The LOBBYMETRY project addresses two types of imbalances in lobbying: 1) mobilisation asymmetries, which exclude some actors from the policy debate, and 2) information asymmetries, which empower specific groups in their exchanges with policymakers. The LOBBYMETRY project analyses these asymmetries and their relationship to each other, as well as their effects on the ways in which sectional and public interests feed into policymaking. The project studies these asymmetries across populations of interest organisations in twelve European countries and at European Union level, as well as within the climate and digital policy fields, that vary strongly in mobilisation asymmetries and constitute areas where well- or ill-informed policies have vast consequences for humanity at large. LOBBYMETRY strives to open the black-box of policymaker-lobbyist information exchange within these areas, develop measures of informational quality and accuracy in lobbying, and evaluate how and when lobbying pulls outcomes away from the public interest. Methodologically, the project combines cross-country surveys including an AI-aided survey experiment, cross-venue data on 100 issues in climate and digital policy, and different forms of participant observation of the information exchanges between policymakers and interest organisations in i) natural and ii) researcher-controlled settings. This innovative combination of methods will generate unprecedented quantitative and qualitative evidence on lobbyist-policymaker information exchange in varying contexts. If successful, the project will shed light on a serious blind spot in the state-of-the-art literature: the mechanisms through which lobbying actually informs policies. Its findings will speak to pressing democratic challenges, such as the underrepresentation of citizen interests in digital policy, and the design of institutional interventions to improve consultation practices, lobbying regulation, and the quality of legislation.

Palaeogenomics has revolutionised our understanding of human population history at the biological and sociocultural level by analysing thousands of ancient human genomes sequenced from skeletal remains. Unfortunately, this approach requires destructive sampling of the skeletal remains, and thus can often be in conflict with the values of descendant communities and national heritage conservation policies. Although alternative sources of ancient human DNA have been sought, their utilisation requires prohibitive sequencing data volumes, or they are rare in the archaeological record, thus precluding large-scale studies. To circumvent these limitations, we will use a novel DNA source: ancient quids. Quids are wads of masticated plant fibres recovered from archaeological sites. Analogous to a buccal swab, an ancient quid contains traces of the chewer's, their oral microbiome's and the chewer's meals' DNA, as well as that of the plants used for its elaboration. Therefore, quid DNA can be used to simultaneously track human population history, dietary and microbiome shifts, pathogen prevalence and their interplay through time. We will use quid DNA to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the Indigenous peoples from the Americas, a continent where human evolutionary history is understudied, skeletal remains are rare, and the destructive sampling of such remains is often limited. In contrast to skeletal remains, quids are abundant in the American archaeological record and span from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene and recent centuries. Through ancient quid DNA, we will reconstruct the genomic history of Indigenous Americans, their past lifeways and subsistence strategies, their health, and how these influenced each other throughout the three major historical transitions in the continent: the initial rapid peopling by hunter-gatherers, the emergence of complex agricultural societies and their demise during European colonisation.

To improve the poor clinical outcomes in high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSC), we need to understand the cancer cell-tumour microenvironment (TME) dynamic interactions upon disease evolution and treatment. In my proposed project, I will establish a unique TME-HGSC patient-derived organoid (PDO) multi-culture model system to identify and understand how the TME impacts treatment responses and how treatment resistance can be overcome. To generate multi-culture PDO preclinical models of HGSC for the first time, I will use my own expertise in 3D culture and stromal cell isolation from patient-derived material, and I will integrate self-generated “TME units” with well-characterized HGSC PDOs established at the host laboratory. I will then use this model to study the chemotherapy-induced changes at the single cell level. I will compare the transcriptional states of the treated models to the interval/recurrent PDOs and correlate their in vitro treatment responses to the patient responses. I will predict strategies to increase the sensitivity of the cancer cells to the HGSC standard treatment by targeting the tumour-TME interactions or the cancer cells themselves without generating a more tumour-supportive TME, by using the multi-culture PDOs in high-throughput drug screens and subsequently integrating the generated data. Finally, I will functionally validate the predicted therapeutic strategies by CRISPR gene editing and drug treatment of the models. I expect that my project will generate profound knowledge on the chemoresistance mechanisms in HGSC and provide the scientific community with a unique experimental model that incorporates the TME to state-of-the-art HGSC PDOs. In addition, this fellowship will allow me to enhance my international visibility through high-impact publications independent from my PhD supervisor and provide me with a great track record in obtaining independent funding, essential to successfully secure independent research grants in the future.

In vitro models—cells that are cultured outside the body, and studied as models of living organs or organisms—have been increasing their importance in a wide range of fields in biology and medicine. Yet they involve epistemic problems. How can simplified and experimentally modified cell culture systems serve as reliable models of living organs and organisms? How do they function in broader inferential practices in different contexts? How do experts of different fields, who have different aims and values, interact and collaborate to generate, study, and use in vitro models? This project will assess the prospects and limitations of in vitro models in comparative biology through answering the above questions. It will integrate philosophical analysis and empirical qualitative methods to examine a case study: in vitro comparative primatology. This is a rapidly developing interdisciplinary area of research, which studies different primate species by applying advance in vitro technology to serve research into human evolution, veterinary science, conservation, etc. Using this case study, this project will generate novel insights into how various experimental modifications, inferential practices, and social/institutional factors facilitate and/or constrain representational function of scientific models. This project will benefit from and contribute to the existing expertise at the Section for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Copenhagen, which hosts and participates in research projects that examine epistemic and social implications of specific practices of biomedical research, including in vitro models by combining philosophical analysis and qualitative methods.

The habitats of most vertebrates are disappearing at an increasing rate with major consequences for their survival and that of humans. Increase in disease emergence and levels of poverty are two of its many impacts, which pose a threat to a sustainable economy worldwide. Monitoring and managing species is essential to restore a sustainable use of resources. Genomics approaches provide a framework to quantify the health status of species using genetic diversity, inbreeding and demographic history. However, such approaches have been widely ignoring a defining aspect of many threatened species – social groups, the fundamental units in which many species are organised, live and reproduce. Through this MSCA-IF, I will develop a new framework using identity-by-descent genomic information to infer socioecological parameters, e.g. group sizes and migration rates - essential for the survival of species. Taking advantage of new readily available samples of mouse lemurs, this action will provide direct input to Madagascar, serving as a model to evaluate recent past anthropogenic actions and, more vitally, preview the impact of ongioing changes on the socioecology of species, under alternative land-use scenarios. This will be a general framework to study the social structure of many other species faced with similar environmental challenges across the globe. The rising public awareness of ecological changes makes it an ideal time to share knowledge on biodiversity, and I will strongly invest in outreach activities. This action provides a unique opportunity for me to learn an essential set of skills on high level statistical genomic methods and non-model organisms’ genomics analysis, coupled with cultivating an extensive new network of expert collaborations. Through this action, I believe I will contribute to conservation genomics and specifically to lemur conservation while gaining invaluable assets for my career development as an independent researcher.