[EDUC Research] Four winners for EDUC collaborative research projects 2025

General presentation

The Université Paris Nanterre has awarded four EDUC-Wide collaborative research projects grants, which will enable our institution to strengthen international research cooperation.

EDUC-Wide is a satellite entity of EDUC, dedicated to the development of international collaborations within the European Alliance, of which the University of Paris Nanterre is a founding member.

In May 2025, Université Paris Nanterre launched a call for proposals to encourage international cooperation with foreign laboratories and the involvement of doctoral students and young PhDs from the EDUC network.

Aimed at federating research communities involving the alliance's foreign universities, these projects enable the development of partnerships on a European scale around scientific and technological projects, and generate preliminary results on common research and innovation topics.

 

Presentation of the projects

 

Project 1: EcoMedia: ecological imaginaries and media ecology (19th - 21st centuries)

The EcoMedia project aims to set up a Franco-German research group dedicated to the analysis of environmental representations through visual and textual corpora (illustrated press, company magazines, posters, photographic collections, natively digital documents). It seeks to understand how European societies have represented, debated and imagined the environment, from the 19th century to the present day, by focusing on two axes: ecological imaginaries, through the study of visual and textual narratives shaping our perceptions of nature, and media ecology, through the analysis of technical media conditioning our understanding of the environmental crisis.

Project leaders:
Prof. Dr. Birgit Schneider, Universität Potsdam
Prof. Dr. Peer Trilcke, Universität Potsdam
Julien Schuh, Université Paris Nanterre

Project 2: Optimizing damage propagation and energy absorption using functionally graded and auxetic materials (ODEGAM)

The search for ever stronger, lighter and more durable materials has become crucial for highly demanding industries such as aerospace, aeronautics and biomechanics. At the heart of this challenge lies the control of crack propagation: how to absorb a high-energy impact without damage compromising the safety and longevity of a structure? The ODEGAM project proposes an innovative solution by reconciling two often conflicting approaches.

Project leaders:
- Jihed Zghal, IUT Ville d'Avray, Université Paris Nanterre
- Michele Brun, University of Cagliari
- Isabelle Bruant, IUT Ville d'Avray, Université Paris Nanterre

Project 3: The effect of humor on attention and social learning in infants

This project aims to study the effect of humor on babies' social learning in an intercultural dimension. It is based on an ongoing doctoral thesis, under a cotutelle arrangement between the University of Potsdam (Germany) and the University of Paris Nanterre, set up in September 2024 as part of the European Digital UniverCity (EDUC) program. The cotutelle focuses on the effects of humor on learning in different contexts in French and German babies aged 17 to 19 months. The project proposed here extends this theme by examining whether, and in what cultural context (French or German), humor serves as a social signal that directs babies' attention to the actions of others, and thus promotes their learning.

Project leaders:
Prof. Birgit Elsner, Universität Potsdam
Prof. IUF, Rana Esseily, Université Paris Nanterre
MCF, Lauriane Rat-Fischer, Université Paris Nanterre

Project 4: The place of indigenous authors in the Brazilian literary field

The struggle of Brazil's indigenous peoples for recognition of their civil rights, which is currently receiving a great deal of media coverage, has been intensifying for over half a century. The establishment of a legal framework with the promulgation of the Statute of the Indigenous, in the 1988 constitution, made their critical living conditions visible and flagrant, in particular their demographic decline, and strengthened, at national level, their struggle for recognition of their cultures, identities and territories. While their first demands were political and social in nature, notably for the homologation of their lands, they would later demand the emancipation of their knowledge and representations.

Project leaders:
MCF, Sandra Assunção, Université Paris Nanterre
MCF, Eva Batličková, Masaryk University