About one month ago I got the message that my proposed research project OPENFLUX, was selected for funding by the European Research Council (ERC). What I applied to was the ERC Consolidator grant 2018 call, which can allocate up to €2000000 to a single project (and more if you need special equipment).

In OPENFLUX, we will use genetically informed designs to study family demography and social stratification. Questions we want to answer include whether society has become more open, whether family background and genetics change in importance across the life course, and whether genetics is an important confound for parent-child similarity in behaviors. Our data will combine twin/family data and molecular genetic data with administrative register data.

The project will be based at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. The tentative start date is Summer 2019, and it will run for five whole years. The project is part of the research activity in the Social inequalities and population dynamics group at the department.

The grant will allow me to hire a number of people, so watch out for announcements.In addition to the new hires, Martin Isungset is also part of the project, as are several collaborators: Eivind Ystrøm (UiO Psychology), Dalton Conley (Princeton), Jeremy Freese (Stanford) and Melinda Mills (Oxford). There is also an advisory board consisting of Wendy Johnson (Edinburgh), Paige Harden (Texas), Elizabeth Thomson (Stockholm) and Eric Turkheimer (Virginia).

A webpage will be launched in due time. We will also have some seminars and meetings that will be open to the public.

---