Synergy Grants 2025: Examples of projects

6 November 2025 Originally posted https://erc.europa.eu/news-events/news/synergy-grants-2025-examples-projects

How do you solve science’s toughest puzzles? By joining forces. Sixty-six research teams, bringing together 239 scientists, will receive a total of €684 million in European Research Council Synergy Grants to tackle some of the most challenging scientific questions across a broad range of fields.

How our relationship with mountains shapes the future

Changing climates, growing populations, biodiversity threats and agricultural transformations put our mountains under pressure. These challenges impact not only local communities and the surrounding lowlands but have global impacts too, since mountains are often hotspots of biodiversity and act as carbon sinks. With the increased interconnection between human systems and ecosystems comes the question of how nature and societies will keep interacting in and beyond so-called mountain socioecological systems. 

An interdisciplinary team of researchers focusses on nine East African mountain settings to illustrate pathways for sustainable futures. To achieve this, they look at the principal services provided by mountain ecosystems (food, energy and water) and biocultural diversity, on the one hand. On the other hand, they investigate how societies exploit, co-exist with, or enhance nature. Observations from these dynamics in the past and present, will guide their predictions for the future to support mountain socioecological systems worldwide in navigating future opportunities and challenges. 

The research team includes four experts from the UK, South Africa, Spain, and Germany; embedded with partners from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Rob Marchant, professor of tropical ecology at the University of York, has a research focus on ecosystems and how they change. Laura Pereira is a professor in sustainability transformations and futures at the Global Change Institute from the University of Witwatersrand Johannesburg. Professor Unai Pascual is an ecological economist at the Basque Centre for Climate Change, and Thomas Hickler is a professor of biogeography at the Senckenberg Institute.
 

Project: AFRI-CAN – East African Mountain social ecological dynamics 

Researchers:

• Rob Marchant, University of York, UK  
• Laura Pereira, University of Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa
• Unai Pascual, Basque Centre for Climate Change, Spain
• Thomas Hickler, Senckenberg Institute, Germany

ERC funding: €9.988.220 million over 72 months 

NB: Figures are tentative and depend on the signing of the grant agreements

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