York teachers awarded prestigious ERC Synergy Grants

Posted on 6 November 2025

Two University of York teachers are set to guide bold analysis initiatives after every securing €10 million in funding from the European Research Council’s (ERC) extremely aggressive Synergy Grant.

Professors Robert Marchant (left) and Oliver Craig (proper).

Professors Rob Marchant (Environment and Geography) and Oliver Craig (Archaeology) will head up two distinct, multi-million-pound initiatives:

• AFRI-CAN will look at how East African mountain ecosystems and the communities who depend on them can survive and thrive within the face of local weather change.
• FORAGER will discover how hunter-gatherers throughout the Northern Hemisphere achieved large inhabitants progress and social complexity, lengthy earlier than farming grew to become the worldwide norm.

The ERC Synergy Grants assist world groups tackling essentially the most troublesome and bold scientific questions.

AFRI-CAN mission

Working throughout 9 mountain areas, the AFRI-CAN mission will analyse how communities work together with nature, how ecosystems evolve, and what pathways may assist resilient and sustainable mountain futures.

Professor Marchant stated: “Research throughout the mission will showcase how essential mountains are for folks, for nature and for future sustainability. Insights from the mission will assist us to navigate by way of the a number of and linked challenges that lie forward within the coming a long time.

“I am particularly excited about developing the science in an East African context and applying our insights to other mountain systems around the world. I am sure we can make the most of this opportunity and build a much stronger research community that is embedded within African partners.”

FORAGER mission

FORAGER goals to rework our understanding of human inhabitants dynamics through the Holocene, the present ecological interval over the last 10,000 years. 

By participating with Indigenous companions, combining archaeological science and local weather analysis, the mission will discover how hunter-gatherer communities throughout the Northern hemisphere achieved giant inhabitants progress, social complexity and resilience lengthy earlier than agriculture was the dominating lifestyle.

Professor Craig stated: “Despite dwelling in comparable environments, cross-cultural comparisons between temperate hunter-gatherers from North America, East Asia and Northern Europe are astonishingly uncommon. 

“Here we aim to unify an approach to this key phase in our history and shift the agenda away from agriculture as the main driver for social and cultural evolution that has prevailed in Western thought for centuries.” 

Big impression

Set up by the European Union in 2007, the ERC is the main European funding organisation for large impression analysis. It funds researchers of any nationality and age to run initiatives based mostly throughout Europe. Both the AFRI-CAN and the FORAGER mission may also embrace collaboration with native communities. 

The ERC Synergy Grants foster collaboration between excellent researchers, making it potential for them to mix their experience, information and assets with a purpose to push the boundaries of scientific discovery. This funding is a part of the EU’s Horizon Europe analysis and innovation programme.

Professor Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council, stated:
“Collaboration is at the heart of the ERC Synergy Grants. In our latest round, teams of researchers will join forces to address the most complex scientific problems together – this time, they are more international than ever. Such scientific endeavours are what Europe needs to be at the real forefront.”

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