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As a growing number of studies have recently implicated important developmental models and mechanisms in the cusp patterning and overall crown morphology of certain mammal taxa, it was essential to assess the relevance of these processes to the primate dentition, and their potential implications to studies of primate crown morphology. In doing so, this also allowed for the assessment of current primate crown nomenclature schemes, which growing evidence has suggested may be critically flawed. This thesis focused on an examination of the enamel-dentine junction (EDJ) of lower molars in a taxonomically broad sample of primate taxa to address these two concerns. This work represents the first attempt to gain a broad perspective of crown patterning across all primates at the EDJ surface, and from this, present a more appropriate and unified assessment of cusp patterning and nomenclature that acknowledges the important developmental processes responsible for cusp expression. The first chapter of the thesis reviewed the literature associated with studies of EDJ morphology, the recent advances in developmental biology relevant to the mammalian dentition, and the current state of the tooth crown nomenclature. Chapter 3 assessed the multiple phylogenetic and developmental components that appear to be responsible for crown patterning in mammals, and considered their application and consequence to the study of primate crown morphology. Important examples of previously unrecognized aspects of growth are introduced here, and considered within the context of these developmental models. Chapter 4 employed geometric morphometrics to examine the covariation between accessory cusp presence and other aspects of molar crown shape in a population of macaque lower second molars, and demonstrates that while current development models used to interpret variation in cusp patterning are broadly appropriate in macaque molars, they do not explain all manifestations of accessory cusp expression. Chapter 5 focused on the first comprehensive analysis of variation in cusp patterning on mandibular molars within the major primate clades and from this assessed the applicability of the current nomenclature schemes to each clade. Results reveal numerous new patterns of lower molar accessory cusp expression in primates, and highlight the frequent discrepancies between the expected patterns of variation inferred from the current literature and the new patterns of expected variation discovered in this study. Chapter 6 provides a discussion of the broader results of this dissertation within the context of our current understanding of primate tooth crown development.

Introduction: While Civil Military Relationships (CMRel) have occurred for hundreds of years, they have changed dramatically in the last 30. First, there was a period of increasing cooperation driven by United Nations interventions in the 1980s and 90s. Then a contraction, as the impact of blurred lines between humanitarians and militaries became more obvious during the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. The last decade in particular has seen increasing securitisation of health, driven on the one hand by the global war on terror and counter-terrorism legislation, and on the other by fear about increasing globalisation and the subsequent risks of transnational infectious diseases. Current guidance is driven by the civilian desire to re-establish clarity about what is humanitarian and what is not, but the lines between humanitarianism, development and peacebuilding have all but vanished-with the CIA using polio vaccination programmes to cover the hunt for Bin Laden and the ICRC supporting the Pakistan government in the routine delivery of emergency care. CMRel are likely to happen more often. While traditional Disaster Relief CMRel have not gone away, as the impacts of climate change and increasing urbanisation mean that populations are increasingly vulnerable to catastrophe, CMRel driven by transnational threats and global competition mean that they will also happen in a range of new contexts. Methods: This is a mixed methods study. The literature was scrutinised through a combination of narrative, hermaneutic and systematised short-cut reviews. Data was also collected in the form of semi-structured interviews with 37 experts experienced in the civil-military arena, be it in Disaster Relief, Conflict, or other settings. Data was also captured using questionnaires, including the first analysis of CMRel in the field-on the United Nations Mission in South Sudan-and a comparison of various CMRel scenarios in order to validate a proposed typology. Finally, Field notes were taken according to ethnographic guidelines on a range of operational deployments and at relevant conferences, meetings and courses worldwide over the course of the PhD (2018-2022). Content analysis of interview and text data was undertaken using nVIVO software (QSR International) and themes identified, which respondents felt described or modified CMRel. There was some limited quantitative analysis to assist in triangulation of the themes (using word frequency counts) and validation of the typology. Results: The literature reviews found that International Humanitarian Law specifically "made of the military medical professional a special case, a neutral resource and Humanitarian asset, who served all combatants" (Koch, 2006). However, this concept appears to have been largely dismissed outside the warfighting context. Certainly, the fact that Healthcare itself is a natural civil-military partnership in many parts of the world barely features in either the civilian or military discourse. Warfighting and Disaster Relief Operations (DRO) CMRel are clearly defined, and the civilian and military guidance is generally consistent. In DRO the key principles are of 'Last Resort' use of the military, ensuring that the overwhelming onus of the response is civilian owned and led. The military contribution should be time-limited, designed to fill critical Humanitarian gaps and distinct from the civilian element. In Complex Humanitarian Emergencies the picture is less clear. While guidance exists, there is still a divergence between the military position where CMRel support the mission, and the IASC guidelines which focus on distinction and distance, to protect the principled approach of Humanitarian actors. In peacebuilding/development there is little guidance. A typology is derived which helps to understand the wide range of CMRel that can occur, and the confusing nomenclature that results. It postulates that there are three main types, depending on the primary driver: Military-led CMRel, Civilian-led and Health driven. Competitive can also occur but is infrequent. Each type has different characteristics in terms of the contexts where they are most likely to occur and their impact. The types can be mapped against different scenarios, using three axes: level of engagement (strategic to tactical), context (stable to highly unstable), and health motivation (humanitarian or development). This demonstrates that in some contexts there may be the potential for several different types of CMRel to occur, and two in particular might be deemed higher risk than others. One (at the tactical level, in conflict) is well recognised from the literature review; one (Peacetime Military Engagement in stable contexts) is not. The typology was validated through a series of scenarios at different points on the map. The consensus amongst civilians and military respondents was marked, and both proposed areas of high risk were identified, validating the typology. CMRel themes arising from conflict and non-conflict contexts were evaluated through the interviews and also case studies based on field notes. While many themes are well recognised, many are new: in particular the clear signal that Medical CMRel are different from those undertaken by the wider military. There was very little overlap between the themes that arose from conflict and non-conflict settings, which is not previously described. An earlier framework for CMRel is modified to explain the observed themes. The new CMRel Trinity proposes that they are based on three pillars: Physical effectiveness, Coordination and conceptual development, and a Moral Component. This framework accommodates all the themes and explains the differences observed. This is followed by an exploration of the role of militaries in diplomacy and health system capacity building (Defence Healthcare Engagement, DHE). Synthesis of the preceding findings results in a framework for effective DHE. The cases for and against closer medical CMRel are explored and it is concluded that Medical CMRel should be closer. Barriers to this are outlined and a way forward proposed. Conclusions: This thesis presents a new way of looking at Medical CMRel. It identifies areas of consensus, debate and contradiction in the literature, as well as areas that are poorly described. It derives a typology that is able to encompass all Medical CMRel, depending on the main drivers and contexts for the relationship. The typology is then validated. The marked differences in the themes important to CMRel, expressed in interviews and observed in the case studies, are explained by a novel model whereby CMRel comprise Physical, Coordination/Conceptual and Moral components. A neglected area in the literature, Defence Engagement, is explored and understood. Together this thesis allows an understanding of CMRel, what makes them harmful or beneficial, and how they can be optimised in future that was previously missing from the literature. In so doing 15 papers and one book chapter have been published to date. The work also forms the basis of the UK Defence Medical Services' Defence Engagement Strategy.

The synthesis of high quality simulated data from event generators is essential in the search for new physics at collider experiments. Modern event generator algorithms use Monte Carlo processes to simulate the evolution of an event from the collision of high energy particles to the formation of long-lived particles. One of the major building blocks of the event generation process is the QCD parton shower. However, despite being a key aspect of modern event generation, the core algorithms which simulate the showering process have remained unchanged since the 1980s, and will become a limiting factor as we move to an era of higher energy and higher luminosity experiments. With the rapid development of quantum computation, dedicated algorithms are required which exploit the potential that quantum computing provides to address problems in high energy physics. In this thesis, we present three novel quantum algorithms for the simulation of a QCD parton shower. The first algorithm provides a proof-of-principle, classical Monte Carlo inspired approach with the ability to simulate two shower steps of a collinear QCD model. By exploiting the compact circuit architecture of the quantum walk, one can drastically reduce the quantum resources required to simulate a shower step. The second algorithm shows that, in this framework, the quantum parton shower can be extended to simulate realistic shower depths whilst using fewer quantum resources. Finally, the third algorithm utilises a discrete QCD approach to parton showering to include kinematics in the shower, simulating a dipole cascade. In this construction, the algorithm has achieved the first data comparison between synthetic data produced using a Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) device, and ''real-life" archival collider data from the Large Electron Positron collider. The three algorithms represent the development of quantum algorithms for the simulation of parton showers, acting as a first step towards a fully quantum simulation of a high energy collision event.

Systematic reviews aim to use pre-specified and explicitly described methods. This entails an element of formalisation in which methods are described according to a fixed structure. However, qualitative studies show that too much emphasis on formalisation can obscure how expert judgement is required even after clearly defined methods are established. Thus, there is a gap between how systematic review methods are formalised in guidance and reported in systematic reviews, and how they are carried out in practice using undisclosed expert judgement. The aim of this thesis is to describe and bridge the gap between formalisation and expert judgement with respect to searching for studies for systematic reviews, with a particular focus on forward citation searching and web searching. Forward citation searching and web searching are useful search methods to consider due to observed variability in both if and how they are used in systematic reviews, in contrast to searches of bibliographic databases which are routine in almost all systematic reviews. To this end, the thesis seeks to fulfil three objectives: first, to formalise the conduct and reporting of forward citation searching and web searching in systematic reviews; secondly, to describe and evaluate the conduct and reporting of forward citation searching and web searching in systematic reviews; thirdly, to explore the role of expert judgement when using forward citation searching and web searching. Both aggregative and configurative review types are considered throughout. The findings show that formalised approaches to searching are apparent in guidance to different degrees. However, systematic reviews do not always reflect formalised guidance. Qualitative investigation describes hitherto hidden practical knowledge which underpins searching decisions. The thesis draws these findings together and proposes that guidance on searching for studies should be framed in terms of the practical understanding which informs how searching is undertaken rather than limited to describing recommended processes.

My creative writing piece, a novella called mm-hm, addresses the lack of representations of creatives in contemporary fiction set in Cardiff. mm-hm is set in a reimagined, near-future Cardiff, it focuses on the story of two brothers, using several inter-linking narrative strands and multiple third-person points of view. It employs elements from dystopian science-fiction to explore what conditions creatives may have to live and produce work under in the near-future. Through mm-hm and my accompanying commentary I have questioned if, rather than seeking new forms of expression reflecting contemporary Welsh creative cultures, we are left with a discursive sphere dominated by superficial and repetitive notions of reativity, identity and community. The commentary is a critical reading of the topic and aims to contextualise the novel within its subject area. This is an interdisciplinary discussion framed by the historical development of creative cultures and how they have used self-published representations of themselves to produce group-based, regional identities. From the early Twentieth Century both avant-garde art movements and post-war countercultures played a key role in producing distinct, regional, group-based cultural identities. This relationship between self-publishing and group-based identities has undergone significant change following the advent of digital, creative industries and the speed at which the digital economy codifies and exploits creative activity. Using this approach I will question if the above changes have limited some spaces within which creative cultures can develop new forms of expression and if we have a discursive sphere where fiction set in Cardiff is almost devoid of representations of contemporary creatives.

Smartphones are ubiquitous and frequently used as learning tools, which makes the design of educational apps an important area of research. A key issue is designing apps to encourage engagement while maintaining focus on the educational aspects of the app. Two design features that may encourage both engagement and learning are immediate feedback and difficulty level. Evidence is presented linking the two design features to the two outcomes both directly and with Flow experience as a mediator. This study investigates the effects of difficulty and immediate feedback on engagement and learning performance in the context of a Spanish learning app. An app has been developed which teaches Spanish phrases. Two experiments have been conducted. The first experiment was a laboratory experiment where the app was used to investigate the effect of immediate feedback as well as the usability of the app. Some evidence was found that immediate feedback elicited higher levels of Flow compared to delayed feedback. The app had an acceptable level of usability. The second experiment released the app on Google Play to investigate the effect of immediate feedback and difficulty level in a real-world scenario. Evidence was found linking difficulty level to both learning and engagement. The evidence for immediate feedback suggested that this effect is weaker than other effects impacting learning and engagement, such as the spacing effect. Implications of these results are discussed.

Communication aids are an aided AAC medium that can improve communication for those who otherwise experience difficulties with speaking. Voice output communication aids (VOCAs) provide speech output based on the user's input and typically use speech synthesis technology. VOCAs present a challenging design brief. Using technology to support face to face communication is a unique challenge that is further compounded by the fact that those accessing VOCAs may require alternative methods of control and/or representation of language. VOCAs are consequently often perceived as slow and ineffectual by those who use them. Design thus offers a considerable potential role in improving the outcomes of VOCA use. This thesis collates a body of work related to the design of VOCAs. The work described investigated different aspects of VOCA design and this commentary explores how these aspects of design impact on the usability of VOCAs. Five publications by the author and a commentary are presented with the aim of demonstrating that the body of work is substantial, coherent, and impactful. The included publications were derived from a number of projects investigating and developing VOCAs and assistive technologies in which the author was involved.

Chapter One: Introduction: This chapter will introduce the background to the study, the focus and significance of the research, and identify the aims and objectives of the research. The chapter will also include the research questions, proposed methodology and contribution to knowledge. Chapter 2: Literature Review: This chapter will provide an overview of cross-cultural relationship management in higher education. A review of the current cultural difference models including Hofstede's cultural dimensions and the concept of psychic distance. The chapter will further explore strategic relationship development, international partnership typologies, and the role of internationalisation in higher education. Staff knowledge, experience, and selection will be discussed in the context of higher education. Identification of a theoretical framework will be made to enable exploration of the entities and processes adopted by the institutions to support the analysis. Chapter 3: Research Methodology: This chapter will contain a critical review of available research methods. A review of the different research stages, research philosophy and approaches will be analysed. The focus of the research will be identified, and the research design and strategy discussed. The case study approach will be detailed including design, questions, propositions, analysis tools and reliability and validity. Case selection will be discussed for both institutions on participants followed by a description of the analysis methods adopted. Chapter 4: Results and Discussion: The chapter will focus on the research collected from the semi-structured open ended interviews with all the participant supported by the embedded observational research and document analysis. Thematic analysis will be employed to identify key themes arising from the data collection in relation to the research questions. Chapter 5 – Conclusions and Recommendations: The chapter will evaluate the findings of the research in relation to the aims and objectives reviewing the theoretical framework to identify key areas of interest. Relationships to the models examined in the literature review will be related to the findings of the case study and any generalisable recommendation will be made.

The pancreas may regenerate without stem cells by induction of cellular plasticity between differentiated cells. Although essential for the remarkable capacity for pancreas regeneration, this property entails a vulnerability to cancer through acinar-to-ductal metaplasia and dedifferentiation by epithelial-mesenchymal transition, which contributes in largely unknown ways to metastasis in pancreatic cancer. As with most solid tumours, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma develops at the interface of cellular plasticity, genomic instability, and tumour microenvironments. However, current methodologies of analysing tumour tissue are unable to measure these modalities jointly. Here, by developing a method for epitope barcoding measured by cyclical imaging of antibody binding with confocal microscopes, this thesis explores the utility of multicolour cell labelling to investigate how polyclonal cancer evolution relates to epithelial-mesenchymal transition. The assembled barcodes consist of combinations of epitopes attached to a fluorophore and a nuclear-localisation signal, which enables cell sorting, quantitative image analysis, and effective decoding by statistical analysis. Using subcutaneous mouse models of pancreatic cancer, this thesis demonstrates that isogenic epitope labelling can detect epithelial clonal expansion events co-localised with fibroblasts in the tumour microenvironment. The epitope barcode constructs were stably expressed in mouse tumours for at least 2-3 weeks, proving feasibility of multicolour lineage tracing with cyclical imaging. By amending the barcodes with 8bp tags sequenced with single-cell RNA-seq, transcriptomic scores for epithelial-mesenchymal transition showed evidence for selectional acquisition of epithelial lineages during subcutaneous colonisation. Such labelled isogenic cell populations were amenable to Luria-Delbrück fluctuation analysis detecting lineages with epigenetic inheritance of cell states. Altogether, epitope barcoding and cyclical imaging form a compelling experimental strategy for investigating the clonality of transdifferentiation in the microenvironment of pancreatic cancer.

Guanine quadruplexes folding in single-strand DNA have been extensively studied for some time. But far less attention has been paid to systems arising in duplex DNA or RNA. Furthermore, the literature shows an apparent absence of quadruplex systems generated exclusively by other nucleic acid bases. With guanine quadruplexes (G4s) as a benchmark, a comparison is made here with equivalent complexes folding in DNA and RNA when derived from cytosine, thymine and adenine. Molecular dynamics simulations determined cytosine and thymine models in DNA as relatively fragile systems, but all non-guanine RNA models were found to be stable into biologically relevant times. Uniquely biplanar or triplanar adenine quadruplexes (A4s) have ostensibly not been described. Adenine models constructed for this work were resolved in silico with stabilities comparable to known guanine equivalents. These complexes achieved further significance with the advent of SARS-CoV-2. RNA viruses are characterised by a poly-adenylated structure capping the genomic terminus. This poly(A) tail is crucial to a cascade of viral replicative activity occurring both extra- and intra-cellular during infection. As a route to proposing potential chemotherapy, this study suggests simple biplanar A4s may fold in this poly-adenylated domain. Notably, mRNA configured as a biplanar A4, shows less dynamic activity than DNA equivalents. This observation may be especially relevant in a physiological context. In contrast to well-characterised guanine quadruplexes, co-ordination with cations appears not to impact on stability. These conclusions may apply to SARS-CoV-2, its variants and other pathogenic RNA viruses. The thesis also infers models of potential interactions between small nucleolar RNAs and long non-coding RNAs may have biological relevance. Non-canonical base-pairing in some instances suggests a molecular mechanism for dysfunction in the development of the embryonic pre-frontal cortex.

Current methods to detect and monitor oil contamination in soils rely upon geophysical techniques or direct sampling and testing and their use amongst the global community is limited by their complexity and cost. Recent studies demonstrate that Visible-Near Infrared Spectroscopy (VNIRS) may be a rapid and reliable method but there are limitations due to uncertainties over the effects of soil composition, moisture content and oil degradation. A laboratory-based study has been conducted that examined the VNIRS properties of artificially-prepared and natural soil samples representing different soil compositions and different moisture contents. Synthetic crude oil was added to samples to obtain oil concentrations of 0.25 % to 40 % and results were used to derive two new oil indices termed the 'Oil Index' (Oix) and 'TPH Index' (TPHix). Analyses of Oix versus % Oil yielded a series of polynomial regressions with a discrete inflection termed the 'Critical Point' (CP). This was found to vary with soil composition, and in particular, clay mineralogy. CP also varied with moisture content. Comparison with the literature indicates that the variability described by the Oix-CP was related to sorption/desorption phenomena and may a have direct relation with the sorption capacity of a soil. Analyses of TPHix demonstrate that this more complex index provides a robust method to estimate oil content in soils, especially at low concentrations, though measures will still need to be modified with respect to soil class. Analyses of time-series data demonstrate that VNIRS methods were comparable to conventional gravimetric methods but yield other useful information related to oil degradation. The research, the first of its kind, demonstrates that VNIRS can be used to accurately measure and monitor crude oil contents in soils. Further, the technique provides insight into soil-oil-water interaction where there are few established techniques available to researchers.

This thesis presents multiple results concerning the cryptanalysis and design of isogeny-based primitives and advanced protocols which aim to provide security in the presence of classical and quantum adversaries. The problems underlying these cryptographic protocols often provide additional information to the adversary such as the degree of a secret isogeny or the evaluation of the isogeny on given points. We study the impact of this additional information on the security of protocols at different levels, spanning from foundational key agreement to more advanced cryptographic constructions with real-world applications. First, we consider different attacks on the foundational problem underlying (variants of) the Supersingular Isogeny Diffie–Hellman key exchange (SIDH), which reveals torsion point images under a secret isogeny. We extend previous torsion point attacks to slightly less imbalanced parameter sets and we present a reduction of the problem underlying certain overstretched and imbalanced SIDH variants to an abelian hidden shift problem that can be solved in subexponential time on a quantum computer. We briefly summarise the idea of a recent series of devastating attacks on SIDH due to Castryck and Decru [CD22], Maino and Martindale [MM22], and Robert [Rob22a]. Second, we cryptanalyse multiple isogeny-based hardness assumptions used in the security proofs of more advanced cryptographic constructions such as undeniable signatures by Jao and Soukharev and an OPRF by Boneh, Kogan and Woo. We provide efficient attacks against the hardness assumptions and we show how the attacks extend to breaking the advanced cryptographic protocols themselves. For the suggested parameters, the attacks allow us to forge undeniable signatures and break the pseudorandomness of the OPRF. These attacks predate the aforementioned papers attacking SIDH. Third, we provide an efficient algorithm to compute a secret isogeny of a specific degree between supersingular elliptic curves given their endomorphism rings and some torsion point images under the secret isogeny. This reduction of the problem underlying SIDHlike protocols to the problem of computing endomorphism rings provides a new lower bound on the size of the finite field the supersingular curves need to be defined over. Finally, we present a new group action of an imaginary quadratic order's class group on the set of oriented supersingular curves, such that the class group structure is easily computable. This data is required to uniquely represent and efficiently act by arbitrary group elements, which is necessary for example in the CSI-FiSh signature scheme. The index-calculus algorithm used in CSI-FiSh to compute the class group structure of the acting class group in CSIDH-512 rules out much larger parameters, a limitation that is particularly problematic in light of the ongoing debate regarding the quantum security of cryptographic group actions. A careful choice of parameters allows us to instantiate our group action in practice for a security level equivalent to CSIDH-1024, a security level currently out of reach using the index-calculus-based methods.

This thesis examines collective and artist-run performance producing practices in the UK in the period of austerity from 2008-2018. This thesis examines collective practices in opposition to the rhetoric, logic, and impacts of neoliberal austerity, while examining how they are, at one and the same time, caught up within them, and frequently complicit with them. I argue that collectives can temporarily reverse and rework the negative material and affective impacts of austerity through gathering artists and producers with similar practices and concerns together in the same space, producing social and affective spaces that feel and operate differently to the rest of the artistic infrastructure, and sharing material and immaterial resources. As I go on to establish, austerity works by making people feel precarious, uncared for, alone, indebted, hopeless, and disentitled. At their best, collectives work by making people feel the opposite. In gathering together in their own space, these artists and producers feel and imagine the possibility of a different way of doing things. These spaces exist to present the performance of others, to support the organisers' individual practices and administrative work, to run festivals and performance events, and to organise around particular issues. An analysis of these functions of collective practice structure the main body of this thesis, which begins by examining collective and artist-run models of performance venues, then studios, then festivals, and finally, networks. In each chapter I examine a specific negative affect of austerity which these groups seek to resist. These are: insecurity or precarity, neglect or a lack of care, isolation or disconnectedness, and hopelessness or a lack of access to futurity. I show, using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of field, Henri Lefebvre's production of space, and Sara Ahmed's work on affect, how the practices of each structural model of collective and artist-run organisation responds to and reworks these conditions by producing affective spaces of security, care, communitas, and hope. These spaces, and the practices that create them, are embedded within the wider context of neoliberalism and austerity which they oppose, and are thus temporary and susceptible to reproducing exploitative and exclusive practices. The task of this thesis is to reveal the immediate positive affective and material impacts of these collectives in opposition to austerity, as well as the complexity of the problems that arise as these groups interact with a wider context over which they have no control. Despite the limitations of collective practice, this thesis argues that through providing relief from the negative affective impacts of austerity, it can provide vital support to artists, practices, and communities during difficult economic conditions, and allow them to survive, to organise, and to imagine and enact better and more liveable futures in the field of performance.

This study is an exploration of the learning value of self-reflexivity within practices of interpretation, undertaken in the context of photography criticism. Reflexivity, understood in this study as the practice of making the researcher's presence explicit within a research-based interpretation, is an established part of research methodology in a number of disciplines, but is rarely employed in writing about photography and is seldom discussed in the discipline's theoretical literature. The study addresses this apparent 'gap' by exploring self-reflexivity's potential to produce metacognitive and other learning gains, and personal growth, both for researchers/practitioners of photography criticism and for readers/audiences of criticism. The study has found that self-reflexivity based on critical self-reflection and disclosure can reveal the pervasive entanglement of thinking and feeling in critical interpretation, and the links between thinking/feeling and the researcher/practitioner's life history. These links, which indicate that criticality can have an affective and biographical basis, are not generally recognised explicitly in photography writing, and the findings support the case for a new, 'postcritical' form of criticism - one interested in subjectivity and the operations of feeling - that is beginning to emerge within the discipline and cognate fields. More broadly, the study has developed an expanded conception of self-reflection as a mechanism for producing learning and growth when used within a self-reflexive interpretive framework. The study has found that by revealing links between thinking, feeling and life history, self-reflection can generate transformed, enriched and extended forms of understanding about photographs, ourselves and the world, and forms of personal growth, in such a way that suggests it can lead to a 'new' or largely unrecognised threshold concept, understood as the most powerful type of learning concept, within practices of criticism. The capacity of self-reflection to lead to alteration and enrichment of interpretation in fields such as visual culture seems to be underexplored in practical education research, and the study thus makes a significant contribution to reflective practice studies as well as to threshold concepts research, with direct implications for how critical studies curricula within arts-based higher education are designed and how the subject might be taught and learned. The study was undertaken as a self-reflexive, practice-led research inquiry, first by the researcher (a practising photography critic and lecturer) working independently, and later with a group of eight academic colleagues acting as research participants. To produce its findings, the study has pioneered an innovative nine-step protocol for engaging in self-reflexive interpretation. Practical guidelines and protocols for undertaking reflexive research seem to be rare in any field and are thought to be unprecedented in photography criticism and related disciplines. The study's self-reflexive analytic protocol therefore represents a substantial contribution to interpretive research methodology, as well as an effective practical learning tool that is ready to use in formal education settings and beyond. The protocol is presented here, however, as the first iteration of a methodological tool that is likely to continue to evolve with further use.

This thesis investigates how teachers and other local actors in France and England have enacted national-level responses to the context of terrorism. These include the Great Mobilisation of the School for the Values of the Republic and the duty to promote fundamental British values, which aim to promote core national values among young people to promote social cohesion and build resilience to radicalisation. France's Policy for Preventing Violent Radicalisation in Schools and England's Prevent duty outline procedures for identifying and reporting suspected cases of radicalisation. The common emphasis on shared values reflects the transnational trend towards civic integration, wherein Western democracies have placed a greater emphasis on liberal-democratic values as a tool for the integration of migrants and minorities. Despite these convergent trends, there is a tendency in the comparative literature to contrast the British 'multicultural' approach to immigrant integration with the French 'republican' or 'assimilationist' approach. Drawing on eight school-based case studies and further interview and observational data, this thesis provides an empirically grounded account of how these particularistic policy traditions and convergent trends are reflected in the enactment of the policies at the local level, as well as in teachers' ideas. It finds that in both countries, policymakers and practitioners have drawn on institutionalised ideas and practices in their responses to recent terrorist attacks or their enactment of national policies, leading to some path dependencies. However, policymakers have also looked beyond prevailing paradigms in the face of emerging challenges. Some of the convergence observed at the national level is evident at the school level. The comparative research design also provides new insights into the governance of the two education systems and reveals that local actors in France have greater decision-making capacity than earlier comparative work would suggest.

The deepest gradient observed in voting at the United Kingdom's 2016 referendum on European Union membership was structured along educational lines. Since Brexit, education has continued to play a key role in shaping public opinion and electoral behaviour. Despite there now being a consensus within public discourse that a stark educational divide has emerged in British politics, scant academic research has been undertaken in this area to-date and thus, little is known about the complex association of educational attainment with public opinion and electoral behaviour. This three-paper thesis provides a timely address to these gaps in knowledge. Each paper applies advanced quantitative methods to high-quality secondary data sources - including the British Election, British Household Panel and Understanding Society surveys - and contributes to providing a deeper understanding of how, and why, it is that educational attainment has come to shape the ways individuals think and vote in Britain today. Paper 1 seeks to understand why individuals with differing levels of educational attainment have tended to vote differently in recent British political contests. It uses mediation analysis to explore precisely what proportion of education's total effect on vote choices was transmitted indirectly in British referendums and general elections from 2016-2019 and to identify the relative contribution of economic orientations, cultural attitudes and political cue-taking behaviours as drivers of this educational divide. Paper 2 builds on Paper 1, by investigating why it is that individuals with differing levels of education come to think differently in the first place. It uses a within-sibship design to provide a more robust test of higher education's causal effect on British individuals' attitudes in the period 1994-2020 and ultimately reveals the extent to which the differences observed in graduates' and non-graduates' attitudes are shaped by non-random selection into universities versus the educational and experiential effects of university study. Finally, Paper 3 moves beyond the individual-level of analysis, bringing geography in, to consider whether the impacts of the educational cleavage are felt evenly across Britain today. It uses a multilevel modelling strategy to explore the extent to which individuals with identical qualifications voted differently in different kinds of constituencies at British general elections from 2015-2019. Taken together, the novel findings presented in these papers provide an exceptionally detailed picture of education's role in the realignment of British politics and shed light on how, and why, graduates have become a distinctive electoral group. In doing so, this thesis not only makes an important contribution to the British political sociology literature, but also informs broader debate(s) about the educational realignment of the politics of advanced Western democracies.

Internationalisation of the Curriculum and global citizenship formation have become important goals in higher education around the world. As such, universities are increasingly positioning their mission statements along the narrative of becoming global and producing graduates who can navigate globalising societies and professions. As a case study, this research examines curriculum internationalisation and Global Citizenship Education in one university in Ghana. Employing a theoretical framework of a Critical Global Pedagogy, I engage with the views and experiences of students, lecturers and institutional heads on dimensions of curriculum internationalisation and Global Citizenship Education that manifest in the institution's policy and curriculum. The findings highlight complexities at the intersection of the colonial foundations of the case study institution, contemporary power dynamics that characterise the institution's internationalisation practices as well as the dilemma around pursuing global engagement whilst ensuring local relevance. Connected to this, three key recommendations are made from the findings. The first is the need for a clear institutional policy definition and direction on what curriculum internationalisation and global citizenship formation means for the institution as part of its broader vision of becoming world-class and research-intensive. There is also the imperative around striking a balance between embedding the curriculum of the institution within its historical and socio-cultural specificities as they pertain to the Ghanaian and wider African context whilst at the same time ensuring that the curriculum is globally engaged. Lastly, I propose a decolonial approach to curriculum internationalisation and global citizenship formation, building on African epistemological and ontological traditions. This draws directly from the South African communitarian concept of Ubuntu, around which community building, mutualism and cooperation can be pursued. I argue that Ubuntu can be leveraged to foster African citizenship in students and transposed to the global level as part of the expansive notion of global citizenship.

This thesis studies two decision problems for finitely presented groups. Using a standard RAM model of computation, in which the basic arithmetical operations on integers are assumed to take constant time, in Part I we develop an algorithm IsConjugate, which on input a (finite) presentation defining a hyperbolic group G, correctly decides whether w₁ ∈ X* and w₂ ∈ X* are conjugate in G, and if so, then for each i ∈ {1,2}, returns a cyclically reduced word rᵢ that is conjugate in G to wᵢ, and an x ∈ X* such that r₂= G x⁻¹ r₁x (hence if w₁ and w₂ are already cyclically reduced, then it returns an x ∈ X* such that w₂ =_G x⁻¹w₁x). Moreover, IsConjugate can be constructed in polynomial-time in the input presentation < X|R >, and IsConjugate runs in time O((|w₁| + |w₂|)· min{|w₁|,|w₂|}). IsConjugate has been implemented in the MAGMA software, and our experiments show that the run times agree with the worst-case time complexities. Thus, IsConjugate is the most efficient general practically implementable conjugacy problem solver for hyperbolic groups. It is undecidable in general whether a given finitely presented group is hyperbolic. In Part II of this thesis, we present a polynomial-time procedure VerifyHypVertex which on input a finite presentation for a group G, returns true only if G is hyperbolic. VerifyHypVertex generalizes the methods from [34], and in particular succeeds on all presentations on which the implementation from [34] succeeds, and many additional presentations as well. The algorithms have been implemented in MAGMA, and the experiments show that they return a positive answer on many examples on which other comparable publicly available methods fail, such as KBMAG.

Technological advances in the digital age mean that researchers can now produce vast quantities of data. These data have the potential to shape the way that human health and disease are viewed. Mathematical and statistical analysis of high-dimensional biological molecular data, or omics data, reveals a paradigm shift that human disease is a product of faulty metabolism, be it caused by genetics or the environment. It therefore follows that metabolic modulation should be able to act as a treatment for such diseases, and metabolic considerations should be factored into prophylactic and curative medicines. In this doctoral thesis incorporating papers, I describe the role of systems biology in the analysis of omics data and how it is used to drive discovery of treatments for human degenerative diseases. The current investigation describes a full journey around the cycle of data-driven biomarker identification, use of animal models of metabolism, and human clinical trials. This work introduces a focus shift away from single toxic species and towards reporter metabolites whose modulation is more tangible and have the potential to reverse the degenerative phenotype. I illustrate this with work focusing on Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, congenital generalised lipodystrophy, and muscle stem cells.

Traditional reactive polyurethane adhesives are versatile materials with a range of mechanical properties. However, they are irreversibly crosslinked preventing separation of substrates at end-of-life for reuse or recycling, causing negative environmental impacts. Therefore, reversible adhesives are of interest in the drive towards a circular economy. Thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs) display a physical response to temperature (solid at ambient, fluid with heat), but the strong intermolecular hydrogen bonding persists in the melt phase causing highly viscous fluids and processing challenges. To overcome these issues, the structure-property relationships of new TPUs were investigated with the aim of exploring potential copolymers as reversible adhesives. Initially, model copolymers were made without chain extenders using semi-crystalline polyols. Polyol molecular weight influenced the crystallinity, degree of physical interactions and molecular weight of the TPU. Branching in chain extenders hinders hard segment association leading to mechanically poor copolymers, whereas urea functionality affords enhanced mechanical performance but lower sensitivity to thermal stimulus, retaining high melt viscosity. Therefore, physical interactions alone do not seem viable for reversible adhesion. Reversible covalent bonds were incorporated along TPU copolymer backbones via Diels-Alder (DA) cycloadducts from the copolymerisation of functional PU prepolymers made from semi-crystalline and amorphous polyols. All copolymers displayed substantial change in physical state as a response to temperature with dynamic and reversible Mn (typically changing from 6 to > 25 kDa). Material properties were revealed as heavily dependent on constituent prepolymers and starting polyols, with semi-crystalline materials showing greater stiffness and amorphous materials greater flexibility. Therefore, final studies were conducted using blends of different prepolymers, making linear TPUs that contain DA cycloadducts. TPUs were synthesised showing phase separation without chain extender and highly tuneable properties. Several materials throughout these studies show promise in the application of thermally reversible adhesives differentiating between high mechanical properties and low melt viscosity.

Aims: This integrative summary aims to critically assess the opportunities and challenges of using secondary data analysis of large-scale UK data for addressing social policy questions within Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and children's nutrition (two areas of my research and which both focus on aspects of childhood wellbeing and developmental health). A key and original contribution of the integrative summary is the proposal of identifying a core outcome set (COS) of indicators, underpinned using Bronfenbrenner's 'proximal' and 'distal' factors (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006), within studies of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and children's food and nutrition. The development of these COS are recommended in order to support ongoing secondary analysis research in these areas e.g., to assess service or outcome quality. Research Questions: RQ1: What does the literature identify as important concepts, factors and indicators and what does this suggest for a scope of a COS in my two research areas? RQ2: What indicators have been operationalised and analysed within my work? RQ3: What are the 'data gaps' within current large-scale UK data collections regarding the operationalisation of indicators in ECEC and children's food and nutrition? RQ4: What indicators could be included within a COS for ECEC or children's food and nutrition? Methods: First, a critical review of seven of my candidate publications from the past 5 years and the literature on ECEC and children's food and nutrition. Second, to follow the suggested steps within the Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials framework (COMET) for developing a COS by identifying suitable indicators using literature in my two subject areas. Findings: RQ1: In ECEC, literature suggests 'good relationships' are key for achieving 'good quality outcomes' for children and it is important to distinguish and measure both structural and process concepts (distal or process) of service quality, underpinned by what children need for their development. In children's food and nutrition, the key concepts discussed are indicators of dietary quality in relation to key government targets (measured through consumption of single foods or analysis of the 'whole diet') and indicators of dietary intake that meet needs for health and social participation as part of wider living standards. RQ2: Relationships between adults and children in ECEC settings are not well measured within large-scale UK datasets. These so-called process or proximal concepts are difficult to identify and operationalise. Secondary data analysts instead have to rely on measuring and analysing structural/distal concepts available to them in datasets. Proxy indicators, such as staff qualifications, can be used but it is not clear if these are good for assessing service quality. In children's food and nutrition, indicators developed in relation to nutritional benchmarking are often subjective indicators (because they are based on self-reported behaviour) and are mostly process/proximal indicators, centred on the child. RQ3: Indicators are often 'fragmented' (spread across datasets), which makes secondary analysis of large-scale data difficult for researchers who may have to combine datasets or carry out separate analysis using a range of datasets. In children's food and nutrition, large-scale UK data have detailed nutritional information but may lack important contextual data and/or have issues with reliability in the data collected. RQ4: The beginnings of a COS has been identified for ECEC and children's food and nutrition based on evidence from the earlier RQs (drawing on the literature) to identify indicators that are important to measure. However, each COS needs further refinement through consultation with a relevant group of experts in each subject area. Conclusions: Secondary analysis of existing data has enormous potential for monitoring outcomes for children and families, through for example, the identification of a core outcome set (COS) within ECEC and children's food and nutrition. To overcome problems of data fragmentation (when indicators are spread across a number of datasets), a COS in my research areas is recommended to enhance efforts for data harmonisation (unifying measures across research studies). The success of implementing a COS in ECEC and children's food and nutrition is reliant on three key things. First, common understandings and definitions of indicators (and here my work needs building to include consultation with expert groups). Second, development of outcome indicators that are sensitive to the context in which they are being developed and applied. Third, a clear understanding of the purpose or aims of the indicators being included through the inclusion of an agreed supporting theoretical framework to unite the indicators and guide their organisation within the COS. This last point is important for providing a sound evidence base for informing social policy and practice.

The work presented in this thesis has been performed with the aim of increasing our understanding of relationships between the structure of an adsorption site and the extent of adsorbate activation, a key step in catalytic processes. Unravelling such structure-performance relationships is often hindered by the complex structures displayed by heterogeneous catalysts; they can be multiphasic and are typically dynamic in nature with respect to structure, composition and local electronic environment. A reactive surface can be comprised of many step edges, kinks and defect sites, but only a small portion of this rich structural diversity may be responsible for catalytic activity. The challenges associated with identifying the structure of active sites can be simplified through the interrogation of single crystal surfaces, for which structural complexity is greatly reduced. By using a low temperature, ultra-high vacuum scanning tunnelling microscope (LT-UHV-STM), individual surface sites of interest can be identified and investigated on an atomic scale. The application of STM-inelastic electron tunnelling spectroscopy (STM-IETS) and scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS), allows the bond strength, and therefore the extent of adsorbate activation to be studied at surface sites of differing geometric and electronic structure. The work described in this thesis has focussed on the development of STM-IETS and STS to investigate the interaction of carbon monoxide (CO) with Cu-based surfaces. CO is an ideal probe molecule given the sensitivity of its vibrational frequency to local structure and its use as a C₁ building block in chemical processes. On Cu(110), adsorbed CO forms one-dimensional structures where the nearest neighbour sites are occupied in the [001] direction. The vibrational frequency of adsorbed CO is highly dependent on the CO coverage. A CO molecule with one of its nearest neighbour sites occupied by CO (a CO adsorption dimer) exhibits an increased C-O bond strength (higher frequency) relative to a terrace monomer. This is assigned to dipole-dipole coupling effects between neighbouring molecules. Conversely, the CO bond is weakened compared to a terrace monomer, when two nearest neighbour sites of the adsorbate are also occupied (a CO adsorption trimer). This is attributed to chemical effects that cause a broadening of the CO 2π* orbital and its increased occupancy. Further investigations have explored the effects of the structure of adsorption site on the CO bond strength. CO adsorbed at the lower [001] aligned Cu(110) step edge sites, exhibits lower CO stretching frequency when compared to CO adsorbed at the upper edge sites. This can again be attributed to changes in the occupancy of the antibonding 2π* orbital that is driven in this case by a substantial difference in electron density associated with these adsorption sites. The aforementioned studies have been extended to investigations of Co, a metal upon which CO activation is of great interest. Given the complexities of preparing Co single crystals, a model surface was formed by depositing Co on Cu(110). When deposition is performed in the presence of CO, a novel CoCu(110) alloy is formed in which two-atom wide Co structures aligned in the [001] direction are embedded in the first layer of the Cu(110) surface. When CO is adsorbed between the linear arrangements of Co atoms, there is a far greater activation of the CO bond relative to the Cu(110) surface. The results demonstrate the broad application of the STM-IETS approach to studying complex surfaces and the ability to provide deeper insights into data that is traditionally generated using techniques that provide a macroscopic picture of a surface.

Post-millennial crises in the digital age have become more challenging and difficult for unprepared organisations and public relations (PR) practitioners to manage. As such, organisations in Botswana, including global conglomerates with operations in Sub-Saharan Africa, have not been spared from these emergencies. With social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Pinterest, to mention a few, spreading crisis information at lightning speed, organisational crises can become global and multicultural in nature, further threatening the organisation's reputation. To manage such complex exigencies, PR practitioners must understand the factors influencing the types of their crisis messages and how to use Facebook to persuade their audience. Currently, the lack of crisis communication research in Botswana to guide practitioners on appropriate response strategies and how language is used on Facebook to persuade audiences has attracted academic interest. Botswana's crisis communication ecosystem is still new and there is need for adjustments for PR practitioners to scale up to international standards. As such, this study investigates crisis communication in Botswana using the case studies of the Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) Fengyue Glass Manufacturing Project crisis of 2011, and the Botswana Railways (BR) passenger train derailment crisis of 2019. This research conducted a detailed content analysis of Facebook posts and identified themes and categories of how these organisations and their audiences communicated during these emergencies. To complement this quantitative data, selected Facebook posts were subjected to critical discourse analysis to establish how PR practitioners used language to dominate and persuade their audiences. Further explanations on how and why practitioners respond the way they do on Facebook were developed from semi-structured interviews with senior PR practitioners in Botswana. The study finds that crisis communication in Botswana is distinctive due to cultural factors. This thesis has developed a crisis information flow and relationship model (the Cross Cloverleaf Relationship Matrix) between Facebook and Botswana's cultural offline communication platform, the kgotla system. The model helps to facilitate Facebook in a non-western setting where it is culturally resisted for its liberalism and promotion of Western values. Additionally, this thesis confirms Coombs (2006)'s cluster of crisis response strategies as valid and robust for non-western contexts, provided the corrective strategy is introduced as a cluster to accompany them.

The global challenge of dementia has highlighted the need for a skilled workforce. Specialists and leaders in dementia care are a key sector of this health and social care workforce and this staff group require advanced education and skills that are commonly delivered by higher education providers at postgraduate level. There is, however, an underdeveloped evidence base on the specific challenges this group of staff may experience when making a potentially difficult transition to postgraduate study. A deeper understanding of the experienced challenges and strategies employed by students is required to inform the development of supportive, and effective, postgraduate dementia care education. This thesis consists of four interlinked papers which, by design, have been sequenced into four phases of research with each phase represented by a published paper where I am first author. These phases are: i) a systematic review examining student experiences of part-time post-qualified accredited study for professionals in health and social care; ii) an electronic survey of graduates (n=31) who had completed the MSc in Dementia Care programme at the University of Manchester; iii) an interview based study of graduates (n=15) from the same programme; and iv) a further analysis of the data from the interview based study, adopting a case study approach to understand processes in which students engage with the challenges identified in the preceding three papers. Findings from the four papers are individually and collectively discussed in this thesis. They conclude that, whilst the MSc in Dementia Care programme was perceived as effective in equipping graduates with the knowledge and skills needed to influence practice, many experienced challenges connected with difficult transitions to becoming a postgraduate student. These transitions included feelings of self-doubt, fear of failure, problems of juggling multiple responsibilities, and variable levels of support from the workplace. The social processes of 'navigating and negotiating the student journey', first identified in Paper 4, are further explored in the thesis, culminating in a new conceptual overview of student experience on the MSc in Dementia Care that integrates the findings from all four papers at the heart of this thesis whilst retaining navigating and negotiating as the key social processes. The discovery and reporting of these social processes hold a wider relevance for postgraduate students on other courses and fields of study. With specific regard to postgraduate dementia education, a set of recommendations are made for supporting students. These recommendations encompass academic practice, policy and further research.

This thesis sheds light on the evolution of the procedure of investor-State dispute resolution over time and analyses its compliance with the international rule of law. To this end, the term investor-State dispute resolution is intentionally understood very broadly. It includes any forum in which a dispute be-tween a foreign corporate entity or individual and the host State relating to any type of investment can be heard by a body that renders a binding decision. This includes dispute resolution before standing bodies, commercial arbitration, investment arbitration, and the newly established investment court system. To understand whether the procedural evolution of ISDR is in compliance with the international rule of law, the main corpus of this thesis identifies different approaches to the formalistic international rule of law. Instead of attempting to define the term, it uses the right to a fair trial as contained in Article 6(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights as an example for the international rule of law. By ad-dressing six major procedural and institutional features (standing in front of the dispute resolution bodies, appointment of members; their qualifications; conduct of the proceedings; appeal; recognition and enforcement) and comparing the differences between them, this thesis identifies procedural particularities of each of the dispute resolution concepts. Having laid out the requirements of the international rule of law, each individual section addresses examples of provisions included in major international agreements or arbitral rules and analyses their compliance with procedural minimum standards. The result of the exercise is twofold. First, it sets out a framework that must be complied with under Article 6(1) ECHR. Second, it proposes adequate provisions to attempt a first suggestion of norms that can be included in any possible reform.

In the context of debates about the implications of asset-based approaches for health inequalities, this thesis considers how volunteering in organised community settings may, or may not, mitigate the detrimental psychological impacts of poverty in people's lives. It contributes to the development of theoretical understandings of how experiences of volunteering relate to psychological wellbeing in such contexts, through development of a psycho-social perspective. Health inequalities in the UK have not only persisted, but increased in the last decade, and have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, while poverty is increasing in prevalence and severity at the time of writing. Psychosocial factors, such as shame, stress, and social isolation have been identified as significant determinants of intersecting dimensions of inequality, including socio-economic status, class, gender and ethnicity. Psychological wellbeing has been identified as key to processes through which asset-based approaches, including volunteering, are proposed to enhance the health of individuals and communities facing the greatest disadvantages. Most of the literature on volunteering and wellbeing is concerned with psychological constructs operating at an individual level, with little focus on the wider social, political and economic contexts in which volunteering takes place. The power relations implicated in analyses of health inequalities have not been considered in relation to volunteer wellbeing. Power relations operate through implicit, unrecognised processes, embedded in our sense of who we are and our place in the social order, manifesting our habitus, while shame is rarely disclosed or even recognised in social interaction, yet may be powerful in shaping our feelings about ourselves. Therefore, this study adopted an ethnographic psycho-social approach, which critically explored narratives and practices of volunteers and organisations, to consider their unspoken and implicit motivations and meanings. This involved participant observation and interviews with eleven volunteers and four voluntary organisation managers, in two different settings. The analysis considers the organisational and societal level contexts, including the significance of denigrating neo-liberal discourses which blame disadvantaged people for their own suffering, and how volunteering may enable people to defend against these. Considering psychological wellbeing through a psycho-social understanding of identity has provided new insight into processes by which volunteers defend against the symbolic violence of denigrating constructions of poor, working-class, and racialised communities and individuals. Volunteers were enabled to enact socially approved values and behaviours, bolstering their self-concept as well as social and cultural capital. Shared narratives of purpose and meaning promoted a sense of collective identity, facilitating a sense of belonging which to mitigated feelings of shame and exclusion associated with their experiences of adversity. However, analysis of the organisational contexts found that their assimilation of discourses of individual responsibility, together with largely unrecognised power dynamics, reinforced volunteers' perceptions of their powerlessness. In one setting a narrative of collective victimhood served to defend against blame but also reinforced feelings of powerlessness and a sense of ressentiment (Hoggett et al., 2013). The findings imply that for asset-based approaches to effectively address health inequalities requires a shift from a dominant focus on individuals, to one of facilitating development of positive collective identities. These may enhance individuals' self-concepts, social support and belonging, but also open possibilities for collective empowerment, to challenge and resist the drivers of inequalities.

The development of new electrochemical devices and their subsequent widespread adoption alongside our energy grids is critical to support the incoming wave of renewable energy generation and the transition to net zero. Hybrid redox flow batteries are a promising alternative energy storage technology that could ultimately provide inexpensive and sustainable large scale energy storage solutions compared to their lithium-based counterparts. Technological improvements rely on improved understanding of the processes occurring in these devices. This thesis focuses on three aspects essential to all electrochemical devices - the electrode, electrocatalyst and electrolyte. First, electrochemical and tomographic imaging analyses are combined to understand the effect of electrode microstructure properties on the performance of a non-aqueous redox flow battery. With the help of a one dimensional model, mass-transfer coefficients are gathered from the experimentally determined polarisation curves and affirm the results positively linking electrode permeability to overall cell performance. Second, the synthesis and optimisation of a multifunctional, nitrogen-doped carbon based electrocatalyst is outlined. The active site of the electrocatalyst is examined using a suite of physical characterisation techniques and is shown to have intriguing versatility across the pH spectrum towards catalysing both oxygen and hydrogen fundamental reactions. This catalyst is then tested, with a variety of success, in two fuel cell devices and, alongside the electrodes tested in the first section, in a hydrogen-manganese hybrid redox flow battery. Finally, the aqueous liquid electrolyte involved in this hybrid redox flow battery is scrutinised. Two in-operando analytical techniques are developed, providing improved handles on real-time solution-phase manganese species concentration in the electrolyte. The production of solid manganese oxides significantly alters solution equilibria making the deconvolution of electrochemical and adjacent, simultaneous chemical processes complex.

The following thesis explores an extension to the classical McKay correspondence, a theorem that touches on several areas of mathematics. Our extension comes by considering pseudo reflection groups which were not included in the original correspondence. The discriminant of a pseudo reflection group is a singular hypersurface expressed by a polynomial ∆ in the invariant ring of the group action. A main object of study is the matrix factorization (z, j) of ∆, and the corresponding Cohen-Macaulay module, arising from the arrangement of the hyperplanes fixed by the reflections. A key idea that we frequently use is that the matrix factorization (z, j) can be decomposed using the irreducible representations of the group. A McKay correspondence of refection groups generated by reflections of order 2 has been presented by Buchweitz-Faber-Ingalls. In Chapter 3 we follow the methods from Loc. cit and consider the complex reflection groups G(m, p,2), which appear in the Shephard-Todd classification and show that similar results hold. The matrix factorization is fully decomposed and the corresponding decomposition of the Cohen-Macaulay module is given. A collaboration with Eleonore Faber, Colin Ingalls and Marco Talarico has resulted in a description of the decomposition of the matrix factorization (z, j) of ∆ for the symmetric group Sn on n letters. In Chapter 4 a modification of higher Specht polynomials is used to present a computational way to explicitly calculate the decomposition of the corresponding Cohen-Macaulay module of (z, j). In Chapter 5, the Lusztig algebra for the pseudo reflection group G(m,1,2) which is Morita equivalent algebra to the skew group ring is calculated. This is achieved by using the McKay quivers for G(m,1,2) and calculating the required relations in terms of 2-paths. The Lusztig algebra can give us insights into how the McKay correspondence can generalise to pseudo reflection groups.

The vast bulk of the chloroplast proteome is imported post-translationally through protein translocation complexes called TOCs (translocon at the outer envelope of chloroplasts). The regulation of such an import system offers a key mechanism to impact chloroplast metabolism and plastid development, both through the modulation of the proteome. In response to biotic, abiotic, and developmental cues, the TOC proteins are targeted by the ubiquitin-proteasome system for degradation. Membrane-embedded TOC proteins must first be extracted from the outer membrane before degradation by the cytosolic UPS. This is accomplished by retrotranslocation through a protein channel, with the motive force provided by an ATPase called CDC48 - this pathway has been termed CHLORAD (chloroplast associated protein degradation). CDC48 functions in a variety of cellular processes at different subcellular locations. The localisation and activity of CDC48 is determined by a wide range of adapter proteins. In UPS processes, CDC48 is typically recruited by a heterodimer of NPL4 and UFD1. There are two NPL4, and four UFD1 isoforms in the model higher plant Arabidopsis thaliana. To examine their potential role in CHLORAD, I performed bioinformatic analysis on protein sequences and predicted structures; interaction and localisation experiments, using microscopy and immunoprecipitation; and finally conducted a mutant analysis of knockout and overexpressing lines, looking at developmental and stress responses. Three UFD1 and two NPL4 proteins can participate within the CHLORAD system by recruitment of CDC48. While the proteins are nucleocytosolic, interactions with TOC proteins were sustained at the chloroplast outer envelope membrane. There appears to be a degree of functional redundancy between sets of the isoforms; this is supported by phylogenetic reconstruction showing isolated clades in the Arabidopsis family. Few phenotypes were observed in the analysis of single mutants. One significant one on TOC protein abundance may be the product of a dominant negative mutation generated through a translational fusion with an epitope tag. The functional significance of NPL4 and UFD1 in CHLORAD requires much additional consideration in the future, with particular emphasis on the analysis of additional genetic lines. Phenotypes may be masked by functional redundancy between NPL4 and UFD1 isoforms, so the investigation of appropriate multiple mutants would be highly informative. Additionally, analysis of crosses to plastid protein import mutants would determine if there are suppressive genetic interactions, which would support a function in CHLORAD. Additional focus should be placed on the generation of domain deletion mutants to validate bioinformatic predictions of function - Ufd1C should be the prime candidate in this regard, to assess how interactions are sustained with a remarkably unique predicted structure. Finally, consideration should also be given to the potential role in biotic stress tolerance, as both CHLORAD and CDC48-NPL4-UFD1 have independently understood contributions to the immune system.

For over 300 years the Bank of England has acted hand in hand with the rulers of Britain, servicing both Monarchs and Prime Ministers in helping run the UK's economy. Its relationship with government has been varied, but also a permanent one. Despite this long and strong relationship, the Bank of England was relatively under-researched until the financial crisis of 2007, when it took drastic action to prevent the collapse of the financial system in the UK. In reaction to this, an institution that had previously hidden in plain sight, one that everyone knew of but little about, revealed itself to have powers that few had previously considered. It is in this context that the move to independence in 1997 may be considered, an act which at the time garnered little attention, as it was felt to be a sensible passing of the running of the economy to technocrats. This thesis asks about the effect of central bank independence in the British polity, and does so in relation to some central sociological questions. It is an examination both of how the Bank of England is structured internally, and where it sits in the wider institutional political landscape. It examines the Monetary Policy Committee, which is at the heart of the Bank post-independence. Questions are asked about the function of this committee and the nature of the people that sit on it. It goes on to consider the wider questions that independence raises about matters of legitimacy and sovereignty. How has independence affected the government's ability to rule and what have the Bank's actions shown us about parliament's legitimacy and sovereignty?

In their description of an unsuccessful and short-lived attempt to settle Formosa (1626-1642), Spanish documents contain what may appear to be an unimportant story. It is extraordinary, however, that documents describing indigenous life in northern Formosa in the early-to-mid-1600s exist at all, even if those descriptions focus on a Spanish colony from a Spanish perspective. These groups of indigenous people, sometimes only mentioned in passing, witnessed one of the first concerted efforts to colonise Taiwan, the first of many waves that would come to transform the island and its indigenous inhabitants. Furthermore, this thesis will show how these people exposed the weaknesses of a Spanish empire that was stretched to its limits, and in this way successfully resisted that early wave of colonisation. This thesis aims to refocus investigations into Spanish Formosa away from the Spanish to look at the people who were in the majority on the island during this time. It is the first time the whole of the Spanish colony has been studied from the point of view of its indigenous inhabitants. Using a theme-based discourse analysis and cultural history, this thesis shows that, despite the unpromising apparent lack of sources, there is a great deal that we can know about indigenous people through Spanish documents. This is a history of Formosa in a Spanish-empire context that is dominated by the Philippines. Bearing this in mind, this thesis takes a fresh, inclusive approach to source documents, considering Formosa to be part of the same discursive area as its neighbours to the south. In this way, the array of sources considered relevant is significantly increased, opening up a range of analytical possibilities. This thesis argues for different emphases regarding Taiwan's Spanish colonial history and indigenous history. It shows that, although the Dutch are often given sole credit for ousting the Spanish from Formosa in their attention-grabbing final battle, Taiwan's indigenous people played a not insignificant part in the failure of the Spanish settlement. This thesis also makes the case for the complexity of the colonial situation in northern Taiwan. Tempting as it is to see the Spanish and the indigenous people as simple diametric opposites, as the coloniser and the colonised only, this thesis shows how the two groups interacted both negatively and positively, not just with each other but with the wider milieu of people in northern Taiwan at the time, reflecting the area's status as a Pacific island entrepôt linking Japan, the Philippines and the mainland. This 'history from below' shows how these people interacted on everyday terms, as human beings, beyond the battles of major powers, at this crucial moment in Formosan and Spanish-empire history.

The body of work in this thesis presents the research and dissemination of knowledge through refereed publications, scientific textbooks, presentations to scientific meetings, and electronic based media. The work is directed toward the management of complex cranio- orbital trauma which has evolved significantly over the last 20 years in response to the increased complexity of injuries presenting to the facial trauma surgeon. Developments in surgical access, treatment planning, enhanced dissection, and surgical materials have yielded palpable improvements in efficiency and aesthetic outcomes. The work presented demonstrates clinical and academic contributions in all of these areas. It is apparent that increased injury complexity has a dose dependent relationship with escalating energy of injury. The biomechanical complexity of the orbit and anterior skull base together with associated soft tissues has provided a research focus to contribute to the understanding of these injury patterns. This is essential to understand the relationship with the mechanisms of injury and help predict which patients will come to surgery and to influence treatment pathways. Novel research is presented in terms of clinical cases, finite element modelling, and fractal analysis which support this. Dissemination of this knowledge in the form of scientific papers, academic books, scientific and clinical presentations, and an on- line distance learning course highlight contributions in this field.

Money is the pivotal institution of society and yet, after more than 300 years, it remains a polarising and unresolved socio-economic issue, with deep implications for equality across the world. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have emerged as potential solutions to some of the old problems with money, but they are often dismissed and criticised. And a narrative has emerged that they are a security threat. This thesis uses the lens of securitisation theory to examine and explore this perceived threat. Using document analysis, the speech acts of prominent figures and the extent to which cryptocurrencies are used in illicit activity are explored, revealing that cryptocurrencies are only used in a relatively small amount of crime. The thesis then considers the views of illicit users of cryptocurrencies and UK law enforcement officers. Analysis of scraped internet forum data shows that anonymity is not the main advantage of cryptocurrencies in illicit activity, as is commonly thought. And through the use of interview, the views of UK law enforcement officers reveal an ambivalence to cryptocurrencies as a technology. Finally, a case study of HullCoin, the world's first local cryptocurrency, shows that other forms of money do potentially have a valid role to play in the future of money. With a focus on the economic sector of securitisation theory, this thesis concludes that there has been an attempted securitisation of cryptocurrencies, but this has not been accepted by some audiences. Illicit use is not a valid justification for claims that cryptocurrencies are a security threat, and the securitising speech acts are more likely an attempt to protect the established alliance, which draws wealth and power from the control of the supply of money. Bitcoin is money. The world could well benefit from reimaginations of this pivotal institution.

This thesis seeks to understand the so-called Irish quarters that prompted speculation, condemnation and intervention in mid-Victorian cities. I analyse material and discursive constructions of the Irish quarter using spatial thinking and cross-disciplinary methodologies including GIS mapping and discourse analysis. Scholars of the Irish in Britain have typically studied the Irish as discrete and separate communities. Urban historians have studied the material and cultural construction of the Victorian slum. I draw these historiographies together by analysing the how the Irish quarter came to be: how the Irish were understood at local level, within contemporary understandings of race; how such neighbourhoods gained their notorious reputations; and how the self-perception of the Irish contributed to these spaces. To investigate this, I focus on the Stafford Street neighbourhood of Wolverhampton, synonymous with its Irish community in the mid-Victorian era. To outsiders, Stafford Street's reputation was formed through territorial stigmatisation, religious discrimination and policing choices, viewed through lenses such as sanitary reform, criminal behaviour and anti-Catholicism, shaped by the power structures which formed Wulfrunian and British identities in the mid-nineteenth century. For residents however, everyday relationships and networks, supplemented by intertwining religious and political understandings of Irishness, formed a uniquely diasporic Irish space. I argue that rather than forming an Irish enclave or simply an imagined community, the Irish quarter was a very real diaspora space in which Irishness, Englishness, class, race and place were constantly revised and renegotiated. I argue too that space is a useful category of historical analysis for understanding marginalised communities, a means to access histories of those often deemed an inaccessible mass.

Dislocation is the most common reason for early failure in total hip replacements (THRs) and occurs following impingement. Impingement is the unwanted contact between either the component and/or bone around the THR. This thesis investigates the effect of factors such as patient bony anatomy, patient activity and cup orientation on impingement likelihood and severity to provide an understanding of how these factors and their interplay may be used to reduce impingement in THRs. Geometric models were developed of bony geometries from different subjects so that variation in anatomy affecting impingement could be investigated, these were implanted with THRs. Kinematic datasets from different subjects were applied to the models to investigate the effects of subject activity and cup orientation. An in vitro simulator study was carried out which developed kinematic activity data for use in a hip simulator to investigate the consequences of impingement damage. Variation in bony anatomy, patient activity and cup orientation affected the likelihood and severity of impingement. The anterior inferior iliac spine and anteversion angle of the natural acetabulum significantly affected impingement outcomes and could be used to predict bone-on-bone impingement. The variation in subject's kinematic data resulted in varying impingement occurrences at different cup orientations. This suggests that clinically recommended implantation positions should be patient-specific. A hip simulator test was developed which applied clinically-relevant motions and loads to generate impingement damage and compared three subject's squat activities. Findings correlated with geometric model predictions. The variation in individual subject bone and motion suggest a subject-specific impingement-free range of motion, therefore to minimise impingement and potential dislocation, implantation targets for component orientation should be patient-specific. The methods developed in this thesis could be developed for a preoperative planning tool and aid the design of new implants by providing clinically relevant tools to assess for impingement.

If capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie emerged in Europe, as Marx, amongst others, has suggested, then this thesis will show how the symbiotic relationship between 'race', class, and capital - articulated as racial capitalism - can be exemplified within Liverpool's Black community spaces. Liverpool has the oldest settled Black community in Europe thus offering this thesis the opportunity to analyze the first 'Black space' in Europe. Similarly, if England is essential to the development of industrial capital that accelerated the urbanization of the UK's industrial spaces, Liverpool again offers a prima facie example par excellence in understanding how racial capitalism fuelled that development. Racial capitalism as a lens can also be applied to the development of mercantile capital, in terms of Liverpool's legacy as the site of the great leap in relation to the transatlantic trade - a trade fuelled by a legacy of Slavery. The power this legacy brought to bear, shaped the UK's political approach in the development of Imperialism, and colonization and therefore influences the UK's contemporary attitudes towards 'race'. This study will show how the continuity of the psyche of colonial attitudes shapes the institutions and attitudes within Liverpool and beyond. Indeed, the decline of Liverpool, ensured the rise of a new breed of political actions at the forefront of the scramble for Africa, Asia, and the cadastral production of the 'pink map of empire', as the 'reformed' slaver families relocated their power bases to the capital. However, their legacy within Liverpool remains today and is revealed in all its insidiousness across this study. The concept of value - immaterial but objective - and its concatenation to contemporary articulations of Blackness will be exemplified through this study of spatiotemporality in Liverpool. Although the scope of achieving a complete oversight into such a complex and vast history tests the limits of what is possible in one thesis. This study's greatest strength is that it makes an important contribution towards renewing a fresh engagement with the relationship between 'race', space, and capital, and as this study will show - articulated as the racial fix -, the centrality of this trialectic to the development of urbanization of capital has been totally underestimated to date, across debates of racial capitalism and beyond. This thesis presents a study on racial capitalism in the 21st century via the process of racialized space within urban development.

Innovation is central to economic growth of a country: an idea that can be traced as far back as in the writings of Schumpeter (1935). Further down the years, Solow (1994) argued that sustained productivity and growth can only be reliably achieved through technological innovation. Universities, laboratories, research centres and companies are generally regarded as the commercialisation parties. However, entrepreneurial start-ups are increasingly being recognised as key contributors to technology innovation even if they have limited resources and face the extra task of launching a business entity in addition to launching a new product. Support for such start-ups through the commercialisation activities is extremely limited in South Africa. This DBA thesis project addresses this gap in practice and aims to develop a 'framework for the commercialisation of technological innovations through start-ups firms in South Africa'. The thesis project was conducted in an action research collaboration with three entrepreneurial start-up firms. An initial framework template was constructed after a review of the existing research literature. Data were collected through field note observations and participant interviews which were used to refine and contextualise the template framework. The updated framework template was then further refined and validated through a focus group composed of three experts in technological innovation commercialisation in South Africa. The final 'framework for the commercialisation of technological innovations through start-ups in South Africa' represents the main actionable knowledge from the project. It comprises twelve identified support intervention themes: finance, networks, collaborations, business management processes and associated skills, commitment, facilities/infrastructure, marketing, testing/certification, mentorship, product packaging/definition, risk management and personal aspects. The thesis concludes with the implications of the framework for key actors involved in supporting and mentoring technology start-up companies in South Africa. The framework could also be used by other players in technological innovations commercialisation like policy makers, commercialisation agencies as well as the innovating start-up entrepreneurs.

Part I Cell division in bacteria is tightly regulated by a multiprotein complex called the divisome. Proteins in the divisome couple cell division and growth, ensuring that a single copy of the chromosome is present in each resulting daughter cell, and preventing more than one instance of division from occurring at any one time. This thesis concerns a combination of biophysical and biochemical techniques used to study the cell division proteins DivIVA, Stk1 and GpsB from Staphylococcus aureus. A model of the solution molecular envelope of DivIVA is derived by small-angle X-ray scattering and compared to a previously proposed model of the protein from Bacillus subtilis. The molecular mechanisms of DivIVA oligomerization are probed through use of size-exclusion chromatography coupled multi-angle light scattering on various truncations of the protein. The structure of the N-terminal domain of S. aureus GpsB is solved and used to rationalise the interaction between GpsB and PBP4. Attempts are made to determine an interaction network between the cell division proteins and members of the peptidoglycan and wall-teichoic acid synthesis machinery by several biochemical and biophysical assays. Part II Biofilms are communities of sessile bacteria that form on a wide variety of natural and manmade surfaces, sometimes at a detriment to human health. Bacteria in biofilms are held together by a viscous extracellular matrix consisting of polysaccharides, lipids, proteins, and extracellular DNA (eDNA). Species of Bacillus are known to secrete two structurally similar endonucleases, Nuclease A and B (NucA & NucB), into their environment as a means of taking up eDNA either to enhance their genetic diversity, or for metabolic purposes, respectively. As a mechanism of protection from self-induced genome degradation, NucA is co-expressed with a proposed inhibitor, Nin. A combination of biophysical/chemical techniques are used to probe the interaction between NucA/B and Nin from Bacillus subtilis. In vitro studies show that NucA and NucB bind to Nin and that Nin inhibits their endonuclease activity. The affinity of the interactions between NucA or NucB and Nin are probed and found to be sub-nanomolar. The structures of NucA/NucB in complex with Nin are solved by X-ray crystallography, revealing the mechanism of inhibition by Nin, and allowing for the calculated dismantling of the complexes by site-directed mutagenesis.

This thesis addresses four important issues in multi-object auction markets, focusing on a theory of strategic bidding and corresponding empirical evidence, on questions of equilibrium existence with distributional preferences, and on the equivalence of market objectives. The product-mix auction (PMA) designed by Paul Klemperer is used by the Bank of England to allocate loans to commercial banks at least monthly. If only a few bidders were thought to be participating, strategic behaviour may harm efficiency. I develop a theoretical model of strategic bidding in the PMA that enables the comparison with other auction formats commonly used for the sale of differentiated substitutes. While the theory predicts that the considered auctions perform (nearly) identically in bidder surplus, revenue, and efficiency, I also show contrasting empirical evidence. In a virtual lab experiment, the PMA achieves highest bidder surplus and efficiency. When bidders are symmetric, payoffs in the PMA are even between 90% and 156% higher and efficiency is 12% higher than in other auctions. The product-mix auction was developed for substitute preferences, but similar concepts may be useful in markets with substitutes and complements. Extending the product-mix preferences and bidding language, I consider an even richer market with substitutes, complements, and distributional preferences. In this market, the seller can favour, e.g., a more concentrated allocation of products among buyers, or an even distribution of products. This type of preference, while common in many real world applications, is novel in the literature. I develop a graph-based bidding language and derive new results on the existence of competitive (Walrasian) equilibria, which can be computed via linear programming. The auction design I develop guarantees fair and transparent pricing. In the context of substitutes, it is often practical for buyers to state their preferences with a budget. This may be spent on several products, while trade-offs between those products are stated as prices. Without budget constraints, it is known that revenue and welfare optimum may not coincide. We show, however, that with budget constraints, the market objectives of maximising revenue and maximising welfare result in the same, unique, market clearing prices and the same allocation. Our proof of this result also constructs an algorithm to identify these prices.

The present thesis investigates the concept of temporality and its applicability within the scope of heritage studies. It argues that cultural notions of time, or temporalities, are of considerable consequence for the emergence of heritage, understood as a discursive formation, in any given society. Taking as its case study the example of the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union, the study examines the relationship between changing notions of time and the rise of a sensibility for heritage preservation in the Soviet 1960s to 1980s. The thesis offers a historical discourse analysis based on visitor guidebooks and brochures related to three museums dedicated to Vladimir Lenin, settings its findings in contrast with the wider literature on the Brezhnev period. Noting that a rise of concern for heritage preservation matters in the Soviet Union coincided with a broader turn towards discourses of tradition and history, the dissertation explores the common roots of a number of features of late Soviet culture. The work builds on the theoretical tools developed by Reinhart Koselleck and Francois Hartog to offer a perspective on the cultural phenomenon of heritage through the prism of temporality. In doing so, it formulates the notions of the 'heritage temporality' - a cultural relationship to time it argues is a precondition for the emergence of heritage - and of the 'chronotope', a methodological tool facilitating analysis of a given heritage site's temporal and spatial aspects.

Most of the world's fish stocks are considered data-limited and there are insufficient data for complex stock assessment models; nevertheless, scientifically sound management advice is required. Empirical management procedures rely on empirical data and can guide management decisions. The main goals of this project were to develop and test empirical management procedures to improve data-limited fisheries management. Candidate management procedures can be evaluated using management strategy evaluation, which simulates the managed system and management in a feedback loop. Here, many generic operating models were generated covering a wide range of life histories. First, a trend-based empirical management procedure was explored. Simulations revealed that the management performance depended on the individual growth rate of the species, and the method delivered poor performance with high risk of stock depletion for faster-growing species. However, management performance could be improved by applying a genetic algorithm and optimisation towards specified management objectives such as long-term sustainable exploitation and risk limits demanded by stakeholders. An alternative empirical method (harvest rates) was found to be applicable to faster-growing species. Optimised parameterisations of the empirical methods from generic simulations were confirmed for several case study stocks with more available data. These analyses suggested that the generic methods lead to precautionary management, but management performance can be improved through case-specific optimisation. The outcomes of this project showed that the current management practices of data-limited fisheries resources applied by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea in Europe are insufficient and do not ensure sustainable and precautionary exploitation, even though this is required through international treaties. However, the management procedures evaluated in this study show a way to overcome current management deficiencies and indicate that simple empirical management procedures are a scientifically sound alternative to expensive model-based management approaches.

Sport coaching has been described as a dynamic, complex and at times, messy, activity that occurs in specific social contexts (Abraham & Collins, 1998; Bowes & Jones, 2006; Cushion, 2007; Jones & Wallace, 2005; Lyle, 2018). Existing research that explores coaching cognitions is, to date, limited in capturing, acknowledging and making sense of the rich socio-cultural backdrop in which coaches mentally operate and practice. The aim of this research is to explore situated coaching cognitions, notably the how (style) and what (content) of coaches' thinking, whilst explicitly capturing the environmental constraints and affordances of the layered contextual environment in which coaching is situated. As part of a complex research design, three contrasting methodological approaches have been used. These gradually progress towards an embedded and highly-contextualised research setting. The research adopts the situated cognition paradigm and consists of three self-contained but connected studies that describe, conceptually refine, and situate cognitions within a rich coaching context. In study 1, a modified Applied Cognitive Task Analysis, along with stimulated recall, was used to reveal coaching tasks and a framework of higher psychological functions (types of thinking in which specific cognitions can be grouped). In study 2, coaching cognitions in a micro-management setting were examined using Think Aloud Protocol. It found that coaches engage strategies to overcome difficulties caused by their environment. However, the findings suggest that as coaching becomes more time-dependent, the influence and strength of wider contextual factors diminishes and therefore, coaches are unable to contextualise and reason whilst practising in complex environmental conditions. Study 3 engaged with the findings from the previous studies and drew upon the ERE model (North, 2017) to inform an ethnographic approach, which identified and examined situated cognitions in a researcher-embedded setting. As part of this study, the socio-cultural layers and stakeholder goals were explicitly captured in order to offer a refined and more sophisticated perspective of situated cognitions. The findings reveal that cognition is highly dependent upon, and influenced by, practical constraints and the social context in which it manifests. Themes such as goals, stakeholders and history help academics and coaches to understand better the challenging and intricately-balanced setting in which coaches mentally operate and practice. Consequently, this body of work recommends that future in situ research should explicitly consider the broader context, domain, and coaching purpose as 'cornerstones' upon which to explore cognitions.

The research described here examines reasoning about causal relationships expressed as pairs of conditional sentences of two types. The pairs either shared a cause, and gave two effects of that cause, or shared an effect, and gave two causes of that effect. Two phenomena that should when the causal meaning of such conditionals is taken account of are discounting and explaining away. If an effect has two causes, and the effect is known to have occurred, and then one of the causes is found to have also occurred, the probability of the other cause will fall. It is no longer needed to explain the effect. For conditionals sharing a cause, learning that one effect is true will make the other more probable, in the case that the state of the effect is not known. One effect makes the cause more probable, which in turn makes the other effect more probable. If the cause it itself known to be true, learning one effect does not make the other more probable. The cause is all that is needed to explain the other effect. Previous research has suggested that discounting and augmenting, which are effects of causal conditional relations, occur differently depending on whether reasoners are asked to give probabilities for one cause or one effect of a pari before and after learning that the other one has occurred, or if they are simply asked to describe the direction of the change in probability that has taken place. This response mode discrepancy is here replicated and confirmed to be a robust effect in a series of experiments conducted over the internet. Various data collected failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for this anomaly. A speculative explanation is described, but further research is needed.

Herein in presented the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of a structurally diverse and stereochemically well-defined library of 2-deoxy glycoside analogues of the biologically relevant human mucin O-glycan structures. Chapter 1 presents a background to the project, contextualising the work within the fields of 2 deoxy glycoside synthesis, carbohydrate-multivalent interactions, mucin glycan biology and mucin glycan analogues. Chapter 2 then sets out the aims of the project to synthesise a library of mucin-type O-glycans to bring all of the above research areas together. Chapters 3 and 4 detail the synthetic routes used to access these analogues, with the synthetic strategy being based on glycal activation chemistry developed within the Galan group. The syntheses employ an orthogonal protecting group strategy using per-silylated donors, which allows for the incorporation of an anomeric linker bearing a reactive azido functionality for subsequent conjugation to a probe or platform via a Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition ("click chemistry.") The uses and initial biological evaluation of these novel mucin-type O-glycans is documented in Chapter 5, where the orthogonality of the azide functionality is exploited in the formation of a variety of novel multivalent carbohydrate-containing structures, such as glycodendrons 208 to 214. The biological activity of some of these probes has been evaluated in bacterial agglutination assays for the detection of urinary tract infections with collaborators FluoretiQ Ltd. Additionally, galectin binding studies have indicated that some of these compounds bind with millimolar to micromolar e.g., compound 99) affinity. These initial evaluations highlight the promising activity displayed by some of these analogues (e.g., glycodendron 210 in the agglutination assay or disaccharide 99 in the lectin binding studies) which bodes well for future investigations and generation of further mucin-type O-glycan analogues.

This thesis focuses on the evolution of the Liverpool Biennial through the use of their evaluation methodologies. Throughout, I will show how evaluation and impact research has shaped the development of the Biennial and how the methodologies have influenced their policy and structure. I will discuss how the implications of these decisions have been governed from the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods of data gathering and how the language has been used to develop the marketing to describe their cultural output and impacts. The research begins with investigating the cultural valuation techniques that have been applied to the Liverpool Biennial Festival's research, and impact reports. This research investigates the methodologies applied to evaluate the cultural value of the Biennial's programme of cultural activity to determine the efficiency and validity of the Festival's cultural impact studies. I will show how the Biennial's extensive demographic research has been used to enable them to develop from a niche trade Festival. Furthermore, I will illustrate how each successive Festival (1999 - 2012) has developed, its increasing economic impact to the city, as well as increasing its popularity to a more inclusive audience under the tutelage of Lewis Biggs, Paul Domela and Paul Smith. Through in-depth analysis of their approach to evaluation, the thesis also reveals how the language of their marketing and visitor profile information has enhanced the intrinsic impact, cultural experience, or customer satisfaction of the service provided within the Festival. The research shows how the finding from the evaluation and impact research has been implemented into the decision-making, planning and curation of the Liverpool Biennial organisation so that they produce significant cultural impact.

Introduction: Protracted bacterial bronchitis (PBB) commonly underlies childhood chronic wet cough. Azithromycin prophylaxis is increasingly used to reduce exacerbations. We aimed to explore parental experience of having a child prescribed long-term antibiotics and investigate the impact of azithromycin prophylaxis on antimicrobial resistance and the nasopharyngeal microbiome. Methods: Fifteen parents of children prescribed prophylactic antibiotics for respiratory infections were interviewed. Thematic analysis was carried out. Antimicrobial resistance and the microbiome were investigated by deep nasopharyngeal swabbing of children with PBB who were prescribed prophylactic azithromycin or not on clinical grounds. Protocols were optimised in an initial feasibility study. In total, 50 children were enrolled - 25 were planned to take azithromycin over the winter months and 25 were not. Serial nasopharyngeal swabs were collected over the study periods (12-20 months). Bacterial isolates were tested for antibiotic resistance and resistant isolates sequenced. 16s PCR was performed on a subset of samples. Results: From parental interviews key themes emerged, and a behavioural model to explain the parental experience developed. Parents desire their children to be well now, with antimicrobial resistance regarded as a possible future problem. Higher than expected rates of azithromycin resistance were found in both PBB groups, although the resistance was mostly low level. Resistance was mostly driven by azithromycin-resistant S. pneumoniae, yet these isolates were predominantly erythromycin susceptible. There was a trend towards fewer resistant bacteria in the azithromycin group, IRR 0.63 (95%CI 0.37-1.06), p=0.083. Alpha diversity was reduced in swabs from children taking azithromycin at the time of swab collection, p=0.02. Beta diversity was significantly different between the 2 groups at the study end; R2=0.14, p=0.0049. Conclusions: A holistic approach should be taken when prescribing long-term antibiotics. Discrepancies between erythromycin and azithromycin susceptibility require further investigation. Azithromycin for PBB did not promote antimicrobial resistance over the course of the study but did perturb the microbiome.

This thesis argues that the nature of the performance of new music has evolved. Its arguments and evidence are taken from case-studies, presented by a performer, that reflect on recent and historical practices. The focus of the research is on the development of performance practices in contemporary music over recent decades, following the innovations of composers such as Stockhausen, Boulez and Xenakis since the 1950s, particularly in the field of writing for percussion. It acknowledges that musical performance has many dimensions and is determined by a complex configuration of conditions and factors such as musical materials, local and geographical physical location, cultural context and technologies. These dimensions offer perspectives for understanding the multivalent site of music performance, as a configuration of practical and theoretical ideas grouped under the headings practice, technology and community. This thesis proposes the notion of the locus of performance generated by a set of such conditions. My experiences as a performer are the basis for an auto-ethnographic methodology and central to the articulation of this notion. My creative work contributes to a model of practice-based research, and establishes my perspective as the performer, able to witness how the locus of performance has evolved. The roles of the composer, performer and audience, and their identity and presence in the musical performance, are considered in relation to factors such as new musical practices, technologies and communities. The relationship between these contributing factors is considered in an attempt to create a model of musical performance. The critical perspectives gained from this process will contribute to an evolved notion of the loci for new music.

This study is a response to the growing global phenomenon of shopping addiction and the psychological, emotional, financial, and societal problems it arguably creates. It addresses an identified lack of theoretical and practice-based insights and knowledge to support therapists to work effectively with shopping addiction, particularly in the field of existential-phenomenological psychotherapy. The study reports on how participating therapists described their ways of working with clients with shopping addiction, why they worked in these ways, and the outcomes that were reportedly created. I used a constructivist grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006, 2008, 2010) embedded in an interpretivist epistemology. Eight experienced therapists who worked with clients with shopping addiction participated in semi-structured interviews, each lasting one hour. The interviews were then transcribed and analysed. Five main categories emerged from the data analysis, within which lie thirteen sub-categories. Analysis revealed that participants used ways of working that align with so-called "common factors", the principal elements of therapy that traverse modalities and, according to research, account for much of the improvement in clients (Lambert, 1992; Hubble et al., 2003). Analysis also yielded some idiosyncratic ways of working that are specific to participants' reported experiences of working with clients with shopping addiction. This research contributes new theory and insights to the fields of therapy with clients with shopping addiction and existential-phenomenological psychotherapy. The study highlights the complex interplay between a shopping addiction phenomenon that stays hidden in therapy and the neoliberal hegemony in which both client and therapist permanently live. Participants suggest that their approaches to working with clients with shopping addiction yield some positive outcomes, although more direct research with clients themselves is required to investigate client experiences of the therapy and of recovery in more depth. The first outcome from this research is a co-constructed map of the social process that is involved in working psychotherapeutically with clients with shopping addiction, as constructed by myself and the participants. The second outcome is a middle-range theory that can support therapists in their work with this phenomenon.

With regards to the behaviours of our social partners, how do we make judgments of moral relevance? For example, under what conditions do we assign responsibility, level blame, and determine and institute the appropriate responses? How do we determine what constitutes a moral transgression, who the valid victim is and what responses are the most appropriate? These questions lie in the gaps between the conceptual frameworks provided by philosophical ethics, philosophy of mind, and the empirical investigations of the cognitive and social sciences. Leveraging the stereotypical structure of everyday moral judgement (discussed below), this thesis highlights each specific element of that structure and aims to consolidate the most recent research on each element whilst also, across three papers, establishing novel findings for each element. Kurt Gray and colleagues (2011; 2012; 2014; 2015; 2018) outline what they consider to be the fundamental structure of moral judgement. One [reacts] to an [agent] who [intentionally] [violates/harms] a moral [patient]. This cognitive template forms part of the Theory of Dyadic Morality (TDM). Although the theory is more extensive, for now, this structure will form the basis for this chapter of this thesis. As written, there are five elements in this structure. 1. Harming/Violating, 2. Moral agents (the principal transgressors), 3. Reactions to those agents, 4. Ascriptions of intentionality, and 5. Moral patients. These five elements are discussed, respectively, as the five sections of the Introduction. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 contain the three papers that form the empirical work for this thesis. Finally Chapter 5 summarises how this novel work fits into the overview established in Chapter 1. 1.1 covers what kind of actions constitute moral harms, how psychologists have disagreed about the centrality of harm over other kinds of violation (e.g., violations that appear to not contain actual physical or emotional harm to a victim) and discusses current pluralist accounts of moral psychology that argue for a range of different kinds of moral violation. 1.2 focuses on judgments that go beyond the act to inferences over the moral agents themselves. Recent work has discovered that a great deal of moral psychology entails character-based rather than act-based judgments and this section discusses how this is important for the understanding of different kinds of moral transgression. 1.3 covers how we react to transgressors including emotional responses, ascriptions of blame and wrongness and how these emotions and judgments drive our different behaviours towards the transgressor. There is a specific focus on the behaviours of Partner Choice (avoidance and ostracization) and Partner Control (punishment). These first sections of Chapter 1 then guide the hypotheses of the first paper, 2.1, Reacting to Wrongdoers: Harm Leads to Partner Control and Impurity to Partner Choice. 1.4 covers our current understanding of how people ascribe intentionality, especially how cognitive psychology has highlighted significant deviations from the most prominent normative theories of intentionality ascription. This lays the foundation for the second paper, 2.2, Does Counterfactual Requirement Explain the Side-Effect Effect? Finally, 1.5 covers judgments with regard to the victims of moral transgressions. For example, how do we perceive the minds of moral patients and why does this matter for moral judgement and also whether we are especially sensitive to human moral patients compared to our cousins in the animal kingdom. This establishes the open questions explored in the third paper, 2.3, Suffering and Dying: How Speciesism Matters for Assessing Extreme Harms.

Radioactive pertechnetate (TcO₄⁻) has been proven a troublesome fission product from the spent fuel of nuclear reactors. Current reprocessing is not effective at removing TcO₄⁻ from effluent resulting in discharges of the anion into watercourses through both authorised and accidental incidents. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been proposed as candidate adsorbents for TcO₄⁻ as a result of their high porosity and the ability to fine tune their properties towards particular applications. The processing of these materials into application specific configurations, such as composites, can enhance the physical properties and aid in recycling of the adsorbent. This project will involve the synthesis of both novel and existing MOFs followed by the processing of these materials into composites that can selectively adsorb TcO₄⁻. We opt wherever possible to use benign reagents, and environmentally sustainable techniques for the synthesis of these materials. As such, we close this thesis by presenting our work in sustainable MOF syntheses. Chapter one introduces the key areas of this project. We discuss the nuclear industry and the need for nuclear waste remediating materials. Metal-organic frameworks and their composites are discussed as well as key literature. We close this chapter by highlighting current materials for pertechnetate remediation and lay out the project aims. In chapter two we present our work into ReO₄⁻ remediation, a nonradioactive surrogate of pertechnetate, with the MOF UiO-66-NH₂ ¬([Zr₆O₄(OH)₄(BDC-NH₂)₆]) (BDC-NH₂ = aminoterephthalic acid). The MOF undergoes post-synthetic modification (PSM)with excess ethyl isocyanate to generate the MOF UiO-66-(NH₂)₁.₈(NHC(O)NHC₂H₅)₄.₂. UiO-66-NH₂ is configured into two bio composites, alginate hydrogel beads and cellulose filter papers. The effectiveness of the PSM material and the bio-composites for perrhenate remediation is assessed. We turn our attention to crystal engineering of coordination polymers and MOFs in chapter three. Crystal engineering is applied to investigate the effect that structural isomerism of the organic linker N,N'-bis (pyridylmethyl)urea and the counter anion present in silver cationic coordination polymers plays on the resulting crystal structure and topology. Initial studies suggested that the ortho structural isomer could selectively crystallise ReO₄⁻ over competing anions such as nitrate and sulphate however this was ultimately found to not be the case. Silver coordination polymer stability in the presence of application concentration levels of chloride was found to be not sufficient to warrant ReO₄⁻ remediation studies. Three new zinc-based materials are also synthesised and characterised in chapter three. The urea-based organic linkers4,4'-(carbonylbis (azanediyl)) dibenzoic acid and N,N´-bis(4-pyridylmethyl)urea are used in these materials, two of which are mixed linker systems. This chapter presents a total of 14 crystal structures,11 of which have not been previously reported. In chapter four we investigate sustainable syntheses of calcium-based MOFs. Recycled chicken eggshells as well as polyethylene terephthalate (PET)bottles are used as sustainable sources of calcium and terephthalic acid respectively, for a one-pot synthesis of[Ca(BDC)(H₂O)₃]. Furthermore, eggshells were used to synthesise the MOFs[Ca(SQ)(H₂O)] and [Ca(FU)(H₂O)₃]. Mechanochemistry is applied to provided largely solventless and sustainable syntheses for the three listed MOFs.