UL Tenured Professor Inta Mieriņa: The road to the European Research Council grant was not easy

It was announced on December 3 of last year that you are a grant recipient. What has been accomplished since then?

Quite a long time passed before the contract was formally concluded, as a lot of time was required to coordinate various ethics procedures with the European Commission (EC). The Commission looks extremely strictly at various issues related to personal data protection, an ethical approach to informed consent, etc. So only on June 1 did we officially start the project.

What could be the risks related to personal data? Why has such attention been paid to this?

One of the things that concerned the Commission’s representatives was, for example, that companies would be hired to carry out sociological surveys on our behalf. The Commission was very interested in ensuring that these companies, God forbid, would not collect any unnecessary data. There was also the question of how we would be able to control that these companies do not leak any information about respondents or collect any potentially sensitive data. So it was not only about how we can coordinate and oversee the process while complying with all European data protection regulations, but also about ensuring that the contracted companies do the same. Therefore, sometimes we had to choose technically cumbersome solutions—for example, we decided that the companies recruiting participants would invite these people to take part in our interviews, and instead of passing their contact information to us, they would ask the participants themselves to get in touch with us.

There were also questions related to working with sensitive groups, since we also plan to conduct focus group discussions with refugees from Ukraine. Of course, we will inform them about all personal data protection procedures, but still the question arose of how these people will perceive it and whether they will fully understand what they are consenting to. And could it not happen, for example, that one person in a focus group knows another participant and might leak information about what that person has said? In short, there are many different nuances, but we must anticipate all these situations, because these are ERC grants, and I believe their ethical principles are stricter than almost anywhere else. This also forces us at the University of Latvia to learn, to think very carefully and precisely about data protection and research ethics. We are learning, our Ethics Committee is learning, our data security specialists are learning, as together we go step by step through this process and consider how to resolve these issues.

And we are talking about organizing research in four countries!

Yes, and that, of course, makes these ethical questions a bit more complicated, since the European Commission’s initial requirement was that we should obtain Ethics Committee approval in each of these countries. The question is, where could we even get it, given that we do not have cooperation partners at universities or institutes in those countries. There is no such thing as a national Ethics Committee, say, a Polish Social Sciences Ethics Committee – it simply doesn’t exist! Usually, such bodies are attached to universities.
We convinced them that we would not do it that way, and that instead we would follow the unified European data regulation, seeking opinions from the data protection authorities of the respective countries.

Another aspect that makes this study different and could be considered an innovation is that we would like to use fragments from interviews and focus group discussions, which will be filmed, in the project’s experimental phase. For example, we might cut a segment in which a person talks about their motivation for why they like or dislike migrants, and use it as background information shown to respondents in a quantitative survey, after which they would be asked about their attitudes toward admitting migrants. Then we would examine how certain narratives expressed by participants in our in-depth interviews or focus groups resonate with the broader public. This is a methodological innovation. But again, ethical questions arise—what happens to these video fragments? Because they show real people. Where will these videos be stored, how will they be used, and could they pose threats or risks to the participants?

In the social sciences, ethical requirements are becoming stricter with each passing year, and it takes a great deal of time and effort to ensure that everything is done properly.

And now everything, everything is planned and all the risks have been addressed.

We are still fine-tuning certain details. For example, when it comes to the video, we thought perhaps we could generate images with artificial intelligence but keep the original audio.

Create an avatar?

Yes, but we tested the latest options from every angle, and you can still see that it is an artificial person. A fake. In the context of our research methodology, that doesn’t work—once you see that it’s fake, it immediately influences attitudes. We can’t do that. A real person is very important.

What else is possible? We could play only the audio, but again, that’s not what we wanted. We also have what’s called an expert panel, which will assist and advise me when necessary. It includes specialists from different disciplines and countries, as well as researchers with experience specifically in ethics, data, and methodology. We discuss these issues with them too, to decide on the best approach. I think we will settle on some middle ground.

At times we do feel frustrated—how much longer can we wrestle with all these ethics and data security issues! But it is important. In a way, here in Central and Eastern Europe, we are not used to this. We have tended to take a more relaxed and freer approach.
I think partly it’s also because our own people are simply not well enough informed about their rights. That is changing, and we need to adapt. These major projects put us on track, and we have no choice but to do everything as correctly as possible.

Have you already formed your team?

We are currently in the project phase of building the team. To recruit postdoctoral researchers for the project, we have placed announcements in various sources, including EURAXESS, which mainly posts such opportunities, as well as on LinkedIn and ResearchGate. We have also informed various professional associations—sociologists, political scientists, historians, etc. All of these are fields relevant to the project. Now we are waiting for the results, and people are starting to apply.

We need people with expertise in the specific countries, since the research will take place in Latvia, Poland, Hungary, and Italy. That means we need specialists who speak each of these languages at the level of a native speaker and who are familiar with the culture, context, political life, and so on of the respective country. At the moment, there are quite a lot of applications from Poland and Italy, but fewer from Hungary. We are still waiting.

And in addition, of course, we are looking for a PhD student who will assist me in the project. As far as I know, this is the first attempt at the University of Latvia to offer a PhD position combined with doctoral studies. In other words, there is in fact a call announced for both a job in the project and doctoral studies. So this will be a person who combines both—similar to how it is done in many places abroad.

My research is very interdisciplinary, so we welcome people from sociology, political science, communication studies, international relations, as well as from the humanities, such as history and the field of social memory studies. Often, it is precisely by working in an interdisciplinary environment that different innovations arise, because then we look at issues from perspectives we are not used to. This generates fresh ideas. That is always very valuable!

For how long are all these job positions in your project planned?

Our postdoctoral researchers will work for almost five years. I want to emphasize that we want to work as a team here on site, not remotely. To have a real team spirit. Until the new LU House of Letters is built, our workplace will be in Riga, at Kalpaka Boulevard 4.

I myself once worked as a postdoctoral researcher in a similar project in Warsaw, and I know how much it means when you actually come to work, collaborate with everyone, share ideas. That is very, very important.

In this project, I consider one of my tasks not only to achieve the project’s goals—of course, the scientific goals are the top priority—but also to enable and help our team members to grow. As a postdoc myself, it meant a great deal to me. It was an opportunity I had never had before—to really focus on one project, on one topic. Calmly, without being constantly pulled in different directions with many other parallel projects and ideas. In Latvian science, it is rare to be able to sit down with one task, make it your only responsibility, and just work on it. No distractions, no one asking you to lecture on the side or prepare conference proceedings. That greatly increases productivity and excellence.

Do you expect that colleagues from Italy, Poland, and Hungary will also come to work here?

Yes, absolutely! At first, there were concerns about whether anyone would want to come here from sunny Italy, but they do! The competition for postdoctoral positions is huge. In fact—for any academic position.

Could it not happen that, in the course of the research, the relevance of the issue will diminish? The war in Ukraine, hopefully, will end, and the refugee flow will subside.

If you work, for example, with some practical research where you need to develop policy recommendations, then, of course, it may happen that by the time you finish the study, the situation has changed and the recommendations are no longer useful. In our case, however, the main goal of the European Research Council grant is scientific excellence—that is, contributing to our understanding of society. This contribution is not situational. It does not depend on a specific period of time. What we want to uncover are much deeper connections that will apply not only to this historical period in which we are living, but which may also help us explain other historical periods we have gone through, and help us understand similar situations elsewhere in the world. It will therefore have a broader scientific impact than simply offering some recommendations at a given moment. So this worries me less.

Of course, we are aware—and I also pointed this out to the reviewers of the project proposal—that the situation may change. And we very much hope that the war in Ukraine will end and that people will be able to return. But in any case, what we have planned will still be possible to carry out.

We must reckon with the reality that exists at a given moment, which may differ somewhat from what it was a year or two ago, but a significant part of the study will also be based on retrospective data—that is, data that is available to us over a very long period of time, and as much as we need it. For example, media data. We will analyze narratives about migrants in the media and compare narratives about Ukrainian refugees with those about other types of refugees, for example, from Syria, Russia, or Afghanistan. Retrospective sources also include politicians’ speeches. We will analyze how refugees and migrants are discussed in parliament or in the Cabinet of Ministers. I believe these data will be relevant and extremely interesting in any case.

The key word here is narratives—the way we talk about these issues, how people talk. Because often, in surveys, we see some figures, but lack deeper explanation. That is what we will try to do in this project—go into the nuances and understand why and how attitudes are formed, and why certain groups we include in the notion of “us” and care for as our own, while other groups we still reject.

I would also like to ask about the road to the grant—I know it has been long, and you did not succeed in getting funding on the first try.

On the fourth. I don’t know what kind of genius one has to be to get it on the first try, although there are such cases. It was the fourth time that I reached the final. There is a two-stage application process. You apply, and if your application is good enough, you move on to the second stage and are invited to interviews.

Did you apply each time with the same idea?

The idea that I would apply for a European Research Council grant came to me a very long time ago—at the time when I was working on such a grant at the University of Warsaw under the supervision of Professor Natalia Letki. That was when I realized what a great opportunity it is—to carry out ambitious ideas with a small team. That is exactly what I have always wanted—independence to do what you want. At that moment, I set my mind on it, but I also learned that the grant is very difficult to obtain and that it is one of the most prestigious European research grants. I took it as a challenge—to prove to myself that I can do it.

The first time I applied was in 2016, almost ten years ago. It was on a different topic, about emigrant diasporas. I made it to the final but didn’t get the grant. The next year I applied again, once again made it to the final, and again didn’t get it. After that, I could no longer qualify for the so-called Starting Grant, that is, the initial grant, because the required number of years after completing my PhD had already passed. So I applied for a Consolidator Grant, this time with a different topic. At that point, I found the question of Ukraine very interesting. Since I had worked on research into attitudes toward migrants, I was able to combine my knowledge from memory studies, done together with colleagues at the Oral History Centre, with my knowledge in political sociology, and with collaboration with colleagues in international relations. In quite a short time, I prepared the application, again made it to the final, and… again didn’t get it!

Didn’t you feel discouraged?

The hardest part is getting to the final, to the interview. Then, theoretically, the statistics say you have a 50:50 chance of receiving the grant. And since it was already my fourth time, of course the question arose—what am I doing wrong?

At that time, I had just been appointed as a tenured professor. First, that allowed me to improve my CV, and second, I suddenly had available funds that I could use to hire consultants who helped me tremendously in preparing for the interview—something I had not managed to succeed in before.

Were these local consultants?

No, they were Australians of Dutch origin. We always spoke at about six in the morning, when it was afternoon for them in Australia. We prepared thoroughly—over the course of two months we spoke literally every couple of days. The consultants asked me very tricky questions about my proposal—what’s new there, why is it needed, and so on. That helped me organize my thoughts a lot, so later, for the first time, when I stood before the evaluation panel—which consists of 12 to 17 people—I had the feeling that I was ready for all the questions. There were no surprises; I was truly prepared, and that left a good impression, because it was clear that I understood what I was talking about.

What I want to say is that such grants do not just fall from the sky. It is very hard work.

For example, I organized so-called mock interview panel presentations—that is, trial interviews—where I invited people to whom I presented my research idea, and who asked me very tricky questions, trying to trip me up. Previously, my mistake had been that in these trial interviews I invited people I knew, who worked on related issues—closer or more distant colleagues.

Was that a mistake because these people were more favorably inclined?

Yes, more favorably than someone from the outside would be. However, I consulted both with Professor Ambainis, who is the only person in Latvia to have received this grant before me, and with Dace Dzenovska, who had just the previous year received a Consolidator Grant, though from the University of Oxford. Professor Ambainis suggested that this panel should be strategically built so that it resembles the actual expert panel I would be facing. It is possible to find information about them—at least about those who had been members in previous years. I really studied each of these people. I read their publications. I literally had a portfolio on each of them. I tried to put myself in their shoes and think about what questions I would ask in their place—for example, if I were a German demographer studying Ukrainian migrants from a certain angle, or if I were, say, a British historian. That allowed me to anticipate and design a mock panel that would resemble the real one.

How long is the interview?

First, there is a five-minute presentation. That, of course, was polished to perfection, because the length has to be exact to the second—you cannot go even one second over, otherwise they will just cut you off.

You could say that in each of the previous rounds I learned what not to do. For example, one year I had prepared a presentation that went well beyond the allotted time. I was interrupted. And of course, after that, in the stress, you can no longer answer the questions well, because you are thrown off balance. Another year they told me: “Well, the methodology is very nice, very elegant, but what are the main questions and hypotheses? What do you want to prove?” Then I realized—you need a hypothesis, you need a solid theoretical foundation, theoretical contribution. All this experience was very valuable, and in the end it led me to a successful result.

Unlike researchers from other countries, we are in a very difficult position, because we don’t have so many people to consult with, not so many successful candidates who could help. When I was writing the application, I had never seen a single example of a successful application, so it was entirely my interpretation of what I imagined should be written. It cannot be compared to how it is in other countries, for example, Finland or Italy, where there are entire databases with many such successful applications to look at and be inspired by.

Estonia and Lithuania have been much more successful in this respect. (Estonia has received 21 ERC grants in total, Lithuania seven.) For example, Estonians have a much more developed system of how they help each other, how the project office supports them, how they learn, how they find consultants. [..]

Now you are the local expert!

I consider myself a complete anomaly, honestly! I believe my success is based on a combination of accidental factors, including the fact that I had previously worked on a European Research Council grant, so I more or less knew what the team might look like and what kind of tasks could be involved. Another factor is that I have long worked, and continue to work, as an evaluator for the European Commission—specifically, I evaluate Horizon and other applications. That is also an excellent experience, helping me understand what and how to write, and what the evaluators are looking for.

I also have interdisciplinary experience. I have never worked in one very narrow field. I’ve always been interested in jumping into something else, looking at things differently from the perspective of another discipline. When you do that, you suddenly notice something different. And that difference is often interesting.

In some ways, it is very difficult for us here in Latvia to be competitive when it comes to this type of grant, because we don’t have the institutional foundation, resources, and experience, or the support system to the same extent as in many other places. But in another sense, the fact that we are somewhat on the periphery and perhaps not always inside research bubbles tied to certain ideas gives us the opportunity to look at things from a unique angle. In my research experience, there have been several such cases.

It is important to recognize that the vast majority of knowledge in the social sciences is produced in Western countries, and this creates a very Western-centered knowledge base, which has its shortcomings. Let me give you an example. In the field of social capital, Robert Putnam is often cited. He has a thesis that if people do not trust one another, they simply need to come together, socialize, and talk, and then they will start trusting more, and everything will fall into place. Reading that, I, as a person from Eastern Europe, say—no, I know from my research that sometimes the opposite happens. For example, young people join political party youth organizations, come with great enthusiasm, and end up completely disillusioned. Their entire trust collapses, and they leave with less trust than when they arrived. So it all depends very much on what kinds of groups we are talking about.

If a scientist now dared to aim for something like an ERC grant, would you share your experience and give advice?

Absolutely, because I know how much that would have helped me!

Interestingly, my supervisor at the University of Warsaw never shared her application. She felt that she had earned it on her own and that others should achieve it by their own efforts as well. We also spoke with people from Lithuania and Estonia, and they have a similar problem: the pool of successful applications is small, so perhaps it would be worthwhile to create a joint database.

Could the object of research also be why we have so few such grants and fellowships?

Those who aim for it need to think about it well in advance—for example, to make sure their CV is prepared, that they have project management experience, scholarships, awards. Also, a certain number of scientific publications in good scientific journals. But many choose the easier route—better to have more publications, but in slightly lower-level journals. Because then you can be sure the publication will come through, whereas getting into a top-level journal is, of course, harder and can take longer… But if a person chooses the easier way, it can backfire later. It is better to have five publications in high-level journals than 20 in lower-level ones. It also matters whether you are one of 15 authors, or the sole or lead author, because the ERC grant application reviewers look for evidence of excellence in the applicant’s CV.

So you really need to think about these things strategically, and prepare for them for many years. I know we have very strong young researchers, and I very much hope there will be more who dare to try.

Full interview in Latvian: UL magazine “Alma Mater”, Autumn 2025.