Federica Gigante awarded ERC grant for UNSEEN project

Congratulations to Dr Federica Gigante, from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and the Khalili Research Centre, who has been awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant for her UNSEEN project.

Dr Gigante’s UNSEEN project focuses on the role of slavery in the transmission of things and knowledge from the Islamic world to Europe in the late 16th and 17th centuries. In particular, it will focus on the port towns of France, Spain, and Italy and their communities of enslaved galley-rowers of Muslim origins.

During periods of non-navigation, these individuals turned into artisans and merchants, opened pop-up shops, and sold goods and remedies to local communities. This, Dr Gigante argues, brought into Europe technological and medicinal practices from the Islamic world and shaped the growing interest in Islamic culture among European collectors, physicians, and scholars.

Speaking of the grant, Dr Gigante has said:

In the humanities, the ERC Starting Grant is unique in giving an early career researcher the opportunity to embark on an incredibly ambitious, disruptive, and risky project with an unparalleled level of intellectual freedom. I am thrilled at the prospect of starting this adventure. I would particularly like to thank those colleagues who gave freely of their time to help me pull this project together.

The European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants are part of the European Union's Horizon Europe programme and aim to empower early-career researchers to pursue ambitious research projects. The application process for ERC Starting Grants is highly competitive: this year, around 14% of applications were successful, with 494 researchers selected out of 3,474 proposals. Each of the Oxford researchers selected for a Starting Grant will receive up to €1.5 million for a period of five years.

The funding – totalling nearly €780 million this year – is part of the Horizon Europe programme and will support researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams, and pursue their most promising ideas. 

Iliana Ivanova, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: 

The European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our early-career talent under our Horizon Europe programme. The new ERC Starting Grants winners aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges.