Romanian researcher wins European Research Council grant

Alexandra Baneu, a researcher with the Babeş-Bolyai University (UBB) in Cluj-Napoca, has won a EUR 1.17 million grant in the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants competition.

She proposed the project “NOTA-Note-taking and Notebooks as Channels of Medieval Academic Dissemination across Europe.”

“Together with an already established and high-achieving team, I will study for the next five years the ‘notebooks’ of medieval students to retrace a part of the history of medieval universities from this novel perspective,” Baneu explained.

The Starting Grants funding, worth EUR 677 million in total, aims to help early-career scientists and scholars build their own teams and conduct research across all disciplines. The grants are part of the EU’s Research and Innovation program, Horizon 2020.

Baneu is the only researcher from Romania among the 436 winners of the 2020 ERC Starting Grants competition.

The grantees are a diverse group of 40 different nationalities. The breakdown of nationalities is available here. Furthermore, 20 researchers are moving to Europe from further afield thanks to the funding. The new grantees will be based in 25 countries across Europe, with Germany (88 grants), the UK (62), the Netherlands (42), and France (38) as top locations.

Some 13% of applications were selected for funding in this round.

The list of the winning projects is available here.

(Photo: Babeş-Bolyai University Facebook Page)