Two senior research fellows from the Institute of History of the ELKH Research Centre for the Humanities (BTK), deputy director András Fejérdy and Gábor Kármán, have been awarded EUR 2 million funding for the implementation of their research projects from the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant. In the history of European research funding, it is highly unusual for the applications of two researchers from a single Central European humanities research institute to be awarded funding at the same time.
The topic of András Fejérdy's project is the history of the conflicting relationship between the sovereign state and Catholic Church in connection to the phenomenon of state oaths from 1780 to 1990. Gábor Kármán's winning project will examine the shared qualities observable in the diplomacy of individual small states situated on the border between the Ottoman Empire and Christianity in the 16th to 18th centuries.
The European Union's largest grant scheme to support exploratory research is responsible for providing long-term funding for research with potential for high rewards. The ERC scheme is open to leading researchers with no restrictions on age, gender or country of origin, who are planning to carry out their projects in Europe. The Consolidator Grant holds the middle position among three major individual ERC application types. It offers grants of up to EUR 2 million over five years to researchers who already have an independent research team and an independent research program, and who apply seven to 12 years after obtaining their PhD. The supported research projects cover a wide range of physical and technical sciences, life sciences, and social sciences and humanities.
András Fejérdy emphasized the importance of the support: “It is a great pleasure and a source of pride that we have both won this prestigious international research grant at the Institute of History. With these awards, our institute has once again shown that in the field of history it is – to use a sports analogy – capable of competing not only in the national championship, but also in the Champions League.”
More information in Hungarian about the research projects is available here.