As contemporary culture bears witness to rapid and fundamental changes brought on by advances in informatics and media technology, quantum mechanics and neuroscience, genomics and microbiology, both language and what we understand as the 'literary' are likewise undergoing a profound transition. At the same time recent theoretical and philosophical work has had us rethink the ontology of matter and the concept of life, challenging critics to find new methods of understanding what it means to be human in material terms, and new ways to conceive nonhuman and inanimate life. My project, poised at the intersection of contemporary poetic, philosophical and scientific modes of inquiry, reworks the relation of language to materiality, vitality and digitality. My Research will trace the genealogy of current anxieties like the apparent conflict between analogue and digital poetics, the illegibility of digital material poetics and the place or displacement of humans in the digital literary landscape. I will conduct this research by critically investigating works by Alfred Jarry, Kurt Schwitters, James Joyce, Hayrette Mullen and Christian Bök among others.

Experimental Particle Physics with a Focus on Neutrino Physics

The proposed project examines the visual representations of national identifications within Polish feminist movement on social media. It aims to explore a process of development of activist and civic practices in Poland, and as such the project constitutes the first study to analyse Polish societal patterns and nationalistic imagery on social media. The ambition of the project is a reconceptualization of the notion of the nation and nationalism from a state-owned, monolithic and predominantly male perception of culture to how nationalism translates into female experiences and practices. The visual representation of digital activism is under researched in modern Polish studies thus leaving space for discussion of the interaction between contemporary feminism and nationalism, while linking it to broader discussion of transnational feminist activism and civic consciousness-raising online in a context of modern global politics. Hence, this research shall benefit modern studies on Polish social movements in relation to digital activism, as well as the broader debates about the role of social media in grass roots political organising around the world. research questions 1. How do feminist activists seeking to challenge the status quo make use of images, and how and to what extent do they challenge the traditional poweraxis of state-media? The main focus of this question, in the context of the entire project, is how images and information circulate between conservative state media and feminist groups on social media in processes of mediation and re-mediation. Attention will be paid to both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms, as the relationship so far has been very dynamic and directly inspired by rising nationalist feelings within Europe. Particular actions and framing of news on television meet with immediate reaction from social media activism. Translated and reconceptualised images on social media cause national controversies on state media and act as a lobbing method for the government. The results will highlight new ways of how visual materials contribute to and intervene with the politics on a personal, local and global level. 2. How are images distributed and through which media, platforms, and networks? I will examine the distribution of the images in relation to 3 elements: a) current policy-making process; b) international involvement of the radical conservative groups and the government; and c) legal cases set against images produced on social media. This will enable me to identify a broad network of interrelations between activists, members of society and the state. The final results will also include the impact of neoliberal politics of the social media platforms on the activism. 3. What are the genres of images drawn from a range of contested discourses and how are they ascribed meaning through (re)contextualization? This project will explore links between journalistic elements and communicative and performative practices of social media, including not only text, photographs and moving images but also memes, selfies and usage of emoji/stickers. The main emphasis will be put on analysing production of knowledge within topics of privateness/publicness, local/national/global, commercial/civic patterns. The final results will summarise innovative and mixed use of traditional genres as well as explore to what extent textual transgressions on the social media translate into the ideas of cultural activism and feminist struggle. Methodology The ambition of this project, however, is to access a wider range of forms of individual and collective practices on social media. To this end, bottom-up and participatory approaches are more appropriate, which will feed into an analysis combining both visual materials and lived experiences of feminist activists. Theoretically, the research will be informed by the Critical Discourse Analysis [DCA] as described by Wodak and Fairclough (1997).

Chromosome number abnormalities are a common cause of infertility in humans. The trend to have children at a later age has important implications for women due to age-related infertility, often caused by chromosome number abnormalities. The ?two hit? hypothesis proposes that the first hit is the lack of a ?crossover? which holds the two similar (?homologous?) chromosomes together. The second hit is related to the how well chromosomes are kept together until the cell divides ( spindle checkpoint ). We propose to use budding yeast as a model organism to find highly evolutionarily conserved genes that affect chromosome number abnormalities in gametes. Our preliminary data suggest that several factors, including temperature, affects how well chromosomes that have not received a crossover disjoin from each other. Interestingly, these genes also function in crossover formation. The genes that we identify in budding yeast will be analysed at the molecular and cellular level before we attempt to generate mouse models. We hope to identify genes that underlie age-related infertility in women in order to understand this phenomenon and to develop diagnostic test to prevent the condition.

DNA is unstable and it can bear different types of lesions. We study breaks which affect both strands of DNA, the Double Strand Breaks (DSBs). DSBs can be repaired in an error free manner by copying the information from the sister chromatin using Homologous recombination. But they can also lead to deletions which can be either small if Non Homologous End Joining (NHEJ) is used, or larger if the ends are re-joined using the microhomology found in the two sides of the break, via Microhomology Mediated End Joining (MMEJ). Deletions signatures from these pathways have been found in cancer genomes. DNA is in the form of chromatin and chromatin is not linear, but it is folded in three dimensions and associates with different nuclear compartments which further specify chromatin characteristics. A DSB also leads to extensive remodelling of the chromatin structure around the break with histone exchange and alterations of histone modifications. Currently, it is unknown to what extend the epigenome is restored after DNA damage. Permanent genetic and epigenetic scars can alter gene expression profiles and are hallmark of cancer. If these scars occur in embryos or in stem cells, they can alter cell identity and the reprogramming potential. Our work together with work from other labs demonstrated that active chromatin is more prone to error-free repair and that compacted chromatin is more to MMEJ/NHEJ. Chromatin and 3D genome organization is cell type specific and dramatically changes during differentiation. In addition, stem cells bear a very unique chromatin feature which in called bivalency in which active and inactive chromatin marks exist together at the same nucleosome and decorates developmentally regulated promoters and protects them from DNA methylation observed in cancers. It is currently unknown: 1. Do DNA repair pathways adapt to changes in chromatin 3D genome organization to confer a cell type specificity in DNA repair fidelity? 2. Is the epigenome fully restored after DNA damage? In this proposal we will use mouse Embryonic Stem cells and study the spatial regulation of DNA repair fidelity and how this changes upon differentiation in different lineages . Then we will investigate the mechanisms controlling DNA repair fidelity at each chromatin state. Finally, we will ask whether the changes at the chromatin structure are fully restored after DNA damage and study the impact of genetic and epigenetic scars in stem cell identity. Our proposal will elucidate the complex relationship between genome and epigenome integrity and its link to mutagenesis and cell identify. Recently, there has been considerable effort in developing genome editing methods which are based on generation of DNA lesions by CRISP Cas nucleases used in this proposal. Therefore, our results will be very valuable for medical and research purposes as detailed understanding of genome editing effectiveness and particularly fidelity and precision in embryonic stages and how this altered in adult tissues, is of paramount importance for correcting disease mutations at stem cells which can then differentiated in the lab to the tissue which is affected by a disease.