Valentina Bambini wins prestigious funding of 1 Million 800 thousand euro from European Research Council
Thu, 17/03/2022
 

With a research on human language investigated through the most advanced techniques of psycho- and neurolinguistics, Valentina Bambini, professor in linguistics at the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS of Pavia, is awarded a prestigious grant, assigned by the European Research Council (ERC) to support the most innovative scientific research.

ERC rewards Valentina Bambini with a grant of 1 million and 800 thousand Euros, awarding her an ERC Consolidator Grant, intended for brilliant researchers with 7-12 years from PhD to consolidate their independent research group.

The winning project "PROcessing Metaphors: Neurochronometry, Acquisition and DEcay - PROMENADE" focuses on one of the most creative aspects of human language: metaphor. Not only poetry, but also everyday communication is full of them. But how do we understand them? Why are some metaphors more difficult than others? And why do children up to the age of 10 tend to interpret them literally, as well as in the presence of neurological and psychiatric disorders? Although metaphor has been studied since the time of Aristotle, we still know very little about this phenomenon from a cognitive point of view.

Valentina Bambini, through this project, faces the challenge of unveiling the mechanisms that support the understanding of metaphors by combining theoretical research in linguistics and the most advanced experimental techniques of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. During the course of the five-year project, adults, children, and individuals with pathologies will be involved.

The results will open a window into human creativity, and will have implications for the teaching and treatment of language disorders.

In this latest round of the ERC Consolidator Grant, 2652 applicants submitted proposals, and 12% of them will receive funding. The winners are 313 and represent 42 nationalities with Germans (58 researchers), Italians (30) and French (26) leading the ranking in absolute numbers.

They will carry out their projects at universities and research centers in 24 EU member states and associated countries, with Germany (61 grants), the United Kingdom (41) and France (29) as the main locations. Women coordinate 33% of the winning projects.

Valentina Bambini

is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS of Pavia since 2014, where she coordinates the PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind.  She trained in linguistics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where she also obtained her PhD with a thesis on the neural correlates of metaphor comprehension. Her research interests include neurolinguistics and the emerging fields of experimental pragmatics, clinical pragmatics and neuropragmatics. She has co-coordinated two exchange projects promoted by the European network EURO-XPRAG on figurative language (2009-2011), a project funded by the Tuscany Region on the assessment of communicative disorders (2010-2013), a PRIN project for the promotion of pragmatics of communication across the lifespan and in pathology (2017-2020). She currently coordinates the IUSS unit in a project funded by the Ministry of Health dedicated to the evaluation and treatment of pragmatic disorder. She is co-founder of the Italian network of experimental pragmatics (XPRAG.it). She is author of more than 60 publications on books and international journals. She wrote the volume "Il cervello pragmatico" (Carocci, 2017).

The ERC, established by the European Union in 2007, is the main European funding organization for outstanding frontier research. It funds creative researchers of all nationalities and ages to conduct projects across Europe. The ERC offers four basic grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees bridge the gap between their pioneering research and the early stages of its commercialization. The ERC is guided by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. As of November 1, 2021, Maria Leptin is the chair of the ERC. The ERC's total budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than 16 billion euros, as part of the Horizon Europe program, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel.