Surging inequality is a defining feature of the world children grow up in today. The neighborhood they live in stages a primary developmental context where this feature of our present time plays out. Children’s demographic and socio-economic status (SES) is given by the status of their parents. Parental and neighborhood SES is associated with child mental health and educational performance, and childhood is a vulnerable period. To understand how and why early life socioeconomic position is linked to mental health and educational performance, I propose a groundbreaking paradigm generalizing temporal, spatial, social, genetic, and individual levels of inference. I will do this by having genomically similar children growing up in different families at different places at different times. These multitudes of counterfactuals will allow me to jointly evaluate hypotheses on selection and causation and risk and protection factors for mental health and academic outcomes. The GeoGen study will render a new understanding of (a) how transmission of risk is transmitted across generations, (b) how early mental health is an antecedent of academic failure, (c) the interactions between genetic risk and protective contextual factors, and (c) characteristics of schools and neighborhoods that are optimal for children’s psychological development. I will use Norway since 1940 as a laboratory (n=8 400 000) with registries giving full genealogy and year-by-year event data on place of residence, indicators of SES, mental health, and educational performance. Within this, I will nest a population-based cohort study comprising genotyping of families (n=240 000 in 110 000 families) and a wide array of survey data, such as non-cognitive skills. The combination of having data on all people in all schools and neighborhoods over time allows me to do an unprecedented study on the gene-environment interplay between risk and protective factors for mental health and academic outcomes.

COORDINATE will do political psychology with infants to reveal meaningful mechanisms for coordinating resource distribution so basic that they manifest even in the preverbal mind. The distribution of resources, help, territory and priority decision rights are central dilemmas for group-living species and the core of politics. Navigating these dilemmas, young children must discover the structure of their social world: who is friend or foe, superior or subordinate, and what does this mean for how people interact? To solve this learnability problem, I argue that early- and reliably-developing core representations and motives have evolved for navigating basic kinds of social relationships with critical adaptive value. Consistent with this theoretical proposal, I discovered that preverbal human infants mentally represent social dominance and, like other animals, use relative size to predict the outcome of zero-sum conflict, spawning a new field of research (Thomsen et al, 2011, Science). However, human society is also defined by reciprocity and by distributing resources according to need, effort and prior possession, yet it remains unknown if these coordination mechanism are inscribed already in the preverbal mind. Here, we test the high-risk proposals that 1) preverbal infants expect direct reciprocity to govern resource donations; 2) infants and preschoolers use gratitude to predict the future reciprocal altruism of others; 3) infants also use asymmetries of prior possession, hunger need and relative effort to predict who will prevail in resource conflict; 4) that beyond the dyadic and triadic relationships typically studied in the field, preschoolers and preverbal infants use the abstract structural forms of pyramidal hierarchy, clique and lines to represent the group relationships of social hierarchy, communality and equality, respectively. These mechanisms likely operate intuitively across life and so we will test if they undergird political ideology and -psychology

This project "Barents Sea Arctic Cenozoic Evolution and Paleogeographical Reconstructions (BRAVO)" aims to reconstruct the Barents Sea Gateway since the Cenozoic (the last 66 Myr). To do so, BRAVO’s objectives are to 1) reveal the effect of sediment loading–unloading, lithospheric strength, and surface-mantle processes on shaping the Cenozoic paleobathymetry-topography of Barents Sea, to 2) constrain the timing of the formation of the BSG, to 3) identify the interplay between climate dynamics and tectonics in erosion and deposition of sediments in the paleo-Barents Sea, and (4) compare the development of the BSG and Fram Strait, as well as the regional to global consequences of the Arctic-Atlantic shallow water connection. BRAVO will achieve these objectives by numerical modelling (inc. finite element and volumetric methods) using open-source platforms of pyGPlates, pyBadlands and high-resolution 2D–3D seismic, well, gravity and magnetic data analyses. BRAVO’s results will be self-consistent 4D Earth models (space and time) of paleobathymetry-topography of Barents Sea Gateway and corresponding sedimentary pathways and accumulation. BRAVO’s ambition is to provide the most reliable paleobathymetric-topographic reconstruction of the Barents Sea Gateway for the Cenozoic. BRAVO will quantify the role of Barents Sea Gateway in exchanging Atlantic–Arctic water, highlight the significance of erosion–deposition of sediments in shaping the gateway, and form the basis for updated global oceanographic and climatic simulations. BRAVO’s pioneering model of the complete Cenozoic source-to-sink analysis for the regional Barents Sea will be a breakthrough for Arctic seabed characterization for offshore wind turbines and mapping slope failure geohazards.

The proposed action titled “ECoSync” aims to incorporate computational modelling as a pivotal framework for elucidating the intricate dynamics of social bonding. This new framework is crucial for the European Work Programme in the current global crises. The action perfectly aligns with the Programme's vision of addressing pressing societal challenges for the well-being and stability of European communities. Recognizing the profound impact of emotions on human well-being, this research endeavors to uncover the underlying mechanisms that govern the emergence of social bonding. The action includes training in computational modelling and fundamental research in musical performance. It highlights interpersonal synchronization as a method for cultivating strong interpersonal connections. Understanding the interplay between emotions and interpersonal synchronization in musical interaction opens up new avenues for exploration, supporting resilience and recovery in the context of global adversity through social bonding. To quantify the processes underlying the formation of social bonds, we will execute a sequence of three work packages (i.e., WP2-WP4). These work packages will synergistically integrate cutting-edge methodologies from nonlinear dynamical systems, social and affective neurosciences, and music psychology. WP2 will focus on the computational mapping of emotional effects on interpersonal coupling. In WP3, we will validate and refine the model through empirical dyadic musical interaction, leveraging advanced motion capture and physiological techniques. In WP4, we will investigate how emotions influence group synchronization and its subsequent impact on social bonding. Finally, the action’s international mobility and training in research will broaden the applicant's academic portfolio and develop extensive experience as well as professional connections, furthering the advancement of the applicant's career as an independent researcher.