ERC grant for history project by Koper researcher Klabjan

The full title of Klabjan's project is Cold War Europe beyond borders: A transnational history of cross border practices in the Alps-Adriatic area from World War II to the present.

Klabjan wishes to draw attention to the need to understand the past of the European continent beyond the black-and-white interpretations of the dichotomous East-West divide and to offer a more nuanced picture of Europe from the end of WWII to the present day, the Koper Scientific Research Centre said in a press release on Tuesday.

He said he was "delighted to be able to contribute with my project to a deepening and spreading of a more varied picture of Europe's past and to remind the national and international public that there was a time and a place, such as the Alps-Adriatic region during the Cold War, when countries, societies and individuals managed to cooperate with each other in spite of different political, military, economic and social models".

While Klabjan, the first Koper Scientific Research Centre recipient of the ERC advanced grant, was picked in the social sciences and humanities segment, two more Slovenian researchers, both with the Ljubljana Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, won the grant in the last competition.

Astrophysicist Maruša Bradač and her team can look forward to using EUR 2.1 million to research "the early history of the Universe, the time when the first stars and galaxies were created", while mathematician Franc Forstnerič will have EUR 1.5 million available to further develop his breakthrough work in complex analysis and geometry.