A European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant of 2 million euros was awarded to Patrícia Vieira, a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra, to implement the research project «ECO - Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon River Basin».

According to Patrícia Vieira, «ECO's main challenge is to establish the parameters for thinking about artistic co-creation between human and non-human beings, reflecting on the inscription of flora and fauna in cultural productions about the Amazon Basin».

Given the current environmental devastation, in particular in the Amazon, ECO seeks to examine the role of plants and animals as active beings in the creation of texts, films and works of art, in which they leave traces of their modes of existence. The project is based on the vision of non-human beings in Indigenous and riverine cosmologies of the Amazon, as well as on reflections on non-human forms of expression developed in the context of the environmental humanities.

ECO analyses myths and legends, oral literature, novels, poetry, songs, cinema, paintings and sculptures that give voice to Amazonian animals and plants and that resist hegemonic, extractivist and predatory attitudes towards non-human and human beings. In this sense, and still according to the principal investigator, «the broader objective of ECO is to call attention to the centrality of animals and plants in human culture and to reflect on forms of coexistence between human and non-human beings, sharing the planet in a equitable way».

Patrícia Vieira is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra. Her research fields are Comparative Literature, Utopia Studies and the Environmental Humanities. Her most recent book is States of Grace: Utopia in Brazilian Culture (SUNY Press, 2018) and her ongoing research projects focus on Amazonian culture and the mind of plants. To see an interview on her most recent work, please check Amazônia Latitude. For more information click HERE.

This is the seventh time a researcher from CES is awarded a competitive ERC grant in recent years, totalling around 13 million euros. Following the Advanced Grant awarded to Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2010), worth 2,4 million euros, for the research project «ALICE - Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons: Leading Europe to a new way of sharing the world experiences», Starting Grants were awarded to Ana Cristina Santos (2013), for the project «INTIMATE - Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe» (1,4 million euros), and to Miguel Cardina (2016), for the project «CROME - Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence: The Colonial-Liberation Wars in Postcolonial Times» (1,4 million euros), and the Consolidator Grants awarded to Margarida Calafate Ribeiro and Helena Machado (2015), to develop, respectively, the «MEMOIRS - Children of Empires and European Postmemories» (1,9 million euros), «EXCHANGE - Forensic Geneticists and the Transnational Exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging Science with Social Control, Citizenship and Democracy» (1,8 million euros), and Silvia Rodríguez Maeso (2016) to implement the project «POLITICS - The politics of anti-racism in Europe and Latin America: knowledge production, decision-making and collective struggles» (1,9 million euros).

ERC grants, which fund research of excellence in Europe through EU support, have been seldomly awarded to scientists in Portugal. In this competition, in which the ERC awarded grants to 11 Portuguese researchers (6 working in Portuguese research institutions and 5 working abroad), approximately 2,500 applications were accepted (with an approval rate of about 13%). Grants were awarded to researchers in 23 countries, with a support of 655 million euros. The goal of the ERC's Consolidator Grants is to support researchers at a stage when they are consolidating their independent research teams.

In this context, it is important to emphasize yet another grant to studies conducted at the Centre of Social Studies, representative of the quality and innovation of projects that are developed by the scientists of the institution.