Michał Drahus, an astronomer from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, southern Poland, and Artur Obłuski, an archeologist at the University of Warsaw, will receive up to EUR 2 million each for projects that they are expected to carry out between 2024 and 2028.
Drahus’s research focuses on comets and other small objects in the solar system, "investigated with modern tools of observational astronomy across all wavelengths."
The subject of the grant-winning project is a “hydrogen and deuterium survey of minor bodies: transformative science with a purpose-built CubeSat.”
Obłuski, meanwhile, is the director of the University of Warsaw's Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology. He has held this role since 2018. Previously, he headed the university's Research Centre in Cairo. He specializes in the study of medieval Nubia.
His grant-winning project is entitled "Afropolis Tungul: Urban Biography of a Cosmopolitan African Capital."
Obłuski has told the media that one of the project's goals "is to tackle the myth of Africa as a continent without history and without civilization."
He said: "Afropolis stands for a city that was built at the intersection of two great cultures – that of the ancient Mediterranean world and Africa."
He added: "The people who inhabited the city were extremely effective in leveraging their geographical location, skillfully drawing on the two resource bases to create a social, political and cultural organism that was unique in global terms.
He explained that "Tungul is the native name of this urban centre, which survived for 15 centuries."
"Tungul and the Kingdom of Makuria," which flourished between the 9th and the 13th centuries, "were established 500 years before the emergence of Poland," according to Obłuski.
ERC Consolidator Grants are given to outstanding scientists who have seven to 12 years of experience after obtaining their PhDs.
The European Research Council was established by the European Union in 2007.
(mk/gs)
Source: PAP, University of Warsaw/uw.edu.pl