NorFish aims to understand the restructuring of the North Atlantic fisheries, fish markets and fishery-dependent communities in the late medieval and early modern world. The project exploits a multi-disciplinary, humanities-led approach to marine environmental history, assessing and synthesizing the dynamics and significance of the North Atlantic fish revolution, equipped by methodological advances in which the PI has been to the fore in delivering. It establishes a robust quantitative framework of extractions, supplies and prices, while also charting the qualitative preferences and politics that motivated actors of the fish revolution across the North Atlantic. Fish contributed to environmental and societal change in the North Atlantic for over 300 years, shifting from being a high-priced, limited resource in the late Middle Ages to a low-priced, abundant one by early modern times. Conditioned by market forces, the ‘fish revolution’ of the 1500s and 1600s reshaped alignments in economic power, demography, and politics. With acute consequences in peripheral Atlantic settlements from Newfoundland to Scandinavia, it held strategic importance to all the major western European powers. While the fish revolution catalysed the globalization of the Atlantic world, we lack adequate baselines and trajectories for key questions of natural abundance, supply and demand, cultural preferences, marketing technologies, plus national and regional strategies. In short, the core questions are what were the natural and economic causes of the fish revolution, how did marginal societies adapt to changing international trade and consumption patterns around the North Atlantic, and how did economic and political actors respond? The answers will help explain the historic role of environment and climate change, how markets impacted marginal communities, and how humans perceived long-term change.

The project ‘Linking community archaeology and wellbeing in the Mediterranean’ (LOGGIA), aims to understand to what extent archaeology can contribute to community wellbeing. LOGGIA will be led by the fellow, Dr Francesco Ripanti, under the supervision of Dr Giorgos Papantoniou in the Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and encompasses three fields of study: archaeology, wellbeing and disability studies. Archaeology may positively impact individual and community wellbeing and especially benefit vulnerable groups. Since the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan includes the employment of strategies of inclusion and empowerment to ensure equal and wide access to cultural heritage assets, LOGGIA will adopt a unique approach to address how archaeology can promote community wellbeing in the Mediterranean context, by focusing on the inclusion of persons with disabilities through case study research. As first and second research objectives, LOGGIA will outline a novel theoretical and evaluation framework linking community archaeology and wellbeing, and assess the impact of archaeology programs on community wellbeing in two case studies of ‘People and Things in Vignale’ (Italy) and ‘Xeros River Valley’ (Cyprus). The fellow has a background in archaeology and thanks to the support of the three interdisciplinary TCD Centres – the Medical and Health Humanities Initiative, the Centre for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute – and the secondment at Manchester Metropolitan University, will acquire the necessary knowledge in the areas of wellbeing and disability studies. An integral part of the research is the non-academic placement at Silversky3D. As third objective, through the popular videogame Minecraft, LOGGIA will assess the extent to which the interaction with a digital environment based on the case studies can contribute to the inclusion of persons with disabilities and their wellbeing.

REACT aims to dramatically impact the targeted release of diagnostic agents and drugs with nanomedicines that respond to biological cues or changing pathophysiological conditions, thus enabling ultrasensitive diagnosis and exquisite therapy selectivity. Nanomedicine research against cancer focuses on the local targeted delivery of chemotherapeutics to enhance drug efficacy and reduce side effects. Despite all the efforts in the design of chemotherapeutic agents as nanomedicines, hardly any improvement has been translated into benefits for patients’ survival. There is an urgent need for improved carrier systems able to deliver high doses of diagnostic agents and anti-cancer drugs to the tumor. Stimuli responsive carriers are promising candidates since the release of the cargo can be triggered locally in the tumor environment. Currently, there exists an unparalleled effort to identify genes, proteins and metabolites implicated in human disease and utilize systems biology and mathematical approaches in order to develop new prognostic tools for the treatment of cancer and develop more targeted therapies for patients. As an expert in drug delivery systems, the PI intends to bring all these efforts and advances into the design of stimuli responsive organic-inorganic hybrid nanoparticles that can adapt their response to the biological milieu. The novel engineered delivery systems will consist of an inorganic porous matrix surface-modified with tumor-specific molecules with the ability to sense changes in the environmental conditions and react by providing a proportional release. These nanosystems can potentially be employed for early in vitro diagnosis through effective screening of deadly tumors, such as neuroblastoma and glioblastoma. Moreover, through the sustained delivery of the nanosystems from injectable gels that can be locally implanted in patients at risk of developing a tumor, a clinically relevant tool for in vivo diagnosis and targeted therapy can be achieved.