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Alessandro Rippa Receives ERC Starting Grant for “Amber Worlds”

23.02.2023

Freigeist fellow and project director of the RCC research group “Environing Infrastructure: Communities, Ecologies, and China’s ‘Green’ Development in Contemporary Southeast AsiaAlessandro Rippa has recently received an ERC Starting Grant, which has been awarded for his new project “Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene (AMBER).” The project will officially start in the fall of 2023 at the University of Oslo (UiO) and it will be the first global study of amber from an anthropological perspective. It considers amber in the context of its extraction sites in Asia, Europe, and Central America, explores its global circulation and economic value as a gemstone, and connects to the geological and palaeontological background of the fossil resin. Through a multi-disciplinary approach, the research group will address key questions about our planet's climate history and provide new insight into the current global market of amber, which is driven by an increasingly Chinese demand and connected to violent mining economies from Myanmar to Russia, Ukraine, and Mexico.

Click here to read an interview with Alessandro about his new project.

The RCC would like to warmly congratulate Alessandro on this great success!