Single-photon sources are crucial for many quantum information technologies, including quantum communications, computation, sensing and metrology. Typical stand-alone quantum emitters (QEs), such as quantum dots and defects in diamonds, feature low emission rates, nondirectional emissions, and poorly defined polarization properties, which prevents QEs from being directly used as single-photon sources in practical applications. Various micro/nano structures have been developed in recent years to enhance QE emission rates by making use of the Purcell effect via engineering their immediate dielectric environment, but the control of polarization, direction, and wavefront of the emitted photons has still been rarely addressed. The main objective of the project is to develop a general design approach for high-performance single-photon sources and demonstrate its use by designing and fabricating a series of advanced single-photon nanodevices with different functionalities. First, the underlying physics of QE coupling to surface nanostructures will be thoroughly investigated. We will then develop a novel holography implementation, vectorial scattering (computer-generated) holography, generating directly profiles of hybrid plasmon-QE coupled metasurfaces. Finally, based on the developed design approach, a series of nanodevices will be demonstrated, on-chip realizing photon emission with desirable polarization and phase profiles, including those of vector vortex beams. This project will enable the realization of single-photon sources with radiation channels that have distinct directional and polarization characteristics, extending thereby possibilities for designing complex photonic systems for quantum information processing. Furthermore, this project will facilitate knowledge exchange via dissemination activities along with researcher training in transferable skills, being fully committed to open science principles and chronicling the whole project in an open online logbook.

This MSCA research project ‘Countering News Avoidance with Personalized News Formats (NAPNF)’ uses an interdisciplinary approach combining sociology and (media) psychology to ask: How does personalized content relate to news avoidance behaviors, and what steps can be taken to counteract their negative influence on news consumption? Despite news avoidance’s prominence in scholarly discussions on how to increase trust in media and other institutions, there is still a dissensus on how to both fundamentally conceptualize news avoidance and understand this audience behavior. NAPNF addresses this gap. To answer this question, this project will first determine the specific profiles of news avoiders via a qualitative approach which will lead to a more multifaceted comprehension of the different rationales of these avoiders. Second, I will conduct a panel survey on how these specific profiles relate to the level of knowledge of contested (e.g., migration) and uncontested issues (e.g., festivities). To date, research has insufficiently addressed to what extent news avoiders actually stay informed on societal issues. Third, personalized news formats based on these contested and uncontested issues will be used in experiments to evaluate whether these formats might stimulate or obstruct news avoidance. NAPNF combines the expertise at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and the Digital Democracy Centre (DDC) on media trust and literacy with my six years’ experience as a quantitative and qualitative scholar in journalism, AI, and newsroom innovation. The project will link academic research to practical recommendations which can contribute to the development of strategies that attract news avoiders in the European society, improve audience reach, and potentially generate societal benefits for the news industry.

This MSCA research project on the logic of informal security cooperation (LINSEC) combines the research fields of security studies, IR, international history, and intelligence studies to answer the project’s overarching research question: What drives and sustains informal counterterrorism cooperation? To answer this question, LINSEC builds on the University of Southern Denmark’s (SDU) expertise in security studies, my research experience in history and intelligence studies, interviews with intelligence officers, and my recently obtained unprecedented access to over 30,000 intelligence records from 1971 to 1979. These records are from a counterterrorism intelligence-sharing framework called the Club de Berne, which is still today’s main cooperation platform for informal intelligence-sharing on terrorism. To understand the logic of informal security cooperation, the project analyses four different aspects. (1) The prerequisites: what internal and external factors determine whether policymakers seek informal security cooperation. (2) Cooperation mechanism: how agencies react to terrorist threats and adapt their habits and modes of security cooperation. (3) Formal versus informal: the conditions under which these actors prefer informal over formal security cooperation, and how informal counterterrorism cooperation ties in or comes into conflict with formal alliances. (4) Continuity over time: what made informal counterterrorism cooperation effective in the 1970s and what makes it effective today? Each of these elements form one objective, which then contain a corresponding research, training, and dissemination subobjective. This project aligns squarely with the Horizon 2020 security research area and its aim of fostering secure European societies. Providing a better understanding of the factors that enhance interstate security cooperation will benefit scholars, security professionals, and policymakers alike.

Ovid –the classical Roman poet of love and mythology– became an immensely influential literary figure in Western Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries. Due to his versatility, ambiguity and multi-generic poetic creativity his readership only kept growing towards the Renaissance, although this demanded a number of different reading strategies (or excuses), best known through the French adaptation of the Metamorphoses, Ovide moralisé (14th century). But allegory and moralizing were not the only medieval appropriations of Ovid's myths. The present project aims to bring the historical and literate reception of the Metamorphoses and the Heroides into the discussion. Reading Ovid’s classical mythology ‘at face value’ or as a part of history was, in fact, a substantial part of the medieval engagement with the Roman poet. Two major works of vernacular historical writing actually use Ovid’s texts in this manner: the Castilian General estoria (compiled 1270-84), and the French narrative of the ancient world, the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César (14th cent. version). The three vernacular texts and their similar appropriation of Ovid need to be studied together. This comparative, multilingual and transnational approach is another innovative aspect of the proposal. Breaking out of nationally defined research traditions requires a new intellectual framework which will be provided by the Danish-English Centre of Excellence, the Centre for Medieval Literature (Odense and York). The project fits perfectly into the European agenda of CML which divides its research into three main strands: fictionality, languages, and canon. The present proposal will draw on, and contribute to, CML in all three areas: studying literature that crosses languages (Latin, French, Castilian), theorizing both the medieval canon (differing but contemporary approaches to Ovid) and the modern, and bringing the medieval reception of classical mythology into the discussion about fictionality and historicity.