Consolidator Grant for two UG and UMCG researchers

Researchers Jutta Bolt (Faculty of Economics and Business) and Romana Schirhagl (UMCG) have been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. The European Research Council (ERC) awards these personal grants, worth two million euros, to outstanding scientists. With this grant, the ERC stimulates groundbreaking research across Europe.

Jutta Bolt | Africa@Work (AWORK)

Bolt aims to examine how work and livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have evolved over a century of profound economic, demographic, and social change. Focusing on 33 countries shaped by different colonial legacies and post-independence trajectories, the project reconstructs detailed occupational structures from 1920 to 2020. It addresses a longstanding empirical gap: although Africa’s workforce is expanding and diversifying, long-run data on employment structures — especially for the early and mid-20th century — are fragmented or unavailable. This limits our understanding of how labour markets developed, how opportunities emerged, and how structural constraints took shape.

AWORK aims to reconstruct detailed occupational structures from 1920 to 2020 using colonial censuses, labour surveys, and post-independence microdata. The resulting database will capture trends by gender, sector, location, and employment type, enabling analysis of when workers shifted out of agriculture, how informal and formal employment evolved, and how economic change varied across regions.

Romana Schirhagl | Quantum sensing FOR Early SEpsis dEtection (FORESEE)

Affecting 50 million people globally each year, sepsis is a leading cause of death in Europe. There is an urgent need for early diagnosis of sepsis to allow timely treatment. However, early symptoms are difficult to identify, may be non-specific, and vary from person to person. One of the earliest responses in sepsis is the production of free radicals by neutrophils and monocytes. This occurs hours or even days before the release of cytokines and other inflammatory markers currently used in clinical diagnosis. The aim of the FORESEE project is to develop a tool that enables in-vivo monitoring of sepsis. The device we will build uses very small diamonds capable of detecting free radicals in their environment. This is similar to what a clinical MRI machine does, but at the level of single cells in the bloodstream. During the project, we will test the device using both patient samples and a mouse model. From these experiments, we will learn about the underlying mechanisms of sepsis. If successful, the results could also provide an early warning sign if a patient’s condition deteriorates due to sepsis. The long-term goal of the project is to develop a monitoring device for ICU patients that gives an early warning if a patient develops sepsis.