What? My project will investigate the effectiveness of prospective self-control strategies and their potential for improving people's self-control. Prospective self-control strategies seek to prevent the emergence or limit the strength of temptations, thereby reducing the need for the effortful self-control, which generally has a rather modest success rate. In doing so, I will specifically focus on two prospective self-control strategies: situation selection and goal support. Situation selection involves strategically identifying and avoiding tempting situations (e.g., a smoker avoiding bars that allow smoking), whereas goal support involves pursuing goals in the company of other people who actively support these goals (e.g., an aspiring runner running together with a running 'buddy'). Why? Extensive research has identified self-control as an important predictor of leading a healthy, financially stable, and happy life. Self-control is also a significant predictor of the success of people's behavior change efforts. Yet, the precise mechanisms through which self-control leads to successful behavior change and life outcomes are still not well understood. This also means that our current knowledge of how to improve people's self-control is limited. Recent research has identified numerous self-control strategies used by people who are generally good at self-control. However, research on the effectiveness of individual self-control strategies is still in its infancy and further evidence is needed to properly evaluate their merits. How? My project involves a two-part research program. First, I will investigate people's meta-knowledge of the scope of self-control strategies, what self-control strategies they commonly use, and whether they deliberately select between them based on their perceived effectiveness. This will be done through an online survey with a nationally representative sample. Second, I will investigate the effectiveness of two prospective self-control strategies (situation selection and goal support) in ensuring progress on important personal goals. I plan to examine this through an online randomized controlled trial with an experience-sampling design, which permits obtaining causal and longitudinal estimates of the strategies' effectiveness with limited intrusion from memory biases.

What? In the face of the looming global climate and biodiversity crises, the European Union (EU) has launched an avalanche of unilateral trade policies in recent years, all under the banner of sustainability. These include import bans on goods linked to forced labour and deforestation and the introduction of a tariff on carbon-intensive imports into the EU. Why? A significant gap persists in our knowledge of how countries, especially in the Global South, perceive these policies and their resulting implications. This project endeavours to fill this void, examining how trade partners perceive EU unilateral trade-climate policies, and whether these policies co-exist, compete, or potentially clash with the norms, priorities and policies of these countries. How? The project will rely on a case study methodology and through the means of policy mapping, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis, seek to illuminate the viewpoint of a selected number of trade partners in the Global South. The project is expected to result in several conference papers, public presentations, and three peer-reviewed articles in international journals.

What? When you look through a microscope, you see a whole new world: Well-known appearances disappear and new objects suddenly emerge. This experience was shared for the first time 350 years ago by a group of naturalists trying to see deeper and deeper into nature. Seeing things through microscopes is not easy, though, and reproducing observations is even harder. My project investigates how early modern microscopists navigated these difficulties through the invention of a variety of representational techniques. These techniques were also used to convey a sense of the scale of sub-visible things. The project shows that the microscopists produced a very sophisticated concept of scaling influential in subsequent attempts to visualise things either too big or too small for the human sense apparatus. Why? Today, microscopes are used every day in laboratories all over the globe. The notion that there is another scale somehow underlying all natural phenomena is an ingrained part of our world view. My project reveals how this very particular world view was produced through a historical process involving scientific instruments, collecting practices and visualisation strategies. This gives us a much richer understanding of laboratory science and what this kind of scientific activity is able to create. More than that, the project develops a model for understanding attempts to make invisible things visible. This is highly important today where images of invisible things - be they global climate change, genes or financial markets - carry so much scientific and political weight. How? The project will be carried out at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Here, I will collaborate with world-leading scholars engaged in producing new histories of science. Using Cambridge as my base, I will travel to nearby archives and libraries, such as the British Library and the Archives of the Royal Society in London, to gain access to letters, diaries, commonplace books and meeting minutes composed by the early microscopists. I will closely inspect the activities of the Royal Society following Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's first observations of 'animalcules', and conduct the first systematic analysis of Nehemiah Grew's representation of scale in his plant-anatomical work conducted for the Royal Society.

What? It's just a box that we made up, and then a lot of things fit into it - a surgeon once told me, in a surprisingly relaxed tone, explaining a diagnostic category called impingement syndrome. The project focuses on the intersection between patient bodies and diagnostic categories. Refusing the classical dichotomy between the messy 'personal' aspect of medicine (represented by the patient) and the tidy 'scientific' taxonomy of disease (represented by diagnostic categories), I aim to unfold complexities of the diagnostic process. The project revolves around an empirically grounded conceptual analysis of the ways that concrete bodies and abstract categories become part of the epistemic practice in medicine. Doing so, it will provide important insights into medical knowledge and practice. Why? The concept of diagnosis is a central component of medicine: a diagnosis fills the knowledge gap between the occurrence of a suffering patient and the need for targeted points of intervention. Previous philosophical work on diagnosis has largely concerned itself with methodological issues on how to arrive at the 'right' diagnoses (e.g., induction or probabilistic reasoning?), but overlooks the extent to which diagnostic categories are plastic. Concrete patient bodies might never fit pre-set categories, and diagnoses may be asserted or made for pragmatic reasons. To properly understand what a diagnostic category is, and how diagnostic processes unfold, there is thus a need for asking more exploratively about how diagnostic categories are used, and what it means for them to be 'right'. How? The project's interests are conceptual, and the overarching approach is philosophical. Acknowledging that the analysis of the project depends on proper acquaintance with the nuances of actual medical practice, I will, however, incorporate empirical material into my conceptual analysis. I will do so, using 'ethnographic philosophy': a method which works by bringing a philosophical concept - in this case, that of 'epistemic iteration' - into a concrete empirical context - medical practice - and then lets the nuances of this context resist the philosophical notion: providing occasions for conceptual development and philosophical insight. Specifically, I will work with concepts from philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science and conduct fieldwork at an orthopaedic surgery department.

What? Solar cell optimisation. This project is focused on making molecules to incorporate into silicon-based solar cells to enhance their performance. The incorporated molecules contain combinations of lanthanide metals to facilitate an energy conversion process that ‘cuts’ one high-energy photon to two lower-energy photons – called ‘quantum-cutting’. The inclusion of quantum-cutting components in solar cell technology has the potential to greatly increase the amount of sunlight converted, and thereby the efficiency of the cell. Why? Solar cells have become both an economically and environmentally friendly energy source, but we need important technological advances before solar energy is efficient enough to replace less sustainable sources such as fossil fuels. Depending on the type of solar cell, the maximum conversion of solar energy from sunlight is currently about 25%. In addition, sporadic sunlight exposure means that the energy conversion in the cell needs to be highly efficient to compensate for days with little sun or during the night. A large fraction of the high-energy sunlight is lost because of a spectral mismatch between the absorption region of the cell and the incoming sunlight. By adding a component to the cell to create a better fit with the spectral region of the sunlight, we can make solar cells with higher performance, and thereby optimise the efficiency. How? The project will take place at the University of Cambridge with Professor Dominic Wright, who is an expert in the advanced synthesis methods needed to make the lanthanide-based molecules. I will synthesise new molecules with external components that allow for incorporation into polymer films. The lanthanide-containing polymer film can then be added to a silicon-based solar cell. Here it works as an ‘adapter’ by converting high-energy sunlight to fit with the absorption region of the cell. Additionally, we are collaborating with a solar cell energy company that will be in charge of incorporating the new molecules into silicon-based solar cells to test their performance.