The projects reflect the academic and geographic diversity of CAS' member institutions. And while the projects fit into the traditional spheres of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, the makeup of the groups will enable new synergies between scholars of different disciplines.

‘The 2019/20 academic year promises to be an exciting time for frontline fundamental research,’ said Professor Vigdis Broch-Due, scientific director of CAS. ‘We want to thank all our applicants for their commitment to innovative scholarship and interdisciplinary, international collaboration.’

Following a rigorous evaluation process, CAS has selected the following three projects:

The Body in Translation – Historicising and Reinventing Medical Humanities and Knowledge Translation

Group leaders:

Professor Eivind Engebretsen, Institute of Health and Society, the University of Oslo

Associate Professor John Ødemark, IKOS, the University of Oslo

‘We are really looking forward to our stay at CAS, and we are grateful for the opportunity to carry out a project we believe is both important and timely,’ Engebretsen and Ødemark said. ‘At a time when there is a lot of focus on the so-called ‘crisis of the humanities,’ CAS provides us with a unique opportunity to create a laboratory for radical exchange between medicine and the humanities by bringing together an international group of outstanding researchers from both disciplines, who are interested in translation from various perspectives.’

A Multilingual Approach to Grammatical Gender (MultiGender): Acquisition, Variation & Change

Group leaders:

Professor Terje Lohndal, Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Professor Marit Westergaard, Department of Language and Culture, the University of Tromsø – the Arctic University of Norway

‘We are very excited about this opportunity to fully concentrate on our project investigating grammatical gender from a multilingual perspective,’ Lohndal and Westergaard said. ‘CAS offers the best conditions you can imagine to conduct the kind of research that we wish to do, and we particularly look forward to inviting world-renowned scholars to work with us in Oslo.’

Evolvability: A New and Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology

Group leaders:

Professor Christophe Pelabon, Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Professor Thomas F. Hansen, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, the University of Oslo

‘We are extremely happy that our project has been selected by the board of CAS,’ Hansen and Pelabon said. ‘We have worked on evolvability together and with some of our future guests for nearly 20 years, and this year at CAS gives us a unique opportunity to make a broad synthesis on the subject and to extend it to new areas.’

Carl Fredrik Schou Straumsheim