Two ERC Advanced Grants for Ghent University research on colour perception and child migration
(23-06-2026) Both the ๐๐ข๐ฃ๐ฅ๐๐ก๐ง๐ฆ and ๐ง๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐๐๐ง๐๐ฃ๐ฉ projects have received an ERC Advanced Grant, one of Europeโs most prestigious and competitive funding programmes for scientific research.
The funding, worth a total of โฌ838 million, has been awarded to 319 leading researchers across Europe.
ERC Advanced Grants give researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that can lead to major scientific breakthroughs.
โThe new Advanced Grant projects showcase the creativity, ambition and intellectual courage that frontier research requires.โ -ย ERC President Prof. Maria Leptin
COPRINTS (Maaheen Ahmed): a new light on colour
COPRINTS focuses on a surprisingly understudied aspect of media history: the role of colour in magazines. Although colour has always been essential to how magazines function and are experienced, it has rarely been the subject of systematic research.
โColour in magazines has never been merely decorative,โ says Maaheen Ahmed. โIt plays a crucial role in how readers perceive the world and experience emotions.โ
The project examines how the use of colour influenced perceptions and collective feelings between the 1890s and the 1950s, when magazines dominated the media landscape. It compares major publishing contexts such as France and Germany with smaller ones such as Belgium, Italy and Spain.
As the first comprehensive history of colour in print media, the project is essential for understanding how colour continues to shape our perceptions today. It also opens up new avenues for creating affective and sensory histories through everyday printed materials.
TransParent (Ilse Derluyn): a new perspective on child migration
TransParent starts from the insight that childrenโs migration is fundamentally intertwined with the lives of their family members, even when they are geographically separated.
The project explicitly gives a voice to parents, brothers and sisters who remain behind in contexts of forced migration, including Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan and Nigeria.
โWe can no longer view child migration separately from the families of which children are a part,โ says Prof. Dr. Ilse Derluyn.
TransParent investigates how families maintain connections across borders, how parenting is practised at a distance, and what happens when children are reunited with their families.
By building bridges between migration studies and family studies, the project offers innovative insights for multiple disciplines. This paradigm shift will also contribute to more evidence-based policymaking and stronger support for families in which parents and children are separated.
About the ERC
The European Research Council (ERC), set up by the European Union in 2007, is Europeโs premier funding organisation forย excellent frontier research. It supports creative researchers of any nationality and age to run projects based in Europe.
The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. Through its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees bridge the gap between their pioneering research and the early phases of commercialisation.
A new ERC Plus Grantsย scheme is open for applications since June 2026.
Researchersย inside and outside Ghent Universityย wishing to apply for an ERC Grant with our university as host institution can contact the EU team forย advice and support.
More information
Contact
EU Team Ghent University (eu-team@ugent.be)