The next researcher in the series, Karolina Kremens, studies the impact of new technologies on the criminal process and asks what procedural rules would look like if groups historically overlooked had been involved in shaping them.

The NCN Generation is made up of researchers whose work pushes back the frontiers of knowledge and changes our lives – improving health, protecting the environment, advancing technology and deepening our understanding of the world.

Dr hab. Karolina Kremens, a professor at the University of Wrocław, heads the Scientific Excellence Incubator – Digital Justice at the university. Her research interests include comparative and international criminal procedure, the impact of new technologies on the criminal process, the role of gender in that process, and the organisation and operation of the public prosecution service. She has served as principal investigator on four NCN projects, and in June this year she was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant.

New technologies in the criminal process

New technologies have been changing the criminal process for a long time. DNA testing and fingerprint identification were once innovations too, the researcher points out. Today, however, their reach is expanding. Evidence is increasingly moving away from traditional forms: searches of handbags and homes are giving way to searches of phones and cloud storage, while geolocation data now appears in case files alongside witness statements. The range of people supplying evidence has also changed, as recordings and other records are now submitted by those involved in an incident and by witnesses themselves. This raises questions about who collected the material and whether it may have been manipulated. This is particularly evident in evidence submitted to the International Criminal Court, an area studied by the Centre headed by Kremens.

The change goes deeper, reaching the very foundations of procedure. “Technology is profoundly changing long-settled procedural principles, including the principle of immediacy and equality of arms” says Karolina Kremens.

Remote proceedings and digital evidence

The researcher identifies two areas in which digital transformation is having the greatest impact on the criminal process. The first is remote proceedings, which became widespread after the pandemic and have since been regulated in many countries. She does not view them in black-and-white terms. She sees benefits where distances are considerable and remote participation saves witnesses from having to arrange childcare, for example. But she also points to the costs: witnesses give evidence from locations over which the authority conducting the proceedings has no control, making it impossible to know whether someone is influencing them, while barriers relating to equipment and digital skills may be overlooked. “Yet, as relatively affluent and educated participants in the criminal process, we assume that everyone has access to a computer, a phone or the internet, and a stable connection,” says Karolina Kremens.

The second area is digital evidence, which is regarded as more reliable than witness testimony. Kremens asks whom we trust to confirm that evidence was created under particular circumstances, and who is even in a position to create it. To illustrate the point, she gives the example of a married couple in a domestic abuse case: only one spouse controls the family's cloud storage and therefore also controls the recordings made on the other spouse's phone. In such a case, access to the data, rather than its content, determines whose version of events is accepted.

Feminist proceduralism

These inequalities are the starting point for the project for which Kremens received the ERC grant. The project aims to reconstruct the criminal process and develop the concept of feminist proceduralism: a model of the procedural principles that might have emerged had marginalised groups also been invited to shape them. “Feminist proceduralism is what I will develop at the very end of this project,” says the researcher.

Her tool is feminist legal theory viewed through an intersectional lens, taking account of class, education, wealth, ethnicity and sexual orientation. The research will cover Poland and Canada, which offers perspectives unavailable in Poland, including those relating to the rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. In Kremens's view, digital transformation itself offers an opportunity to reshape procedural principles, since it is changing them regardless.

She brought two objects into the studio. The first was an illustration by Łukasz Kubiński depicting the structure of the project. “The laboratory is the criminal process, the tool is feminist legal theory, and the opportunity is the digital age,” Karolina Kremens explains. The second was a Taylor Swift record. The project's theme song will be her track “mad woman”. “I think it captures very well what the project is about and how much energy I will have to put into persuading people that the seemingly mad idea at its heart is, in fact, viable,” says the researcher. 

Before ERC, there were NCN grants

Karolina Kremens has served as principal investigator on four NCN projects. She began with SONATA, followed by SONATA BIS and PRELUDIUM BIS, and is currently carrying out an OPUS project. These projects involved teams of varying sizes, including students and PhD students, and it was through them that she learnt how to manage research teams. The reviewers of her ERC proposal noted that she had never led a European grant, but nevertheless considered her national track record proof that she could manage a budget of EUR 2.5 million over five years. Kremens therefore regards NCN grants as a prerequisite for a successful ERC proposal and increasing NCN's budget as the most urgent priority.

Selected excerpts

Unequal access to creating digital evidence

In many different types of proceedings, we often think that witness statements may be flawed because someone may remember events differently or may even be lying. But we assign a somewhat different weight to DNA evidence and, more recently, to digital evidence. The question, then, is whether we all have equal access to the means of creating evidence. (...) One partner may have greater control over what the family stores in the cloud. This means that everything recorded on the other partner's mobile phone, everything documented in some way, may remain under the control of the person with sole access to the cloud or its security settings.

An intersectional approach to feminist legal theory

I would like to emphasise very strongly that this is feminist legal theory viewed through an intersectional lens. I do not want to repeat the mistake feminism made for many years: looking solely from a woman's perspective, and primarily that of a white, educated and affluent woman. An intersectional perspective allows us to see other dimensions of disadvantage. It means looking not only at white women, but also at women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds and from different social classes.

NCN grants as a prerequisite for ERC funding

All the reviews placed in the ERC system after I received the grant make it clear that my previous experience of leading a range of NCN grants is what assures the reviewers that I can deliver an ERC Advanced project worth EUR 2.5 million over five years. (...) I believe that a sine qua non for receiving an ERC grant is being able to demonstrate that you have secured external funding and successfully conducted research with it. In Poland, these external grants are awarded by NCN.

Researchers from the Jagiellonian University, in collaboration with partners from Belgium-Flanders, will carry out an international research project on performance monitoring and feedback processing. They were awarded PLN 1.5 million under OPUS LAP for their research.

The Polish research team, managed by Dr hab. Magdalena Senderecka, Jagiellonian University Professor, will carry out a research project in cooperation with the research team managed by Prof. Gilles Pourtois from the Ghent University in Belgium. They will study human brain, which is capable of monitoring performance and processing feedback. This is crucial for the process of learning and adaptation to the changing demands of the environment. Polish and Belgian researchers will investigate whether these processes depend on motivation and learning. They will track the processes using electroencephalography (EEG), a diagnostic method that measures changes in brain electrical activity, conducting large-scale EEG experiments with over 200 participants in Poland and Belgium-Flanders. Their findings might provide valuable insights into how people with different psychological profiles respond to feedback on success and failure, which may, in the long run, pave the way for the development of more effective ways of learning and coping with challenges.

Selection of winning applicants 

The project was evaluated pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure which is common for European research-funding agencies. The Lead Agency Procedure (LAP) allows research teams to apply for funding of joint research projects and simplifies the evaluation procedure performed by research funding agencies. The proposal was fully assessed in one country only, in this case in Poland, and the evaluation was performed by the National Science Centre. The evaluation results were then approved by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), which subsequently awarded funding thereunder to the research team from Belgium.

The results published today only apply to bilateral projects involving research teams from Poland and Belgium-Flanders. Approval is pending for OPUS LAP proposals involving bilateral or trilateral cooperation with partners from Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland and Luxemburg. The results will be published following approval by the partner agencies from the respective countries.

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of our valued colleague and mentor Ks. Prof. Andrzej Szostek, a distinguished ethicist and philosopher, Professor at the Catholic University of Lublin and NCN Council Member from 2010 to 2018, who died on 21 July 2026.

Ks. prof. Andrzej Szostek Ks. Prof. Andrzej Szostek was one of Poland’s foremost ethicists, an active researcher, teacher and theologian. Throughout his career, he held numerous positions of responsibility. His association with the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin spanned over half a century, during which he served as Rector from 1998 to 2004, headed the Department of Detailed Ethics, served as Vice Rector for International Affairs for eight years, and led the Department of Ethics from 2002 until his retirement in 2018. 

Professor Szostek’s research focused on the rational foundations of ethics, the nature of conscience, human dignity, freedom, love, and social responsibility. He also studied the anthropological and ethical thought of Karol Wojtyła. Professor Szostek inspired others and encouraged reflection. His publication track record comprised almost 200 publications. In recognition of his academic achievements and public service, he received many honours and awards.

He served on the NCN Council for two terms, from the very beginning of the National Science Centre until 2018. He actively participated in the development of the grant system in Poland, shaping the NCN’s grant portfolio, and laying down the proposal evaluation procedures and project performance processes. His involvement and contribution into the formation and development of the National Science Centre was immeasurable. 

We mourn the passing of Ks. Prof. Andrzej Szostek.

Memory politics is not the sole preserve of national governments. Cities engage in it too – by erecting monuments and forging links with local authorities abroad. Their actions may reinforce, reshape or run counter to the national narrative. Natalia Matiaszczyk, a PhD student at the University of Lodz, will use her OPUS 30-funded project to study the memory politics of 440 cities with populations of more than 250,000 across over thirty countries occupied by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the twentieth century. She is interested in the tools available to local authorities and in how their actions depend on political systems and administrative structures. She also asks when cities can act as agents of reconciliation. Previously, in a project funded under PRELUDIUM, she studied South Korean cities and their memory politics concerning Japan. She has also surveyed around eighty Polish cities.

Natalia Matiaszczyk, photo from Natalia Matiaszczyk’s private collection Natalia Matiaszczyk published her first academic paper while studying for her bachelor's degree. She is one of just over forty people in the history of NCN funding calls to have received an OPUS grant before completing a PhD. Her project ranked second on the HS5 ranking list. – It is the culmination of several years of research – says the grant recipient. – The reviewers noted that I have experience in running projects and that the project itself is ambitious and important to the social sciences. They concluded that my track record gives me a good chance of delivering it successfully.

We talk to the researcher about how cities tell their own versions of history in our #rozmowaNCN series.

Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz: The most obvious associations with urban memory politics are monuments and street names. How else do cities commemorate their past?

Natalia Matiaszczyk: Monuments and memorial sites are indeed among the most widely used tools. Commemorative events are also important: national and local holidays, as well as anniversaries central to a community's identity. But the range is broader than that. Cities can establish major local museums independently, without support from national authorities or external funding. They can conduct their own historical research and organise conferences and workshops. They can run educational programmes for residents and, where national law permits, develop their own programmes for children in primary and secondary schools.

That is the local dimension. The other is international: city diplomacy directed at local authorities abroad. This may involve dialogue and initiatives aimed at reconciliation with a country with which they share a difficult past. It may take the form of history-focused events for children and young people or student exchanges. It may also involve negative or confrontational action, such as promoting nationalist positions or making a show of suspending relations over differing interpretations of the past.

Can local collective memory differ from the official national version?

Local identities often differ from those promoted by national authorities. Memory politics at national level inevitably simplifies matters to some extent. Local action is closest to the community and is not as standardised as action at national level. 

It is not only different countries that remember the same events differently – people within a single country do so as well. For example, the memory of the Second World War differs between Łódź, Warsaw, Podlasie, Kashubia and Silesia. I feel that Polish society is often unaware of this. There is no single memory of the Second World War; it varies from one region of the country to another.

Which Polish cities actively engage in memory politics?

Wrocław is one of the most active centres, both locally and internationally. Wrocław established links with Breda because the Dutch city retains a vivid memory of its liberation by Polish troops in 1944. It also commemorates General Stanisław Maczek, specifically in an international context.

In my survey, a relatively large number of Polish cities said that their initiatives were intended to foster reconciliation with German twin towns and promote mutual understanding and respect.

You mentioned that cities' memory politics can also run counter to the national narrative.

One of several monuments in Gwangju commemorating the ‘comfort women’, photo from Natalia Matiaszczyk’s private collection Perhaps the clearest example I know is the South Korean city of Hwaseong, where I conducted fieldwork on local memory politics concerning Japan.

Hwaseong decided to raise awareness of Japan's crimes against the so-called comfort women – women and girls subjected to sexual exploitation by the Imperial Japanese Army. The number of victims is estimated at 300,000, and in some estimates as high as 400,000, most of whom are believed to have been Korean. For the South Korean government, the issue matters only in its relations with Japan; it makes no effort to communicate it to a wider international audience.

Hwaseong erected monuments to these women overseas – in China, Canada and Australia. Several other Korean cities began taking similar action, and memorials of this kind were also established in countries including Germany. A monument erected in a foreign municipality creates a permanent place in the urban landscape with specific symbolic and emotional significance. 

Initially, the city's action was a form of opposition to national policy. The first initiatives date back to 2015–2016, when the South Korean authorities were attempting to play down the issue in relations with Japan. Hwaseong concluded that this approach ran counter to Korean interests and showed a lack of respect for the victims and their memory. It erected the monuments entirely without support from national authorities, in direct opposition to their memory politics.

You have studied cities in Poland and South Korea, and your new project covers a further 440 cities in Europe and Asia, in countries formerly occupied by Germany and Japan.  Is the aim to examine how local authorities operate in such varied political environments?

I want to conduct a broad comparative study of the memory politics pursued by cities in countries that suffered under two of the twentieth century's most devastating occupation regimes. At the same time, this selection will allow me to examine how cities behave in different contexts. The sample includes cities in democratic and non-democratic states, in decentralised and highly centralised systems, and in unitary and federal states. I will examine how specific conditions affect whether cities engage in memory politics more or less actively. Do they work towards reconciliation, or do they instead adopt more extreme nationalist positions than their national governments?

How will you conduct the research? 

Gunsan: the only functioning Buddhist temple in the whole country dating from the period of the Japanese occupation of Korea, photo from Natalia Matiaszczyk’s private collection I will begin with surveys, which I will then analyse primarily using quantitative methods. Based on the findings, I will select three cities in Europe and three in Asia. In each, I will conduct comprehensive fieldwork: analysing memorial sites and the narratives presented there, and interviewing officials and others involved in memory politics. I will ask how and why particular decisions are made, what motivates them, what problems and challenges arise, and how local and national authorities cooperate – whether such cooperation exists at all and whether national authorities try to restrict local action. I will then compare the survey findings with the detailed case studies.

Memory is relational: it involves two sides. Will the survey cover only formerly occupied countries, or the former aggressors as well?

I will conduct the survey in countries that were occupied. However, once I have selected the case-study cities, I also want to contact their twin towns in Germany and Japan to understand their perspective. I used the same model in my earlier research on Korean cities.

How many survey responses would you consider a success? I imagine that collecting data will be a major challenge in a project of this scale. 

If I managed to obtain responses from even half of them, that would already be quite a good result. In Europe, freedom-of-information legislation also helps researchers obtain data. It can be used to improve the response rate.

You mentioned that your research will also cover non-democratic countries. Where do you expect to encounter the greatest research difficulties?

In Chinese cities. First, because there are so many of them and, second, because access to information and response rates may prove problematic. China itself is nonetheless fascinating: it is a totalitarian state, yet local authorities still have a small degree of latitude to pursue their own commemorative initiatives. This may therefore be the project's greatest challenge, but it may also yield its most interesting findings.

Some Asian countries have freedom-of-information mechanisms while others do not, so this may present a challenge. That is why the project allows a fairly long period for the surveys – more than a year – so that I can collect and analyse the data.

This is a project about the past, but it also looks to the future. What would you like the project to change?

Above all, I want to show that local authorities are important actors in memory politics. They are closest to local communities and best understand local circumstances and collective memory. Every decision they make affects how residents and visitors perceive past events at memorial sites. That, in turn, shapes how we view our own nation, our history and current politics, as well as another nation with which we have a difficult relationship. Local authorities shape collective memory and identity, which in turn influence the decisions we make.

The National Science Centre plans to launch new calls in cooperation with the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), which will give Polish researchers the opportunity to obtain funding for bilateral projects carried out jointly with partners from Spain. 

In early July, NCN and the AEI signed a Memorandum of Understanding setting out the framework for cooperation between the two institutions. Planned calls:

• OPUS 32+LAP/Weave, in which the National Science Centre will act as the lead agency;
• FLAMENCO, in which the Agencia Estatal de Investigación will act as the lead agency.

The joint calls will be carried out in accordance with the Lead Agency Procedure. This means that research projects will undergo merit-based evaluation at only one institution – the lead agency – competent for one of the teams participating in the project, within a call forming part of its own funding offer. Once the evaluation process has been completed, the lead agency will forward to the partner institution, for approval, the list of projects recommended for funding.

The calls will be open to proposals for funding basic research in any scientific discipline covered by one of the 26 National Science Centre panels.

The first FLAMENCO call

As early as August, together with the AEI, we will launch the first edition of the FLAMENCO call, aimed at Polish research teams planning to carry out projects in cooperation with teams from Spain.       

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS: 

• Proposals should cover basic research and include a plan for joint Polish-Spanish research. Projects involving the purchase or construction of research equipment or activities within research networks will be funded provided that they meet the basic research criterion. Projects consisting solely in the purchase or construction of research equipment or activities within research networks do not meet the funding conditions and will be rejected.
• No state aid will be granted under the call.
• In any given edition of NCN calls, a person may be named as the principal investigator in one proposal only.
• The duration of Polish-Spanish research projects may be 24, 36 or 48 months.
• Proposals for NCN funding of the Polish part of the research project may be submitted by the entities listed in Article 27(1), points 1–2, 4–5 and 7–8, of the Act on the National Science Centre.

PLANNED CALL SCHEDULE:

• Call announcement: 24 August 2026
• Deadline for submitting joint proposals to the AEI: 24 November 2026
• Deadline for submitting national proposals in the OSF system: as soon as possible after the joint proposal has been submitted to the AEI, and no later than 7 calendar days thereafter
• Announcement of the call results: November 2027
• Start of the research projects: January 2028

This advance notice of the call is provided for information purposes only. Detailed terms and conditions will be set out in the official call announcement.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Contact on the Polish side: NCN 

Coordinators:

• Life Sciences: dr Magdalena Wyszkowska-Kolatko
• Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences: dr Katarzyna Bester-Ostrowska
• Physical Sciences and Engineering: dr inż. Anna Koteja

General enquiries:

dr Jadwiga Spyrka

Contact on the Spanish side: AEI

bilat@aei.gob.es

On 15 September 2026, we will launch the OPUS 32 call, which will accept proposals for research projects carried out in international cooperation under the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP) within the Weave programme. For the first time, we will open this route to Polish-Spanish projects. 

LAP cooperation in the OPUS 32 call under the Weave programme 

In 2026, the National Science Centre continues its cooperation with partner institutions from: 

• Austria (FWF – Austrian Science Fund), 
• Czech Republic (GAČR – Czech Science Foundation),
• Slovenia (ARIS – Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency), 
• Switzerland (SNSF – Swiss National Science Foundation),
• Germany (DFG – German Research Foundation),
• Luxembourg (FNR – Luxembourg National Research Fund),
• Belgium – Flanders (FWO – Research Foundation – Flanders).

In addition, under an agreement concluded between NCN and the Spanish agency Agencia Estatal de Investigación del Reino de España (AEI), proposals for projects carried out in Polish-Spanish cooperation may be submitted in the OPUS 32+LAP/Weave call.

As the lead agency, NCN will carry out, within the OPUS 32 call, the merit-based evaluation of OPUS LAP proposals covering the implementation of bilateral or trilateral research projects involving research teams from Poland and from Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders under the Weave programme, as well as proposals for the funding of bilateral Polish-Spanish research projects. If a proposal is recommended for funding, NCN awards funds to the Polish research teams, while the relevant partner institutions award funds to the foreign teams.

The OPUS 32 call will accept the following OPUS LAP proposals:

• prepared by Polish research teams in cooperation with foreign teams, in accordance with the requirements set out in the OPUS 32 call announcement, which will be published on the NCN website on 15 September 2026,
• in any scientific discipline within the NCN panels,
• for the implementation of basic research that has not been and is not being funded by NCN or from other sources,
• that provide for scientific cooperation based on the balanced and complementary contribution of the research teams applying in parallel for project funding to their respective research funding institutions under the Weave programme and under bilateral Polish-Spanish cooperation. This means that the contribution of each of the teams involved in the project is significant and indispensable, and that the tasks planned for each team complement one another and form a coherent, joint research project. An OPUS LAP proposal which, in the assessment of the Expert Team, does not meet this criterion cannot qualify for funding.

OPUS LAP proposals must be submitted to NCN by the Polish research team via the OSF system by 2 pm on 15 December 2026. In addition, each of the foreign research teams involved in a given project must submit a funding proposal to the relevant partner institution under the Weave programme or, in the case of bilateral Polish-Spanish proposals, to the AEI. In order to submit the proposal correctly, a complete set of the documents required by the relevant partner institution must also be provided to that institution, in accordance with its applicable deadlines and rules. If the partner institution requires a copy of the OPUS LAP proposal to be submitted in its own system, after submitting the proposal in the OSF system, a complete English-language version of the proposal should be generated in PDF format and provided to the foreign research team. The versions of the OPUS LAP proposal submitted to NCN and to the partner institution must be identical. 

General enquiries:

Is your project interdisciplinary? What do the application limits imply? What are the funding rules? You can find the answers to these and many other questions in our Q&A section for the GRIEG BIS and C&C Kick-off calls.

We have published answers to the most frequently asked questions concerning the GRIEG BIS and Coordination & Capacity (C&C) Kick-off calls under the Basic Research Programme of the 4th edition of the EEA and Norway Grants. We also encourage you to explore the presentation delivered during the information webinar.w

Frequently Asked Questions

Researchers interested in applying for either call can now access our Questions & Answers (Q&A) section, where they can find explanations of the key issues related to the application procedure.

Q&As have been compiled using questions posed by participants of the information webinar of 8 July 2026. The webinar focused on the GRIEG BIS and C&C Kick-off calls launched under the Basic Research Programme. Over 400 representatives from Polish research organisations took part in the event.

During the webinar, NCN representatives described the key features of the two calls, including the eligibility criteria for applicants and partners, requirements for international partnerships, project budgets, application procedures and the evaluation process. They also introduced the matchmaking tool, designed to facilitate cooperation with partners from the Donor States.

Polish researchers might soon be able to cooperate with research teams from Spain and have their cooperation funded. The National Science Centre has started preparations for new calls for proposals in collaboration with Agencia Estatal de Investigación.

Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak and Prof. José Manuel Fernández de Labastida sign the MoU AEI is a Spanish state agency that funds research in all scientific disciplines. NCN and AEI have been discussing for months the possibility of enhancing scientific collaboration between Poland and Spain and have consequently come up with the idea of launching launch joint calls for proposals. The two agencies share a common mission to support basic research and a belief that international research projects are an important catalyst for the development of research and lasting relationships between research centres from both countries. 

The discussions on the launch of a joint call for Polish-Spanish research projects are a response to a growing interest in international collaboration among researchers from the two countries and a need to create new opportunities to carry out ambitious research projects.

At the beginning of July, NCN and AEI signed the Memorandum of Understanding laying down the common purposes and framework of cooperation. The MoU was signed by the Director of the National Science Centre Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak and Director of Agencia Estatal de Investigación Prof. José Manuel Fernández de Labastida.

Representatives of the NCN and AEI The representatives of the two agencies met in Madrid to develop the basis for future cooperation between the agencies. Over two days, they discussed the guidelines for the future joint bilateral calls for proposals allowing researchers from Poland and Spain to apply for funding of their joint research projects. They also discussed the organisational processes and proposal evaluation procedures in detail, to make sure that the future calls are as effective and appealing as possible for the scientific community in both countries.

The MoU represents an important step towards strengthening research collaboration between Polish and Spanish research teams. The partnership of NCN and AEI aims to foster knowledge exchange as well as formation of international research teams and implementation of ambitious research projects addressing the critical challenges of current science. 

Karolina Safarzyńska, the next researcher in the series, investigates why efforts to bring emissions down are failing despite ever tighter climate policies – and looks for the answer in the way people influence each other.

The NCN Generation is made up of researchers whose work pushes back the frontiers of knowledge and changes our lives – improving health, protecting the environment, advancing technology and deepening our understanding of the world.

Karolina Safarzyńska is a professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw. She works in complexity economics and behavioural economics, and her theoretical models are used to design climate policy measures. She earned her PhD at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and has been a visiting researcher at, among others, the Santa Fe Institute – the birthplace of complexity economics – as well as completing traineeships at the UN, the WTO and the World Bank. In 2022 she received the NCN Award.

Preferences take shape in networks

Complexity economics starts from a different premise than the classical approach: rationality is not the only way of making decisions, but one of many modes of behaviour, one that comes into play under particular conditions. In practice, people are often prone to cognitive biases: when buying a car, for instance, they focus on the low purchase price, which looks rational at the time but, seen more broadly, leads to higher running costs and higher emissions. The crucial point, however, is that preferences change above all through social interaction – something classical economics leaves out. We live in a networked world that we cannot escape, one in which information reaching us from every side shapes our political preferences, our behaviour and our buying decisions.

This assumption is what sets her approach apart from mainstream economics. Classical models assume that preferences are fixed – a simplification, she points out, rather than a description of reality. Network models, by contrast, can capture phenomena such as the polarisation of opinion or the spread of consumer fashions.

Why good policies fail

Transport in Europe is subject to emission standards and to measures introduced at city level, yet over recent decades it has remained the only major sector in the EU whose emissions are higher today than in 1990. Karolina Safarzyńska explains this mismatch by pointing to preferences: people buy ever larger cars that burn more fuel even when they are more efficient, and as they grow wealthier they drive and fly more.

As she sees it, her criticism of the mainstream is aimed not at the policies themselves, but at the assumptions on which they are built. Mainstream economists, she argues, design policies that are “elegant and efficient”, and then blame the failure to implement them on an imperfect world or on a political crisis. She turns this reasoning on its head: if policies are socially unacceptable and cannot be introduced, then the question of why people reject them belongs inside the model itself. That is precisely what complexity economics examines – which measures will prove acceptable, and how preferences evolve.

Convenience as a climate mechanism

At the heart of the climate problem, on her account, lies our taste for convenience – a preference as deeply rooted in human nature as our fondness for sweet things. There is nothing wrong with an individual wanting a more comfortable life; the problem arises only at the collective level, when similar behaviours accumulate across whole societies. What interests her is not judging individual choices, but what follows from the fact that we all behave in much the same way.

She sees the same mechanism at work in consumer fashions – in the spread of SUVs across Europe, or in the high number of cars per capita in cities with good public transport. She looks for solutions not in appeals to individuals, but in macro-level policy: investment in renewable energy and regulation to curb the most emission-intensive behaviours. One example she gives is the ban on meat advertising in public spaces now being introduced by Dutch cities.

Climate as a network problem

The network view of the economy, she explains, grew out of the analysis of financial crises – and that is where complexity economics has had its greatest success. A financial crisis is a crisis of a network: banks lend to each other, so a fall in the value of one institution’s assets leaves it unable to meet its obligations and sets off systemic risk. Aggregate models built around a single representative agent cannot capture these dynamics. Climate change analysis, she believes, is heading the same way – although in climate policy this line of thinking is only just opening up.

The effectiveness of this way of thinking became clear, she recalls, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when infection dynamics were driven by the structure of social contacts rather than by aggregate indicators alone. Epidemiological models were good at predicting how the pandemic would unfold, but not at showing how to influence people’s behaviour within networks – and containing it depended on exactly that.

Research toolkit: networks of agents instead of a single individual

Karolina Safarzyńska’s research toolkit rests on large macroeconomic models. In place of the single abstract individual typical of classical models, she introduces whole networks of agents, whose behaviour she increasingly calibrates against empirical data. In one recent project, her team used network models and Austrian data to examine how consumers might nudge each other towards eating less meat and cutting emissions.

Selected quotes

Why the mainstream misses the bigger picture

We have perfect policies designed by mainstream economists, and emissions just keep going up. And they say: “It’s not our fault, the world is imperfect, we have this perfect policy but it can’t be implemented, it’s a political crisis, not an economic one.” But is that really the case? Why don’t our models take account of the fact that this policy is simply unacceptable – and why do we keep treating it as the only, optimal solution when we can’t actually put it in place?

Evolution against the climate

It’s really interesting that you used the word “convenience”, because that’s exactly what we struggle with most. Evolution really is completely against us in this fight against climate change. We like our comforts, and we’re going to keep chasing them. At the individual level, there’s nothing wrong with that. But at the meta level, I’m less interested in the individual and what they do than in what comes out of all of us behaving the same way, in tandem, and what problems that creates for the climate.

A degree of moderation

There are lots of areas where we could change our behaviour, but I don’t want to be the moraliser here, telling people: “Please don’t eat meat, please don’t fly, and please, heaven forbid, don’t get into a car.” There’s a middle ground, a kind of moderation we can all reach together.

Science as a collective effort

Sometimes, in all the competition for the best publications, the best theories, the citations, we lose sight of the fact that we’re working together on a problem that’s really complicated and needs some kind of collective effort. I was disappointed by the way science is evolving – as a highly competitive system built on individual success, one that doesn’t encourage the collective thinking we need to solve global problems.

We are pleased to announce the results of OPUS 30+LAP/Weave for projects carried out in bilateral or trilateral collaboration with research teams from Austria and Czechia. The total budget for the Polish part is over PLN 43.6 million.

Under OPUS, funding is available to all researchers, regardless of their academic degree or title, experience or age. Grants must be designated for domestic basic research projects or basic research projects carried out in international collaboration. 

The autumn edition of OPUS calls follows the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP), whereby researchers working in Poland may seek funding for bilateral or trilateral research projects involving research teams from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Belgium-Flanders. The LAP is an efficient international proposal evaluation procedure agreed upon by the research-funding agencies from the above-mentioned countries, including the National Science Centre. It relies on mutual trust to the quality of review and selection processes. Projects are evaluated once, in one country and by one agency only, while the other agencies approve the results of evaluation and award funding thereunder to their respective research teams involved in the international LAP projects. OPUS LAP proposals should provide for a balanced and complementary contribution of the participating research teams from two or three countries to the proposed research. 

OPUS and OPUS LAP in numbers 

A record number of proposals has been submitted to OPUS 30. Researchers working at the Polish research institutions have submitted 2,359 proposals for a total of over PLN 4 billion, including 267 LAP proposals for a total of over PLN 451 million. The first batch of results was published in June, when funding was awarded to 279 OPUS projects with a value of nearly PLN 571 million. Today, the number of winning projects is increased by another 26, including:

• 19 bilateral projects carried out by Polish and Czech research teams with a budget of PLN 30,441,129 for the Polish research teams, 
• 6 trilateral research projects carried out by Polish and Austrian research teams with a budget of PLN 11,425,482 for the Polish research teams, 
• 1 trilateral project carried out by Polish, Czech and Austrian research teams with a budget of PLN 1,762,229 for the Polish research teams. 

The winning projects are managed by principal investigators from nine Polish cities, working in twenty different research centres. Six projects awarded in Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences address, inter alia, cross-border communication, memoryscape of borderlands, urban life and business relations. In Social Sciences and Engineering, funding was awarded to nine projects covering fluid dynamics, distribution of tropospheric water vapour, and photophysics of xanthene dyes. Eleven grants will go to Life Sciences for projects carried out in collaboration with research teams from Austria and Czechia, focusing on photosynthesis and tick-borne pathogens, as well as ethical and legal concerns when sharing biospecimen.

The topics of recommended OPUS LAP projects carried out in collaboration with researchers from Austria and Czechia, as well as their abstracts for the general public, are available on the ranking lists:

OPUS 30+LAP/Weave ranking lists 

OPUS 30+LAP/Weave ranking list for bilateral Polish-Czech research projects (.pdf)

OPUS 30+LAP/Weave ranking list for bilateral Polish-Austrian research projects (.pdf)

OPUS 30+LAP/Weave ranking list for trilateral Polish-Czech-Austrian research projects (.pdf)

Next results to be published soon 

The winning applicants of OPUS 30+LAP/Weave will continue to grow. Approval is still pending for projects involving teams from Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders, in addition to Poland. The results will be published as soon as they are approved, and the final results of OPUS 30 will be available in autumn.