attempto online - Research

07.09.2026

New European Research Council Starting Grants in history and plant research

Two University of Tübingen researchers receive coveted ERC funding

Dr. Thomas Benfey of the Institute of Ancient History and Dr. Juan Carlos De la Concepción of the Center for Plant Molecular Biology are each to receive a European Research Council Starting Grant; this comes with up to 1.5 million euros over the five-year funding period. Starting Grants are awarded to outstanding researchers from any discipline early in their careers, between two and seven years after completing a doctorate. In his project, CIRCLE OF JUSTICE, Thomas Benfey aims to shed more light on the history of the Middle East in the 7th and 8th centuries – a period which saw the end of the Sasanian Empire and the rise of Islam – by researching Middle Persian documents produced in this time that have received little attention to date. In the project MORPHEUS, Juan Carlos De la Concepción will go to the molecular level to investigate the mechanisms that plant cells such as those in seeds and spores have developed to form regulated states of dormancy and rest.

Thomas Benfey – Middle Persian documents as sources for 7th and 8th century history

Portrait of Thomas Benfey. — Thomas Benfey.

In the project “Circle of Justice: Middle Persian Documents as Sources for Sasanian and Early Islamic History” (CIRCLE OF JUSTICE), Thomas Benfey will examine the history of the Middle East in the 7th and 8th centuries from a new perspective. His work will focus on some 1,700 documents that have received relatively little scholarly attention so far. For this he has received an ERC grant of just under 1.5 million euros over a period of five years.

The history of the Middle East – and indeed the entire world – took decisive turns in the 7th and 8th centuries: Islam emerged as a geopolitical and religious power and the Sasanian Empire came to an end. The regions that had constituted this empire’s core territories for centuries – Mesopotamia and the western Iranian plateau – were then incorporated into the nascent caliphate. “Sources from this period are scarce. Until now, studies of this period have largely been based on accounts written centuries later,” Benfey explains. “These accounts deal chiefly with the decisions of rulers and other powerful individuals, so that point of view has often taken the fore in modern research into the late antique and early Islamic Middle East. The broader administrative, social, and economic context in which these decisions were made has received relatively little attention.”

Benfey is accordingly using the Circle of Justice as structuring principle. The Circle of Justice refers to the constraints to which even the rulers of the Sasanian and early Islamic empires were subject. The idea was developed by thinkers active in this very context – the late antique and early medieval Middle East. The four main elements of the Circle of Justice are the military, agriculture, taxation, and the judiciary. “The authority of those in power depends on the extent to which they can manage these elements, none of which can function properly if the others are not in order. Ultimately, political authority fails if landowners and tax officials do not treat peasants fairly,” Benfey says.

No source provides a more direct view into these four key areas during the 7th and 8th centuries than the Middle Persian documents, says Benfey. About 1,000 of them are papyrus and parchment manuscripts produced in Sasanian-occupied Egypt between 619 and 629. Around 700 come from Iran and include economic and administrative texts written on parchment, cloth, and pottery shards, mostly from the late Sasanian Empire and the early Islamic period (ca. 610–759). “The script is often difficult to decipher, and the Middle Persian in which they are written can differ significantly from what we find in other sources such as literary texts and inscriptions,” says Benfey. “Other researchers have made foundational contributions, but there is still a great deal of work to be done if we are to gain a comprehensive understanding of the contents and contexts of these immensely valuable texts.” This, he says, can only be achieved through interdisciplinary research. His long-term goal is to fully harness these sources’ potential for historical research.

Contact

Dr. Thomas Benfey
University of Tübingen
Ancient History
Phone +49 7071 29-75280
thomas.benfeyspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de

Juan Carlos De la Concepción – Geregelte Dormanz im Lebenszyklus der Pflanzen

Portrait of Juan Carlos De la Concepción — Juan Carlos De la Concepción.

De la Concepción’s project, “Mechanisms and molecular innovation in plant cellular dormancy” (MORPHEUS) seeks to unravel the mechanistic basis and molecular evolution of dormancy in plants. The ERC will support the project with more than 1.5 million euros over five years.

All living organisms face a universal challenge: surviving and thriving in harsh and changing environments. A wide variety of life forms, ranging from bacteria to multicellular eukaryotes, have developed a conserved survival strategy: dormancy. During dormancy, cells enter a state of low metabolic activity that keeps them alive until favorable conditions return. This process prevents the extinction of populations and played a fundamental role in the origin and persistence of life on earth. As they generally do not move, plants rely on dormancy as a long-standing strategy to survive and disperse their offspring. Dormancy is fully integrated in the reproductive cycle of plants, shaping their ecological success and diversity.

“By controlling the time of germination, dormancy strongly affects the survival, adaptation, and extinction of plant populations. Because is so important, different dormancy strategies have emerged over the course of plant evolution” says De la Concepción. Seeds are a good example of this as they can remain dormant even hundreds of years, while they are dispersed by the wind or by animals, until they reach a suitable environment for the new plant to germinate. “This also makes dormancy a major agricultural trait influencing crop productivity and has a major economic impact,” De la Concepción says.

What does a cell do to survive bad times without losing viability? “Diverse organisms enter into dormancy in very different ways, but a universal characteristic is the shutdown of energy-intensive processes in the cell,” De la Concepción explains. The production of proteins in the ribosomes – a process known as translation – is particularly energy-intensive. Therefore, cells must almost completely stop this process to enter dormancy. Multiple mechanisms for ribosome inactivation, or ribosome dormancy, have independently emerged during the course of evolution. Yet, while extensively studied in bacteria, yeast and animals, the molecular mechanisms in plants remain largely unknown. “How independent plant lineages evolved separated molecular mechanisms to maintain ribosome dormant remains a fundamental question in plant and evolutionary cell biology,” says De la Concepción. To answer this question, he plans to build on methodological advances in structural biology, proteomics and comparative genetics between selected model organisms covering different steps of plant evolution.

Contact:

Juan Carlos De la Concepción
University of Tübingen
Center for Plant Molecular Biology
juan.delaconcepcionspam prevention@zmbp.uni-tuebingen.de

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