The second ERC Advanced Grant for the University of Vienna was awarded to microbiologist Dagmar Woebken for her research project “WinMicAct”. More than 2,500 projects were submitted across Europe in the ERC-AdG Call 2024, of which a total of 281 will be funded. Since 2007, a total of 149 ERC grants have been awarded to researchers at the University of Vienna.
About Durnová's project "LONERS"
Social responses to loneliness
Loneliness is increasingly being recognized as a key social challenge - not only as an individual feeling, but also as a factor that influences health, social cohesion and trust in institutions. In her ERC-funded research project LONERS, Anna Durnová explores the question of how loneliness is emotionally experienced, negotiated in social debates, and addressed by institutions. To better understand the diverse emotions in this context, the project combines loneliness research with sociological approaches to emotions. The goal is to develop a better understanding of how emotional experiences are negotiated socially and politically and what consequences this has for the regulation of privacy. Is loneliness merely a temporary feeling that can be overcome through mindfulness or a conscious change of perspective? At what point does it become a risk to the individual and their surroundings, justifying outside intervention? The study examines the moments when institutional support may be necessary and how privacy comes into play in such situations. The project aims to develop a new understanding of the “politics of privacy” that demonstrates how emotional well-being can be protected in an increasingly individualized society.
About Anna Durnová
Durnová is Professor of Political Sociology at the Department of Sociology at the Universität Wien and Faculty Fellow at the Yale University Center for Cultural Sociology. Her research focuses on the role of emotions in democratic societies. Previously, she was an Elise Richter Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, the Charles University in Prague and the University of Lyon. She completed her habilitation at Sciences Po Paris.
She has led numerous projects on democracy and emotions and is currently coordinating the international Horizon Europe project CIDAPE. Her publications include The Politics of Intimacy (2018) and Understanding Emotions in Post-Factual Politics (2019). In addition to her academic work, she is also active as a journalist and published a popular science children's book in 2022. Her feminist play Hodina ženy was staged by Divadlo Feste. In 2024, she was awarded the Mattei Dogan Foundation Prize for European Political Sociology.
