Birth of the Marimacho: Modernismo’s Trans* Cultural Productions in Latin America analyzes the emergence of a new gender expression in early-twentieth-century Latin American literature, science, and visual culture: the ‹‹marimacho››. In the Hispanic tradition, marimacho is the umbrella notion that may refer to a sexist slur as much as a modern form of non-binary gender, a transmasculine identification, or a lesbian identity. This project examines the aesthetic construction of this hybrid, counter-cultural, and gender-dissident figure in an extensive cultural repertoire that includes novels, plays, films, leaflets, medical studies, prison and mental hospital records, poems, and newspaper and tabloid articles. I seek to increase the understanding of the region’s politics of gender and sexuality during the modernizing era (1880s-1930s), that is, before the solidification of LGBTQ activism, pride literature, and minority social movements of the Global 1960s. In response to the new gender dynamics led by cosmopolitan networks of first-wave feminism, the keepers of gender normativity created the marimacho as a monstrous version of conventional masculinity. The main objective of this research is to investigate why a broad range of cultural materials named queer women, non-binary individuals, and trans* men as marimachos, as gender hackers that put at stake the futures of heteronormativity, reproduction, and family life.

How do families mobilize to respond to their members’ needs? How do families transmit advantages and disadvantages within and across generations? Most of what we know about these questions is restricted to solidarity and transmission in the nuclear family – a small segment comprising only the closest kin. The project’s core concept – the kinship matrix – offers a much richer view of family members and family ties relevant to solidarity and transmission. It widens the lens to examine nuclear family ties in a larger pattern of relations that constitutes the immediate and extended family network spreading vertically and horizontally. Based on this concept, the project will achieve three objectives: to collect new comparative data on the kinship matrix in five European countries (Objective 1); and to use these data to conduct novel studies of solidarity (Objective 2) and of transmission (Objective 3) that break new ground in family research. The project comprises three subprojects, each dedicated to one objective. Subproject 1 will achieve Objective 1, collecting and preparing data on kinship ties that underpin all analyses on solidarity and transmission. The new comparative survey on the kinship matrix will be supplemented by further sources of population-scale data. Subproject 2 will achieve Objective 2, capturing solidarity in a multigenerational structure of immediate and extended kin. Subproject 3 will achieve Objective 3, capturing status transmission and behavioral transmission across a wide set of relevant kin. All subprojects will study the channels of solidarity and transmission, combining attribute data on status and behavior with relational data on the quality of kinship ties. The project will advance our understanding of the family as a unit of cohesion constitutive to the European social model and as a unit of transmission constitutive to inequality within and across generations. The new data will be released to create a lasting impact on family research.

Psychological theories of emotion and cognition agree that emotional experiences play an important role in decision making and risk evaluation. For emotions to influence decision-making, individuals need to perceive these emotional signals (i.e. interoception), and appraise them appropriately (e.g. attribute as an internal state). These processing stages have been found to be abnormal in some forms of mental illness. In gambling behaviour, it is assumed that abnormal levels of arousal are a source of reinforcement and can lead to problematic gambling participation. Yet, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear, and emotional signals alone (e.g. heart rate changes) do not reliably differentiate people with and without gambling problems. The current project will clarify the role of arousal in disordered gambling to close this knowledge gap by using a novel approach to separate the contributions of arousal perception, and the influence of risk and ambiguity on arousal and the appraisal of arousal. Work package (WP) 1 will record psychophysiological measures of arousal in people who gamble, and assess their relationships with the subjective perception of arousal. WP 2 will examine the influence of risk and ambiguity on the ability of arousal to predict decision making. WP 3, will investigate whether unrelated (‘incidental’) arousal is attributed to the gambling episode and influences decision making in gambling behaviour. Combining computational modeling and psychophysiological measurements is a new experimental approach which will give additional insights in identifying which of these emotional dimensions are perturbed in gambling. The proposed research will have implications for gambling policy, and targeting emotional components in prevention and treatment of gambling addiction.

By 2050, the global population over the age of 80 will triple. Thus, research for improving the quality of life at older age can be of enormous benefit for our ever-aging society. To address this challenge we propose an innovative approach based on a combination of stem cell research with genetic experiments in C. elegans. Mechanisms that promote protein homeostasis (proteostasis) slow down aging and decrease the incidence of age-related diseases. Since human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) replicate continuously in the absence of senescence, we hypothesize that they can provide a novel paradigm to study proteostasis and its demise in aging. We have found that hESCs exhibit increased proteasome activity. Moreover, we have uncovered that the proteasome subunit RPN-6 is required for this activity and sufficient to extend healtshpan in C. elegans. However, the mechanisms by which the proteasome regulates hESC function remain unknown. Our first aim is to define how the proteasome regulates not only hESC identity but also aging and the onset of age-related diseases. Moreover, one of the next challenges is to define how other proteostasis pathways impinge upon hESC function. We hypothesize that, in addition to the proteasome, hESCs differentially regulate other subcellular stress response pathways designed to protect them from disequilibrium in the folding and degradation of their proteome. We will perform a comprehensive study of proteostasis of hESCs and mimic this network in somatic cells to alleviate age-related diseases. Finally, we will determine whether loss of proteostasis promotes somatic stem cell (SC) exhaustion, which is one of the most obvious characteristics of the aging process and contributes to tissue degeneration. By using mouse models we will examine whether sustained proteostasis delays neural SC exhaustion. Our research will have an impact in several fields such as stem cell research, neurogenesis, proteostasis, aging and age-related diseases.