ERC Synergy Grant awarded to Adam Izdebski for EUROpest Project

EUROpest aims to replace simplistic models of disease with a more comprehensive approach, enabling a more detailed understanding of historical disease outbreaks and a blueprint for navigating future ones

The European Research Council has awarded the new EUROpest project with a Synergy Grant to develop novel approaches to disease research. Led by Adam Izdebski (MPI GEA, University of Warsaw), Alexander Herbig (MPI EVA), Timothy Newfeld (Georgetown University), and Elena Xoplaki (Justus Liebig University Giessen), the project will examine the influences of genetics, environment, society and climate on disease outcomes.

“The main objective of our project is to find the answer to the question of why the same pathogens, depending on the context, bring about different biological, ecological, social, economic and cultural effects. We want to address this issue by studying more than 50 different epidemics in European history, from the Black Death to the age of industrialization, over some 500 years, looking at them from possible angles, including climate, genetics, ecology, as well as the unusual topics such as church rituals (did they sing or not?) or the types of hats worn,” says Izdebski, who will take up a Professorship at the University of Warsaw in July 2025.

At the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Izdebski’s Palaeo Science and History research group has been exploring the ways in which history, a humanistic discipline, converges with the environmental sciences that focus on the past. Since 2018, the group has worked to include new kinds of data into historical studies, such as pollen and sediment records or isotopic and geochemical analysis. 

Now, the EUROpest project will analyze historical European regions as complex networks in which a range of factors influence can influence the outcomes of disease outbreaks. Using a variety of methods and diverse sets of data, including ancient pollen, climate history and archaeogenetic information, the researchers aim to understand the complexity of disease outbreaks and potentially improve future pandemic preparedness.

To synthesize all these diverse forms of data, the team will rely on machine learning methods developed by Ricardo Fernandes, researcher within the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. These methods investigate spread dynamics and causal drivers for past outbreaks, offering models useful for future outbreaks.

The EUROpest project: A Novel Understanding of Pandemic Disease in Preindustrial Europe (1300-1800): Combining History, Machine Learning and Natural Sciences will be carried out by a consortium coordinated by the University of Warsaw. Besides the University of Warsaw, the other leading institutions of EUROpest are Justus Liebig University Giessen in western Germany (Elena Xoplaki), Georgetown University in Washington (Tim Newfield), and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Alexander Herbig).