Prof. Piotr Skowron from the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics, and Dr Agnieszka Brylak from the Faculty of Modern Languages, University of Warsaw received the prestigious Starting Grants of the European Research Council (ERC).

As part of the grant Prof. Piotr Skowron from the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics is going to conduct the project “Proportional Algorithms for Democratic Decision” (PRO-DEMOCRATIC).

The project is set in the field of computational social choice. Its main goal is to analyse formal models describing scenarios, where a group of individuals disagrees on certain matters, yet needs to make a collective decision. This can be observed, for example, in the elections of representative bodies or in participatory budgeting. The research team will try to answer the following question: How to ensure that the collective decisions are fair and proportionally reflect voters’ preferences?

Grant amount: €1,479,938

More information on the project and Prof. Skowron’s research >>

Dr Agnieszka Brylak from the Faculty of Modern Languages will carry out the project “The concept of teotl: a complex approach to the principal religious category of pre-Hispanic Central Mexico”.

The main goal of the project is to unfold the notions of the pre-Hispanic Nahua principal religious category teotl by analysing its four crucial aspects. The first one concerns the revision and deconstruction of the “Aztec pantheon”, for centuries framed in terms of Graeco-Roman models. The second studies teotl in relation to other religious categories. The third aspect concerns a philological analysis of terms and expressions in historical Nahuatl (as documented in 16th–18th century sources) which contain the stem teo. The fourth focuses on how the notion of teotl was appropriated by the colonial Christian discourse in Nahuatl.

Grant amount: €1,499,925

More information on the project and Dr Brylaks’ research >>