Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "High-end, modular EEG equipment for Brain Computer Interfacing (Flanders BCI Lab)" "Marc Van Hulle" "Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology" "With Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI's) subjects can control the environment from their brain activity directly, bypassing the need for speech or other forms of muscular activity. Evidently, this has raised great hopes for patients suffering from severe disabilities. After the initial successes, three challenging topics have emerged for the future. First, the hybrid BCI's that aim to achieve a faster and more reliable communication by combining sensors and paradigms (eye trackers). Second, the affective BCI's that would enable subjects to convey emotions directly. Third, the cognitive (or natural) BCI's that relate to the subject's cognitive abilities such as selective attention and memory. To enable Flemish researchers to actively participate in this evolution, not only high-resolution EEG equipment is needed but also that can operate in synchrony to study collaborative actions between subjects (social skills). The targeted high-end EEG device is highly modular: this way, the consortium can also be served with several medium-resolution EEG devices, which can operate in synchrony for collaborate experiments." "Studying the effect of TES on SSVEP + MI BCI training." "Raf MEESEN" "Rehabilitation Research Center, University of Madeira" "The Research Council of Hasselt University approved the stay of dr. Diego Andrés Blanco Mora (Madeira Interactive Institute Technologies (M-ITI), Portugal). During this stay, dr. Diego Andrés Blanco Mora will perform research in cooperation with the research group REVAL." "Complex Dynamics in Society: An application of complexity studies on community formation in South West Anatolia during the Hellenistic Period (323-133 BC)" "Jeroen Poblome" "Archaeology, Leuven" "The main goal of this PhD research is to study community formation and development in southwestern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) during the Iron Age, Achaemenid and (early to mid) Hellenistic periods (8th to 2nd centuries BCE). The main case studies are two neighbouring, contemporaneous communities, Sagalassos and Düzen Tepe. Findings on this local scale are then scaled up to treat community formation dynamics on a sub-regional scale – corresponding to the study region of the Sagalassos Project – and the interregional scale, covering Pisidia, Lycia and Pamphylia.The outset of the research program grew out of the realization that approaches to community development during these periods, throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, were all too often grounded in an explicitly ‘Hellenocentric’ framework of polis formation. Within such a framework, aspects of urbanization and development of extensive structures of socio-political organisation are considered mainly through a dichotomy of Hellenic versus ‘indigenous’ cultural identity and society. Several problems can be associated with such an approach, not in the least a clear disregard for existing variability in community organization and operation throughout time and space. Additionally, the roots of the transposition of Greek cultural modes of community development from the Aegean ‘heartland’ towards other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, can be traced back, at least partially, to a ‘Eurocentric’ discourse stacked up against the ‘East’ in its own proper context. Along with this differentiation between Greek and ‘other’ cultural modes of living, a priori differences in social complexity are often presupposed. Percolating from (neo-)evolutionary approaches, a clear differentiation between so-called ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ societies is employed, with all associated implications for development of social, political and economic structures.Despite its commonly problematic usage, the high potential of the concept of social complexity for studying community formation and development in the past is highlighted in this research. One of the development goals of the research project was therefore to devise a framework built around a better conceptualisation of social complexity dynamics. The major theoretical sources of inspiration for this framework were drawn from complex systems research. This approach offered a suitable pathway to trace dynamics and developments of complexity in social systems without carrying any inherent teleological notions, thus overcoming the existing limits to the concept of social complexity by effectively bridging the previously assumed ‘gap’ between simple and complex societies. Social complexity can be ideally conceptualised as an analytical unit to approach aspects of multi-scalar structure (moving from the foundational level of social interaction, to the emergent level of collective organization, and back), information processing as an essential feature of organizational development, communities as nexus for collective action, and a proper embedding of the social system within its environmental context from which it derived its necessary energy and resources to sustain system dynamics (studied through the coupling of social-ecological systems).The end goal of the research is to present a conceptual model of community formation and development, exploring several of the various possibilities offered by a complex systems approach. The utility and validity of this framework is demonstrated through its application on the aforementioned case studies. To avoid any potential mismatches between the extensive conceptual framework and its archaeological application in archaeology, two intermediate chapters are added to discuss the analytical operationalisation and narrative framing of such an application. Specifically, this research focuses on in-depth material studies of pottery derived from excavations and surveys conducted at a number of selected sites. To this end, an integrative approach is employed which combines all steps in raw material selection, production, distribution and usage of these material objects in an encompassing view, and links this evaluation of material culture to wider organizational structures and societal dynamics at play in these communities at the time. This pottery dataset is then compared and critically evaluated against other strands of data from the selected case studies." "Dying at the Margins of Athens: Burial Customs, Local Traditions, and Social Realities in the Attic deme of Thorikos (c. 900-300 BC)" "Roald Docter" "Department of Archaeology" "This research project will collect and evaluate all material and physical anthropological data from the cemeteries of Thorikos in an attempt to reconstruct social, ideological and political realities in this deme from the Early Iron Age (900 BC) to end of the Late Classical period (300 BC), especially in relation to the city of Athens. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, following the latest developments in demographic studies, which take into account questions of age, gender, pathology, kinship ties and mobility, it is aimed to gain insights into the identity and modes of life of the burying and buried population." "The interplay between language contact and language change in a fragmentary linguistic area: the Italic peninsula in the first millennium B.C.E." "Freek Van de Velde" "Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Leuven, Comparative, Historical and Applied Linguistics, Leuven" "This research project focuses on the languages spoken in the Italic peninsula in the first millennium B.C.E. (in particular, Latin, Etruscan, Oscan and Umbrian) and the insights they can provide into the process of language change. Linguists have long recognised that the spread of language innovations from one language variety to another is an integral part of all language change, but the conditions which determine whether or not an innovation spreads to neighbouring varieties are not well understood. In particular, there has been little systematic research on the effects of different degrees of relatedness and similarity between the languages involved on the diffusion of novel features between them. The Italic peninsula is an area that is of unique interest for resolving questions such as this, in that it attests a large number of languages with different degrees of relationship and typological similarity. Studying the effects of language contact in this context will allow the various predictors of language change to be systematically examined in relation to each other. In addition, the results of this research project will provide insights for future research on poorly attested languages" "A morphosyntactic and semantic analysis of the augment use and absence in the oldest Greek literary texts (800-500 BC)." "Mark Janse" "Department of Linguistics" "My investigation combines Classical Philology and historical linguistics. In several Indo-European languages, such as Greek, Armenian, Phrygian, Sanskrit and Iranian, the past tense form was built not only by using special endings but also by adding a prefix to the verbal form. This prefix is called the “augment” in Classical Philology and Indo-European scholarship. It was mandatory in Phrygian, in classical Greek and classical Sanskrit, but in the oldest forms of the languages mentioned above (the Rig Veda in Vedic Sanskrit and the Gathas in Iranian, both from the 2nd Millennium BC), it seemed optional, metrically motivated or was missing altogether. My investigation intends to determine where this prefix comes from, what its original meaning was and how it became obligatory in Greek. My hypothesis is that the augment was in origin an independent particle with both deictic and temporal meaning, that its use and absence can be explained by syntactic and semantic rules and constraints and that the metrical requirement played only a limited role. To check this, I will list, tag and analyse the past tense forms in the oldest texts in Greek (the Mycenaean tablets from the 13th century BC, epic Greek from the 8th century BC, elegiac and lyric poetry until the 5th century BC) and discuss all possible factors influencing the use and absence. " "Late Prehistoric (8000-2000 BC) communities in marginal landscapes. Investigating human-environment interactions in the Western Taurus Mountains, SW Turkey" "Jeroen Poblome" "Archaeology, Leuven" "Our current knowledge of Late Prehistoric (8000-2000 BC) communities in Anatolia is primarily based on evidence from a number of well-known settlements in areas suitable for agriculture. Next to nothing is known about sites in other landscape units such as marginal mountainous areas. The proposed research aims to fill this gap in knowledge by shedding light on how different landscape units were incorporated into the cultural landscape, throughout the Late Prehistory. By investigating the Dereköy highlands, located in close distance to the well-studied Burdur Plain (SW Anatolia), the research will yield novel complementary insights on Late Prehistoric communities. It will examine how and when past communities used marginal landscapes, and will provide a window on periods which are currently poorly known in plain areas, such as the Middle Chalcolithic (5500-4200 BC). The unique archaeological datasets of both low-and highlands will paint one of the most comprehensive pictures of Prehistoric cultural landscape in Anatolia. By incorporating the ecological data of the area, diachronic developments will be evaluated within the framework of socio-ecological systems in order to understand wave patterns of complexity and decline throughout the Late Prehistory. Although the proposed research deals with human-environment dynamics from the past, it is relevant to contemporary societies as well, as it places current human-environment developments into context. " "A mycobacterium bovis BCG transposon insertion library as a tool to study the role of mycobacterial glycolipids and other components in pathogenesis." "We aim at improving the protectieve efficacy of the M. bovis BCG vaccine against M.tb infection. We have generated an ordered M. bovis BCG transposon insertion library and selected mutants for further study. These mutants are characterizing biochemically and evaluated as TB vaccines in a stringent animal model. We're thoroughly studying immune responses upon infection, which mainly determine vaccine potential." "Performative patterns in the history of Greek (500 BCE – 600 CE)" "Klaas Bentein" "Department of Linguistics" "In modern languages, polite formulaic phrases often trace back to performative verbs (e.g. performative verbs of asking such as parakaló in Modern Greek, bitte in German or prego in Italian). Despite the communicative significance of these patterns nowadays, remarkably few researchers have investigated the significance of performatives in ancient languages such as Ancient Greek, even though they provide direct evidence of ancient communication practices. In this project, I aim to provide the first historical pragmatic study of performative patterns in the history of Greek (V BCE – VI CE). To that end, I will investigate their pragmatic diversity, functional distribution across text types and registers, and the diachronic processes that shaped their development. Performatives in the history of Greek such as parakalô: ‘I ask’, eukharistô: ‘I thank’ and boúlomai ‘I wish’ display relevant forms of morphosyntactic, pragmatic and diachronic varation that can expand our knowledge of the meaning of performatives, such as variation in aspectual and modal marking, correlations with the dialogicity of texts and collocational variation with related intersubjective strategies. Moreover, the study of this diachronic corpus, especially of understudied Post-Classical Greek texts, contributes a contrastive perspective on the field of historical pragmatics which until now has focused primarily on English." "Biography, history and philosophy in the 3rd century BCE Peripatos: the case of Hieronymos of Rhodes" "Stefan Schorn" "Ancient History, Leuven" "Hieronymos of Rhodes was one of the main representatives of the 3rd century BCE Peripatos. Although much read in later times, his works have come down to us in fragments only. The work titles and the fragments we have show a special interest in historical topics: in biography of poets and philosophers, history of literature and history of culture. As for his philosophical views we know most about his ethical doctrines where he departed, to some extent, from Aristotle and contemporary Peripatetics. The fragments show that historical and philosophical interests were closely interconnected in his works and demand a global study. This project will produce the first thorough study of this thinker which will determine his position within Hellenistic, especially Peripatetic, philosophy and within ancient historical (antiquarian) and biographical literature. The study of his historical fragments will be part of 'FGrHist IV: Biography and Antiquarian Literature”."