To mark its centenary celebrations (2019), the Board of the Union Académique Internationale has launched the Early Career Researchers Awards (ECRA) to reward early-career researchers working in the humanities and social sciences.

Worth 6,000 euros (€) each, the Early Career Researchers Awards are awarded every two years following a call for applications and an evaluation process.

The awards are not intended to fund major research projects or to cover publication costs. They are only intended as grants to cover the cost of individual research such as visits to key libraries, participation in fieldwork and attendance at academic conferences.

_______________Partners_______________

_______________Awards Winners_______________

2026-2027

STRZELECKA Celina - Korean Academy of Science - Woomi Prize

Discipline : Anthropology

Title of the project : Algorithmic Infrastructures and the Temporalities of Rural Transformation 

Abstract 

This project explores how algorithmic infrastructures are reshaping the temporalities of rural life and agricultural practices in Poland. Grounded in anthropological methods and informed by critical data and infrastructure studies, it investigates the emerging relations between farmers, technologies, and soil under the pressures of digitalisation, ecological crisis, and climate policy. The guiding concept of the project is that of “agricultural time machines”—technologies that not only optimise productivity but fundamentally reconfigure how time is perceived, managed, and embodied in agri-ecosystems. 

Poland offers a unique terrain for this study. As a country with one of the highest proportions of small-scale farms in the European Union1, it is currently experiencing both resistance to and selective adoption of precision farming (Illustration1), AI-driven soil sensors, and data-intensive management systems. Recent protests against the European Green Deal and the adoption of AgTech tools—technological innovations in agriculture such as AI-driven soil sensors, farm management software, precision irrigation systems, and autonomous machinery—have exposed deep tensions between rural temporality and digital acceleration. in the name of ecological transition have exposed deep tensions between rural temporality and digital acceleration. This makes Poland a crucial site for examining how algorithmic systems mediate between global policy frameworks and local soil-based knowledge. While the project focuses on Poland, it also addresses broader tensions visible across Central and Eastern Europe, where digitalisation intersects with post-socialist agrarian structures, family farming traditions, and contested notions of ecological transition.. It also provides an opportunity to study how rural communities resist, adapt to, or reimagine such technologies in relation to their own temporal and ecological ethics.

MONTAÑES Antonio - Brepols Prize

Discipline : Anthropology

Project : Praying in the United States : Migration, Faith and Christian Performativity

Abstract

This ethnographic fieldwork proposal seeks to investigate the role of prayers in shaping migrant's socioeconomic aspirations and ideas about hope, faith and agency in the United States. More concisely, the proposal aims to ethnographically explore the ways in which Latin-American immigrants engage with prayers to navigate social hierarchies and expectations and give meaning to their migratory journeys in the state of Florida. The project focuses on the Prosperity Gospel, a controversial set of spiritual beliefs claiming that it is God's will for Christians to be wealthy, healthy, and prosperous. The location for the ethnographic research proposal is the city of Miami, the most prominent cultural and financial Spanish-speaking hub in America. The proposed fieldwork research combines ethnographic and qualitative methods (participant observation, interviews) with hermeneutical approaches conducted in ritual and domestic contexts. The project seeks to answer three research questions : A) What material (objects, places, sensorial environments) and immaterial realities (biblical narratives, Christian poetics, mnemonic devices) shape and inform the development of praying practices and the creation of dialogical communications between believers and God? B) How do prayers relate to migratory experiences and socioeconomic trajectories of Latin American migrants in Miami? C) In which ways do Latin American migrants' prayers reflect, interact with and re-signify local American culture, Christian traditions and capitalist expectations ? By engaging with the study of prayers in a migratory context, the project shall provide an ethnographic account of Christian intimate practices and offer insights into how Christian imagination intersects with capitalist ideas, American culture and migratory experiences. The project will provide insights of particular interest to disciplines such as prayer studies, the Anthropology of Christianity, the Sociology of Religion and Migration studies, and scholars interested in the formation and recreation of Christian performances in the United States of America.

CIOLLI Matilde - De Gruyter Brill Prize

Discipline : History

Project : The Anti-Democratic Origines of Neoliberalism in Latin America. A Global Intellectual History (1940-1980)

Abstract

This project seeks to investigate the early spread of neoliberalism in Latin America and its relationship with authoritarian regimes between the 1940s and the 1980s. The project argues that the first Latin American neoliberal intellectuals, in opposing the expansion of socialism and developmentalism in the continent, ended up supporting anti-democratic measures as inescapable, albeit temporary, political conditions for the establishment of a free-market order. In doing so, the project has the broader goal of showing how, in the Global South, the emergence of neoliberalism, as both a doctrine and a set of policies, often involved a disjunction of economic liberties from political freedom, in order to allow a smoother functioning of the market. Through this global history of the authoritarian origins of Latin-American neoliberalism, it will be also possible to historically explain why contemporary far-right governments, while increasingly showing authoritarian tendencies and implementing reactionary policies, have persisted in supporting neoliberal, free-market policies. 

2024-2025

• Dr Possum Pincé - Rapid climate changes during the Mesolithic: impact on man and environment in the southern part of the NW European plain
  See the presentation of her research

• Dr. Ségolène Vandevelde - Temporalités de création des sites d’Art Rupestre dans le Bouclier Canadien
  See the presentation of her research

2022-2023

• Dr Piero Andrea Martina - Vers une édition critique numérique de la Fleur des histoires de Jean Mansel 

• Dr Anh Thy Nguyen - Renaissances du Moyen Âge (France, XVe - XVIe siècles)

2020-2022

• Dr Ronika Power - The Sentinels of Ħal Saflieni, Malta: Science Facts versus Science Fiction
  See the presentation of her research

• Dr Ioannis Chalozonitis - Legacy of the Riverland Heroes: Elite Graves and their Significance as a Focus of Social Cohesion in Archaic Communities of the Strymon River Plain

Contact : ecra[at]unionacademique.org