctoral fellowships, including at Cambridge and Oxford.

The lecture will be in English with Polish subtitles.

The lecture will be streamed online on the YouTube channel of the Copernicus Centre where other lectures are also available, i.e. 

In English with Polish subtitles:

• Dr Sebastian Glatt (How our body translates mRNA into proteins?)  

In Polish:

• Dr hab. Michał Tomza, Jak wystresować kota Schrödingera? [Training Schrödinger’s cat]
• Prof. Wojciech Fendler, MikroRNA w radioterapii – nadzieje, rozczarowania, zastosowania [MicroRNA in radiotherapy: hopes, disappointments and application]
• Prof. Jakub Growiec, 300 tysięcy lat wzrostu gospodarczego [300 thousand years of economic growth]
• Dr Paweł Polkowski, Wyspa petroglifów: 10 lat badań w egipskiej oazie [Petroglyph Island: 10 years of research in the Egyptian oasis]

The results of the Weave-UNISONO call for research projects conducted by Polish and Austrian researchers are now published.

The National Science Centre supports international research collaboration which is why it is involved in the Weave-UNISONO call aimed to fund bilateral and trilateral research projects with Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany and soon with Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders. As a result of NCN’s collaboration with the Austrian research-funding agency Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) that has acted as the lead agency, 2 research teams from Poland will soon be able to start their research do to funding of their research with the Austrian partners totalling over 1.34 million PLN.

Under Weave-UNISONO, Dr hab. Piotr Tadeusz Borodulin-Nadzieja from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Wrocław will collaborate with the Austrian research team for a period of 3 years. Over 388 thousand PLN was awarded to the project Analytic P-ideals, Banach spaces and measure algebras. Barnabas Artur Farkas from the Vienna University of Technology will be the principal investigator in the project.

Dr Piotr Jan Szewczak from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw will conduct research in set-theoretic aspects of topological selections. Dr Lyubomyr Zdomskyy from the Institute of Mathematics at the Vienna University will be the principal investigator of the foreign partner. Over 955 thousand PLN was awarded to the project.

The first results of the Weave-UNISONO call were published together with the Swiss National Science Foundation on 27 September 2021 and the next results were published on 14 December together with Grantová agentura České republiky (GAČR) from the Czech Republic.

NCN proposals must be submitted electronically via the ZSUN/OSF submission system as soon as possible following the submission of the joint proposal to the ARRS, within 7 calendar days at the latest.

Please read the important information on the dates and application procedure in the Weave-UNISONO call and the updated call documentation.

The table below presents a preliminary timeline for calls operated by the National Science Centre in the year 2022.

The call timeline does not include multilateral calls launched by the international networks of research funding agencies, including the NCN, which are announced and pre-announced on the NCN website all year round according to the decisions of the participating agencies.

2022 call timeline

* calls schedule might be changed in the course of the year

Download the 2022 NCN Call Timeline

The JPI Urban Europe network has awarded funding to 16 new research projects within the EN-UTC Urban Transformation Capacities Call 2021 covering the call topics on:

• Urban circular economies;
• Community-based developments and urban innovation ecosystems;
• Robust and resilient urban infrastructure and built environment.

The total budget of awarded projects amounts to 16,8 M EUR, including 4,2 M EUR of European Union co-funding.

The following projects with Polish researchers were awarded within the EN-UTC Call 2021:

U-GARDEN: Promoting capacity building and knowledge for the extension of urban gardens in European cities. Polish Applicant: Group of entities - Warsaw University of Technology (Leader of the group of entities) in cooperation with the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (Member of the group of entities). Polish Principal Investigator: dr hab. inż. Maciej Kazimierz Lasocki. The project will involve research teams from Spain, Romania, and Sweden.

CREST: Climate resilient coastal urban infrastructures through digital twinning. Polish Applicant: Group of entities - National Institute for Spatial Policy and Housing (Leader of the group of entities) in cooperation with the Kołobrzeg Commune (Member of the group of entities) and INnCREASE Sp. z o.o. (Ltd.) (Member of the group of entities). Polish Principal Investigator: dr hab. Bogna Gawrońska-Nowak. The project will involve research teams from France and Norway.

CONTRA: Conflict in Transformations. Polish Applicant: Group of entities - University of Warsaw (Leader of the group of entities) in cooperation with the Municipality of Gdynia (Member of the group of entities) and IDEA Institute Ltd. (Member of the group of entities). Polish Principal Investigator: dr Joanna Monika Krukowska. The project will involve research teams from Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway.

City&Co: Older Adults Co-Creating a Sustainable Age-friendly City. Polish Applicant: Group of entities - Jagiellonian University in Cracow (Leader of the group of entities) in cooperation with the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (Member of the group of entities). Polish Principal Investigator: dr hab. Jolanta Małgorzata Perek - Białas. The project will involve research teams from  the Netherlands and Romania.

EmbedterLabs: Better Embedded Labs for More Synergistic Sustainable Urban Transformation Planning. Polish Applicant: Gdańsk University of Technology. Polish Principal Investigator: dr inż. Joanna Beata Bach - Głowińska. The project will involve research teams from the Netherlands and Sweden.

The aim of the JPI Urban Europe is to finance international, interdisciplinary research projects that respond to the challenges of modern cities and urban areas. The National Science Centre has been cooperating with the JPI Urban Europe network since 2015.  

The implementation of research projects funded within the EN-UTC Call 2021 will start in 2022. More information and the full list of projects recommended for funding can be found at JPI Urban Europe website.