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This research aims to help Migrant Entrepreneurs (MEs) understand themselves by examining their journey from early post-migration stages, into their working careers, and onto their current endeavours as MEs/entrepreneurs. In the UK, are MEs capable of becoming British entrepreneurs if they cross the localisation threshold? As such, liminality is incorporated as a lens to provide processual guidance. While doing so, the relevance of effectuation principles is reviewed to determine whether it can offer a plausible explanation of ME's decision-making process when creating business ventures in the host country. This research opted for a qualitative approach using an interpretive constructivist analysis to produce a transferrable qualitative study. Interestingly, it was confirmed that establishing oneself as an entrepreneur is not limited to business criteria and that the entrepreneurial development process begins immediately after migration. Through identity development, unconventional learning opportunities, market awareness, and stakeholder engagement, entrepreneurialism was evident in all these aspects. Additionally, after examining the prevalent entrepreneurship literature, it became apparent that there is a need to provide adequate exposure to the darker side of becoming an entrepreneur as readily as it does to success stories. As some participants perceived becoming an entrepreneur as a double-edged sword, some juxtaposed their entrepreneurial journeys with their everyday lives. A transition from migrant to MEs to entrepreneur requires a commitment that exposes participants to the realities of life in the host country that is more concerned with conformity than entrepreneurial diversity. Since the MEs are first-generation migrants, some could not commit to the UK in the long run and were left in flux despite their longstanding entrepreneurial careers. It caught the author's attention that some participants still dreamed of returning home. With these in-between liminal situations and other potential liminal states in mind, this research proposes a single conceptualisation of entrepreneurial identity development that is transferable across different MEs.

This thesis examines the status and representation of the boy performer in both children's company plays and men's company plays by William Shakespeare, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, John Marston, and Ben Jonson. Through comparative analysis of these texts, I demonstrate that plays that share genres, plots, and theatregrams can be differentiated by casting, as playwrights use their casts to both reinforce and challenge textual storytelling through the actor's body. In plays performed entirely by children, we can see that the homogeneity of the casts brings themes of interchangeability, exchangeability, and objectification to the forefront. In plays performed by casts of boys and men, the differences in status, size, and sexual development of players personalizes binary divisions, aligning boys with femininity, servitude, and foreignness (and in a racialized context, Blackness) and men with masculinity, authority, Englishness, and whiteness. When plays move between company types of the early modern era, these different casting configurations then alter the messages of a single text, adapting the performance through the presence of different kinds of actors with different sets of cultural codes. The performer's body is thus not merely an accompaniment to the text; it is a sign, in and of itself, that alters the text. Ultimately, reading the boy performer in both children's plays and men's plays expands our understanding of the different ways "boys" contributed to early modern stagecraft, and how the vestiges of their presence adds a crucial component to the reading of dramatic works.

The research is set within the context of evidence for deteriorating mental health among young people in the U.K. and the link between this and societal recognition and support of child spirituality. The initial thrust of the research was an investigation into the importance of access to silence in supporting child spirituality and spiritual experience. The research consisted of two sets of audio-recorded half-hour largely child-led interviews with a total of 39 school children aged 12-14 years in four schools (secular, Catholic, Quaker and Steiner) situated in a variety of locations in England. Prepared questions, derived partly from previous research in the field of child spirituality, were expanded to include aspects of solitude and silence. Following the course of the initial data analysis, prior to the second interview set, it became evident that silence (as a binary) was less important than anticipated. The children seemed to be describing a space that better corresponded to the concepts of liminality, and occasionally communitas, as expounded by, for example, anthropologists Edith and Victor Turner. Adopting an approach similar to grounded theory, I amended the second interview question-set to include these concepts. The subsequent data analysis indicated that the majority of children interviewed, when speaking of a spiritual experience, described entering a liminal or 'threshold' state that was often formative and memorable. Silence, when conceived of as non-binary might be subsumed within the framework of liminality. I suggested that this enhanced framework represented an inclusive, coherent and non-reductive schema that supported the understanding and support of child spirituality.

During the thirty-year period (1968-1998) known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 3500 people died and thousands more suffered physical disabilities and psychological trauma. Belfast, among other conflict cities, helped inspire the term 'dark tourism' in the 1980s. The country continues to be in conflict but is officially in a period of peace. Northern Ireland has been the theme for much peace and reconciliation research, but literature to date concentrates on polarised urban discourses rather than rural representation. Toward expanding peace through tourism literatures, this research explores how the term emotive out-of-place peace tourism can be used as a methodology to affect emotional transculturation in a unique rural Northern Ireland visitor experience. Bringing domestic tourists from Catholic and Protestant communities into face-to-face contact through a liminal participative 'out-of-place' visitor experience, the researcher choreographed and performed a series of 'Troubles' events: a guided night walk through checkpoints, an IRA Wake, a UDR Funeral, and a Mixed-Marriage Reception. Contributing to the debate as to whether tourism is a 'peacekeeper' versus 'peacemaker', the research demonstrates that an in situ liminal, emotive out-of-place peace tourism experience, may generate sustainable tolerance, respect, trust, sympathy, and empathy towards others through transculturation in post-conflict Northern Ireland. This research has advanced peace through tourism literature in the direction of 'emotive out-of-place peace tourism' and has used bridging concepts to present the 'emotive out-of-place peace tourism bridge' which could be modified to offer opportunities for transculturation in other arenas of conflict.

This research project is driven by a motivation to better understand the effect of painting's internal and external space when interrupted by objects placed at its periphery. The research consists of two strands of exploration. Firstly, through the practice of painting and secondly, through theoretical research in support of that painting practice. By moving between painting and writing, it examines how phenomena such as the act of making, memory and object-agency can coalesce to form complex, new objects. The project places to the fore the importance of hand making and acknowledges how handmaking is central to the creative process of the painter, whilst engaging with how the presentation of the resultant work affects the generation and transmission of meaning. Another strand of this investigation calls upon how the evocation through practice and acts of remembering and forgetting can communicate autobiographical experience, to form dialogic relationships, via the making process. This is a circular process involving myself as maker, the painted picture plane, placed objects and the viewer. It also explores how painting embodies memorised data within its materiality and is additionally provoked by the effect of 'trigger objects'. In addition, the thesis addresses how the painting object becomes imbued with the artist's intention and how the mnemonic faculties of the human mind are prompted by sub-semiotic signs contained within the material of the picture plane, to generate the attributes of a 'quasi-person' (Graw, 2018). How this occurs and interacts with the picture plane, contributing to the painting's status as a 'subjectobject' (Joselit, 2016) and the production of intended and unintended meaning (Alexander, 2010) is also considered. Through the practice of painting, the research explores how dialogue is formed between placed objects and the painted picture plane, and how objects of personal interest can in turn, steer subliminal conversation and how they thereby metaphorically 'reach out' and commune with the audience (Gell, 1998). Finally, the research interrogates the external edges of the picture plane, understood in terms of the parergon (Derrida, 1987) and the otherness of heterotopian spaces (Foucault, 1967). Such spaces share common characteristics of transition, uncertainty, between-ness and unknown-ness, all encountered at the periphery of the painting, the place where internal and external dynamics meet. This research encourages the viewer to adopt new viewing strategies, proposing this less certain space to be a desirable location in which to take the time to pause and consider.

Befriending is typically a third sector service in which volunteers provide companionship and support usually to people who are lonely or isolated, most often through one-to-one, face-to-face visits. In the UK around a third of people with dementia live alone. Both UK and Scottish governments include befriending in their national strategies to improve the lives of people affected by dementia. From the stance of a social model of disability, befriending is increasingly allied to the 'dementia-friendly movement', a broad range of initiatives designed to make communities inclusive, supportive and empowering for people with dementia. Existing literature on befriending for people with dementia - mainly pilot studies and service evaluations - tends to focus on those with more advanced conditions, and their views are absent or filtered through third parties. Taking a holistic, case study approach, and drawing on a range of methodologies, this study explored the experiences and meanings of befriending for individuals living on their own with dementia, from their perspectives, in the contexts of their wider lives. During a series of research visits, relatively unstructured conversations with three participants, combined with ethnographic and reflexive accounts, generated a wealth of multifocal data. This allowed the meanings of befriending to be understood in a wider matrix of biography, personal community, everyday living, disability, and life events. In enacting aspects of befriending, the research relationships themselves yielded insights into the obstacles, processes, delicacies and rewards of getting to know someone. As well as befriending, stories about other relationships - formal and informal, past and present - were especially prominent. Detailed pictures of each person's social network were developed, and their experiential qualities explored. This led to an awareness of relational gaps and loneliness, and to an appreciation of the distinct place of befriending. The research showed that participants were undergoing multiple transitions, in the here and now, and stretching back in time. Hence, the study questioned decontextualized models of 'successful' post-diagnostic transition in dementia, and the tendency to view the lives of people with dementia solely through the prism of 'dementia'. Relatedly, data analysis also uncovered 'betwixt and between' or 'both/and' states: for example, individuals were ill and well; coping and struggling. The concept of persistent liminality was used to capture these complex, fluid experiences. Strengths and limitations of the social model of disability were identified. For participants, wellbeing not only involved removing barriers to a full life but also a response to insoluble difficulties and suffering. The project had three key messages. 1) Befriending was a kind of friendship and a kind of service. Participants recognised and valued befriending as a friendship and as a person-centred service: their needs came first in a relationship that was for them but also experienced as mutual and two way. 2) Befriending satisfied unmet needs and wishes for certain kinds of relationship. As 'facilitated friendship', befriending enabled individuals to form the sort of closer, compatible, reciprocal social tie they felt they lacked. To different degrees, memory loss affected how much each person could remember about recent visits but everyone recalled what being in their befriending relationship was like and what was good - and occasionally troublesome - about it. The project pointed to the value of using tailored memory aids to reinforce the psychological presence of befrienders. 3) Befriending had the capacity to 'meet' individuals in the persistently liminal spaces they inhabited, responding both to surmountable and inherent limitations in their lives. Befrienders helped to foster wellbeing from within ill-being - or, as one participant said, "guid times the bad times".

The past forty years have witnessed the progressive shift of neoliberalism from economic and political doctrine to ontological imperative (Huehls and Greenwald Smith, 2017). So pervasively has neoliberal ideology bled into previously non-economic areas of social life that it is now perceived as a natural, inevitable and unquestionable brand of Gramscian ‘common sense’. This inescapability of the neoliberal hegemony has led critics such as Slavoj Žižek and Fredric Jameson to affirm that it is now easier to imagine the end of the world than the breakdown of late capitalism. Through an analysis of literary representations of what has effectively been the neoliberalisation of work, space and leisure, this thesis explores the ways in which contemporary literature challenges the indisputability of the neoliberal discourse and rejects the unimaginability of any alternative to the status quo. In so doing, this thesis reasserts the committed character of contemporary literature and its role in exposing the socially constructed nature of the neoliberal consensus. By means of a comparative analysis of novels published from the 1980s to the 2010s in Britain, the United States and Italy, this work brings into dialogue the literary traditions of the more prototypically neoliberal British and American economies with that of a country where the process of neoliberalisation was more recent and arguably only half-hearted. In order to decode the authors’ portrayal of the existential condition under neoliberalism, this thesis avails itself of the conceptual framework of ‘liminality’ in its recent applications to advanced, industrialised societies (Turner, 1974; Szakolczai, 2014; Thomassen, 2014). This research recognises in liminality a recurring feature of contemporary society and it interprets it as both symptomatic of an increasing precarisation of existence and, by virtue of its associations with transitional and transformational states that render it a fertile terrain for the emergence of counter-hegemonic discourses, as an instrument of systemic critique.

This thesis explores the storied spaces and archetypes of a secondary service, using Facilities Management (FM) as an example of non-core and increasing outsourced organisational functions. At its core is the development and implementation of artificial folklore, which intertwines organisational behaviour, storytelling, and a folkloric approach. An in depth exploration of FM is investigated, exploring the people, place and process (Tranfield & Akhlaghi 1995) which reveals elements such as liminality and enchantment. This leads onto a concentration of the storytelling nature of secondary services, specifically utilising the genre of fairytales to investigate the patterns within the FM storied space, and their archetypes. Three delivery mechanisms of FM are identified: Consultant, external Service Provider and an internal (Inhouse) organisational division. These three groups are demarcated and tell both deconstructed and reconstructed fairytales about their chosen profession, using fairytales as a guide. This innovative, arts-based approach revealed organisational illegitimacy within the secondary service, supported by liminality, which allows the metamorphosis that is increasingly required in a turbulent organisational environment. Although the concept of FM is misunderstood outside the discipline, storied spaces of the FM collective reveal no such ambiguity. What is revealed is a recognised connection across the three groups in their role as the necessary evil represented by the Shadow archetype. The artificial folklore approach then culminates a ghostwritten tale for each identified FM service stream: the consultant's Hansel and Gretel, the service provider's Goldilocks and the inhouse provider's Cinderella.

This research explores the shaping of space within the divided/contested contexts of Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine, exploring ways in which space is being produced that transcend the established boundaries of knowledges, practices and places. It stems from the observation that the production of urban/architectural/public spaces in contested contexts often evinces a disjuncture between those so-called experts who possess a rarefied and theoretical knowledge about space and those who have more lived understanding of a particular place, with the former holding significantly more power and authority. If the primarily theoretical and generalised knowledge of the experts is privileged, then the more visceral and specific knowledges of those who inhabit relevant places are to some degree elided. The experts’ knowledge is, however, inevitably incomplete. This research seeks out other ways of knowing and producing space in these contexts, asking: what if a broader knowledge base could be applied to the shaping of space? Is this possible and what might it mean in divided/contested contexts? This is an epistemic, feminist exploration of power and resistance, marginality and practice in divided/contested space. The principal research question is: what can we learn from productions of space in divided/contested contexts that transcend the established boundaries of knowledge, practice and place? It is about resisting binaries and eroding boundaries through spatial praxis in these contexts. Theory is developed side-by-side with empirical research throughout the study, with each used to test and inform the other. Critical political, poststructural theory is applied to a broad range of literature across planning, architecture, urbanism and geography and to spatial practice, on the ground. In particular, the conceptual framework draws heavily upon the philosophies of Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau and the critical writings of bell hooks to explore how these themes play out in decision-making around deeply contested space. A multi-tiered rhizomatic methodology has been employed to identify, explore and critique particular instances of such praxes, empirically, in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. Seven ‘spatial stories’ are explored, including NGOs, a pedagogic organisation, community organisations, and individuals, all working within challenging, marginal contexts that include borders, interfaces and refugee camps. These praxes are shown to open up other ways of knowing and practising in the vulnerable, changeable space of the margins. A theory of liminal spatial praxis emerges, which is an agonistic navigation of the multiple thresholds between what is ring-fenced as accepted, privileged or ‘expert’ knowledge and that which is subjugated; between spatial practice in the exclusive, professionalised sense of the word and the all-inclusive Lefebvrian/De Certian understanding; and in the leftover space between distinct places, so rife in divided/contested contexts.

School mealtime research in England has been preoccupied with the nutritional composition of a meal in relation to children’s bodies and health education. Underlying these concerns is the assumption that if children eat the right food and receive the right discipline, they will be admitted into adult society. Children’s socialisation is often reported from an adult-centred perspective, referring to children from the adult viewpoint or from a school management perspective, which underpins adults as the legitimate holders of knowledge on children’s experiences. I seek to problematise this view, along with the tendency to regard mealtime structure and social life as a unified, monolithic mechanism that maintains individuals in their subjection to produce docile children, which analytically neglects children’s individualised forms of knowledge and power. Rather, I will examine children’s school mealtime socialisation from a child-centred perspective, which has received little attention in the current literature. My research will demonstrate how children experience the mealtime differently, in a constant and intense struggle between multiple coexisting voices. Data are drawn from 25 months of ethnographic research conducted in a primary school in South West England. The analysis draws on a synergy of rich and varied data to explicate how children negotiate moral and social mealtime rules, the materiality of the meal hall and the temporality of social interactions in their peer produced social worlds. The findings demonstrate that children can be sophisticated and agentic when subverting the normative moral and social order, both for humour and camaraderie, and privately to alleviate discomfort. My research contributes an understanding that socialisation is an open, active and creative process of interdependence and experimentation with contradiction between the self and the other. In consequence, children’s socialisation can be double-edged: learning the authoritative discourse of the adults and finding covert ways to temporarily disrupt and subvert the established order.

Historically, Ireland has been perceived as being a homophobic, illiberal, socially conservative country. This perception has now changed. Ireland is now commonly regarded as being a modern, European, secular and (arguably) queer-friendly nation. The equal marriage referendum in 2015 highlighted the extent to which traditional heteronormative institutions have been queered, in that they have been radically altered. That is to state that marriage, the prime heteronormative space, is now a space that same-sex couples can occupy. Space is therefore very important as it exists on both symbolic and literal planes. The Irish nation has made ‘space’ on a symbolic level for LGBTQ+ people, but also literally as reflected in the fact that many legal changes have improved the lives of the LGBTQ+ community. This thesis examines the use of space in Irish lesbian fiction from 1872-2017. I understand space both in a metaphorical and literal sense, the latter to designate the physical spaces in which the authors have placed their lesbian characters. The term lesbian is associated with the poet Sappho, who resided in the Greek island of Lesbos. The fact that Sappho originated from an island, a liminal borderland space, is significant as it signifies how lesbianism can be regarded in spatial terms. By applying theories of liminality to lesbian fiction, this thesis examines the points of intersection between queer and liminal space, to argue for what could be defined as a space of queer liminality that exists in Irish lesbian fiction.

This thesis examines three interrelated questions by way of an ethnography of the Taipei Dance Circle (TDC): What is ‘a dance troupe’? What is ‘artistic work’ for society? What is ‘becoming a dancer’? As a modern dance troupe, the TDC (1984- 2019) was known for dance pieces using baby oil, a practice led and then lost by its founder and choreographer Shaw-Lu Liu. I argue that when Shaw-Lu Liu died in 2014 the dance troupe passed into a liminal state to keep itself going. This situation challenges the ontological meaning of being a dance troupe. To address this question, I draw on Victor Turner’s theoretical concepts of social drama and the ritual process to suggest why a dance troupe should be treated as a process in time. Thirteen months of involved participant observation, complemented with detailed interviews, allow me to show how the members of this dance troupe practise their distinct performing arts, and how a dancer continues ‘becoming a dancer’ in this transition period. By engaging with anthropological theories of creativity and play, this thesis argues that the TDC’s rehearsal and dance practice transcends the traditional dichotomy of work and play. Finally, by comparing the kinaesthetic attention and choreography of the late choreographer Shaw-Lu Liu with that of the new collaborator/choreographer Cheng-Chieh Yu, I illustrate the different relationships between an individual and an organization: this ‘becoming a dancer’ is understood as an ongoing process of professional socialization.

The notion of limit has been explored in anthropology mainly from the point of view of liminality. The original focus of my investigation is to look at it through movement. The research stems from my passion for running marathons, where I encountered the limit of the ʻwall of the marathonerʼ. This experience takes the individual into a 'no man's land' to cross a desert and face emptiness, and possibly opens to a new sense of life. Since I discovered it, my intention has been to investigate it further and to invent practices following its inspiration to share with others. In this research the limit of the wall of the marathoner has been taken as a generative idea to imagine three projects in different contexts: Running walls (Peterhead prison, northeast Scotland), Running north (the Shetland Islands) and Whiteout (several educational institutions in Italy and the UK). These are three experiments in the sense not of testing a hypothesis or exactly reproducing 'the wall' but of practices of care where the limit is a condition to make possible existentially relevant experiences, opening exploratory paths of inquiry in human life. They consisted of educational courses, workshops and performances investigating the possibility of leading groups of people through creative processes where body and movement are both the core of the experience and a source of knowledge. Aiming for an inquiry in the first person, they combine marathon running with the Feldenkrais method and autobiography. Looking at other fields of knowledge (education, ecology, evolutionary biology and mathematics), the research shows how the limit, rather than being a border or a separating line, is a space with high educational potential, which allows one to become exposed and to ʻcut through the worldʼ. It is suggested that its notion can overcome the idea of a linear progression between statuses, and highlight a movement in-between, foregrounding presence rather than identity. Contributing to the current debate over anthropology and/as education, through the work of Ingold and Masschelein, the research explores a different way of knowing, an epistemology of attention through an encounter between anthropology, art and education.

The vast majority of once-popular UK children’s comics have now ceased publication. This includes Misty. Aimed specifically at girls between the ages of 8 and 14, Misty was a comic which consisted entirely of frightening fiction and articles based on the supernatural and horror. This research seeks to identify the reasons for Misty’s popularity at the time of publication (1978 – 1980) and justify a return to frightening fiction through Bildungsromane for girls via the medium of comics. Through the examination of the cultural background at the time of publication and how this was reflected in Misty, a contemporary creative work, Destiny, a novella, and ‘Destiny’, a Misty-style serial story script, distilled from the novella, has been produced. This has been accomplished via the application of a formula, which is a process created as a result of answers to questions posed via email by the author to Misty’s consultant editor and contributing writer, Pat Mills. Via the identification and application of critical concepts in the Misty serials ‘Moonchild’ and ‘The Sentinels’, as well as the one-off story ‘The Treatment’, the underlying reasons for the popularity of the stories contained in Misty have been examined. These reasons are analysed and applied in the creation of the new story in the form of a novella, which in turn has been re-written as a comic script, including the artwork for a sample front cover. This, along with Mills’ step-by-step process for creating a comic (the Formula), reveals the potential of comics of this nature as accessible and perhaps even valuable chaperones with which to navigate through the fraught liminal period of adolescence.

This research explores whether a concept of the divine can have alternative expression outside of religious bodies in contemporary art and utilises this notion in the idea of liminality, which is defined as a transitory rite of passage between different states of self. Since the liminal is a fundamentally ambiguous and uncertain experience, this research frames its argument in the idea that a perception of the divine has its refuge in such a state, regardless of whether religious creeds of the sacred have been rejected. It is through a contemporary art venue then, that the liminal concept can be applied for the purposes of testing this theory. In the search for contemporary art mediums that are dynamic enough to fit this ambitious criteria, it is the discipline of intermedia art which has been selected, involving the bringing together of various elements (be they visual, aural or textual) and applying them, all at once. With the potential of simultaneous artistic effects at work, which become disorientating in their potentially ambiguous effect, such a method subsequently becomes the direct evocation of the liminal experience. A Practice Review examining various examples of intermedia art, from contemporary practitioners, demonstrates how the liminal theme applies to their works, followed by an in-depth exploration of the theme itself through the lens of various disciplines (such as depth psychology). A Methodology will be laid out for the application of my own intermedia framework, which selects visual split screen montage with audio and text incorporated from other sources, thereby reconfiguring the original narratives displayed. This framework of utilising previously unrelated elements is correlated to the metaphorical application of Alchemy, which depth psychologists have perceived as a process of the psyche and through which one element mediates between the others, thereby conducting a liminal operation. The research then analyses a sequence of seven completed montage works that make up the practical side of this undertaking, all utilising historical subject matter as originally interpreted in biographical film sources and then aligning them to a counterpart in order to grasp a mythical commonality. From this, we can detect and interpret the archetypal significance of such figures and why they have historically been symbolic to whole cultures, having long lasting effects on the political, social and cultural zeitgeists of their time. From these works, we can therefore detect how an unorthodox notion of the divine is evident in narratives which initially seemed to have no relation to spiritual concepts; however, when re-configured in relation to new elements, historic time is suspended and through the liminal effect, deeper narratives of divine myth become signified.

Background: Dementia is the biggest cause of death in the United Kingdom (Matthews, 2016). Early-onset dementia (EOD) is a subset of the dementias affecting people between the ages of forty-five to sixty-five (Mercy, 2008). People with early-onset dementia (PwEOD) can find themselves negotiating very different experiences from those who develop the condition in later years. As EOD occurs in prime working-age and parenting years, the implications can therefore be challenging (Beattie et al., 2004; Rayment and Kuruvilla, 2015). PwEOD can still possess good health relative to people with typically older onset dementias. However, due to the under-researched nature of the condition, the number of PwEOD is likely to be underestimated (Kaiser and Panegyres, 2006). As a result, there is a lack of suitable services for PwEOD to access (Withall, 2013). Therefore, EOD represents a significant public health, economic and personal concern with few suitable strategies to address the diverse needs of a younger population, thus making it a much-needed area of research development. Aims: The aim of the thesis was to establish the experience of EOD from autobiographical and other written content. The focus was upon the impact of having a diagnosis of dementia at working-age. This aim required the collection of deep, rich data, from a sample of PwEOD. Methodology: The study was conducted from a qualitative perspective grounded in social constructionism and symbolic interactionism. A systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out to identify gaps in the current literature. A meta-ethnographic synthesis was used to synthesise qualitative studies based on experience of EOD (Noblitt and Hare, 1998). Following this, personal accounts by PwEOD were selected to be analysed to understand the personal experiences of living with EOD. Four autobiographies and a blog provided the data for a thematic analysis (TA) to be performed which over two studies examined personal and social effects. Findings: The findings presented as two studies; Study One considered the personal aspects of the condition and Study Two considered the social and interpersonal aspects. Study One: Diagnosis was a pivotal point which indicated the end of one era and the beginning of another. Shock was the initial experience. Whilst also confirming an unwelcome trajectory to life, the writers moved into varying levels of acceptance. The diagnosis was simultaneously wanted and unwanted. Diagnosis formed the first theme. Notions of separation in an insecure place of limbo were common. Changes occurred; transition had to be negotiated in stages of separation from others. Spatial oddities and matters of chronicity were related to the sense of not knowing the time. These experiences were linked to liminal experiences and the inevitable need to 'let go'. These ideas formed the second theme 'Lost in time and space'. The transitional experience of feeling 'unfixed' was not always interpreted negatively. Personal identity formed the third theme. Identity was impacted by both the diagnosis itself and the experiences of living with EOD. The writers described how they had lost both their previous roles in life and their sense of self. Writing had been adopted to help reconstruct identity with a diagnosis of dementia. Study Two: The idea of contagion was drawn from cultural tropes which evoked ideas of stigmatising contagion. Experiences of feeling rejected through fear of others' concerns about them were explicitly discussed or implied through the writing. This was understood as blame and shame. There was a disenfranchisement with humanity and belonging. This affected the credibility that struggled with stigma. Fears were voiced that family kin might 'catch dementia' from the PwEOD in the way it consumed their lives. This contributed to the impact of a contagious view of EOD. This inevitably led towards stigmatising effects and contributed to the breakdown of identity. Credibility was found to be crucial to identity. It could be a fluid matter knowing whether an outsider was pitching their belief in the PwEOD being disabled and unreliable in a malignant and deviant sense or a medical fraud. Stigma was sometimes driven by outsiders and their perceptions, making the life of PwEOD more difficult. The activity of PwD as walkers and 'wanderers' was one that was noted frequently. Emphasis on walking helped express feelings of exasperation and helplessness, but there was a discrepancy between walking and wandering and the stigma that was attached to wandering. These issues form the second theme, 'blame and shame'. Managing potential changes to identity provoked problems and behaviours undermining the personhood and wellbeing. This reflected difficulties for the writers to overcome a loss of identity as well as dealing with stigma imposed by others. Using autobiography on the theme of illness offered a boost to regaining a refreshed identity. These ideas formed the theme 'social and interpersonal identity' which discussed the claiming back of a renewed if damaged identity. Social identity therefore could be challenged to restore a renewed and more potent personality with a social message for the self as well as others. Discussion: The discussion found significance in the diagnostic transition throughout the synthesis of the SLR and studies One and Two. Diagnosis provided a life-defining experience begging the need to address changes to life and living. Life with EOD could be expressed as feeling torn apart with no stable ground upon which to stand. These changes occurred as experiences which could be articulated as vague, elusive and unknowable leading to ambiguity rather than certainty. The journey from chronic illness to face others' reactions could be discriminatory. Situating EOD in a solely biomedical model meant that it was more likely that the stigmatising aspects of EOD made it less feasible to find positive factors. Moving from this, there was evidence of adaptation which looked to reunify body and self accordingly in ways that were workable and socially evident to others as identity forming. A new identity had to be balanced carefully between what was traded away by what could no longer be managed and blended into the new and more inspired identity made up of new accomplishments. Social identity was often found to be present across gender and working roles. Lives could, at the same time, be lost and located to a new location through the pursuit of writing autobiographically. This thesis showed how writing published material allowed for the regeneration of self and how it was possible to make different identity gains than in previous 'healthy' lives. The material is based upon a small sample of writers and adds to the limited research that currently exists in the field of studying qualitative life experiences with EOD. It provides evidence of a skilled and participative subset which can bring more insight to what it is like to have dementia. Conclusion: Conclusions reflected that with the SLR, many gaps and needs were identified within the limited studies drawn from four available studies by PwEOD. However, of the studies included to expand family kin experience of EOD, many concerning elements were highlighted showing unmet needs and phenomena such as parentification and the loss of childhood and adolescence. However, with the expanded inclusion of Study One and Study Two using TA the findings suggest that PwEOD, are finding increasingly independent and diverse ways of giving voice to their condition. One way of doing this is through autobiography and blogging. This response in turning to this outlet is initiated by a permanent loss of health. From this state, a variety of consequences, both gains and losses could occur. This has implications for identity. With the onset of chronic illness, everyday life upon which former identities hinged, changed. The importance of being able to reconstruct identity suggested this was a pivotal process in living with EOD together with maintaining dignity, stigma, skills, minimising losses along with broadening key social relationships and networks. Identity required empirical validation in daily life with a minimising of credibility gaps which often occurred from social side-lines. A more individual approach may be more effective when diagnosing and planning care for this special subset of individuals with dementia. The concept of identity lies with how people create meanings and act assertively as they interpret their experience. The thesis found that identity goals are changed with a diagnosis of EOD. Future research would benefit from seeking independent qualitative views surrounding EOD for the PwEOD and immediate family kin. By exploring the working-age/parenting nature of EOD context may help build upon the positive and inhibit the negative effects of living with EOD. This may also support growing families whose own identities are affected by having someone in the family with EOD.

The idea of 'threshold concepts' has attracted attention and framed many enquiries into learning, particularly in higher education, since it was first proposed by Meyer and Land in 2003. It has formed the basis of a broadly-based scholarly community; however, it lacks some of the features of the kind of generative research programmes described by Lakatos. These include the lack of an explicit ontological and epistemological position and a lack of clarity around the fundamental concepts of transformation and liminality. Instead, much of the literature on threshold concepts uses metaphors and analogies and borrows from eclectic fields and traditions. This is particularly evident in discussions of the liminality found amongst learners when confronted by troublesome knowledge or cognitive conflicts. This empirically-based study proposes that it is possible to understand the philosophical perspectives underpinning threshold concepts in terms of a commitment to ontological realism combined with epistemological constructivism. This combination is evident elsewhere, notably in constructivist science education, in physics, and in the tension between classic Glaserian and Charmazian constructivist grounded theory. This study therefore uses a hybridised grounded theory approach, combined with a think-aloud method, in order to study experiences of liminality among pre-university learners faced with a threshold concept in physics. Learners used reflective self-dialogue and deliberative problem-solving strategies to reconcile a mismatch in explanations. Key characteristics of liminality were identified including threshold avoidance, two forms of stuckness, oscillation and mimicry. However, the use of grounded analysis resulted in a reinterpretation of liminality from a period during which transformative learning took place to one in which a learner actively explored the problem space; active exploratory learning emerged as a core category. This facilitated a change in perspective from teacher-centric to learner-centric, a resolution of the two forms of stuckness previously observed, and the development of a coherent narrative to explain oscillation and mimicry and to enable a resolution of the differences between the 'possible breakthrough ideas' observed during this study and the 'eureka' moments described in the literature. This reinterpretation enables the development of a new understanding of liminality which paves the way towards the development of threshold concepts as a theory of learning. It also demands a pedagogical refocusing from the remediation or avoidance of learner deficit to strategies for enabling learners to make the most of the liminal experience.

This thesis focuses on explaining why group encounters with rural landscapes in Scotland are deemed to be positive for mental wellbeing. The relationship between greenspace and human wellbeing is a phenomenon that researchers across multiple disciplines are grappling with, though little research engages qualitatively. This thesis clarifies, ethnographically, why some people make excursions into rural spaces and why these excursions are believed to be positively transformational and associated with mental wellbeing. It outlines motivations for engaging in excursions from urban central Scotland to areas in rural Scotland. My research explores the intangible, ineffable and ephemeral experience of case study groups in ‘natural’ rural landscapes and what is relevant in the relations between the self and non-human in these circumstances. This thesis describes how and why group interactions within ‘natural’ space is adopted as a positive self-transformation strategy. It considers the ‘nature experience’ as relational between the self, the social and place - with what constitutes the social as ambiguous within case study interaction. This project was multi-sited: I travelled with my case study groups to rural spaces around the lowlands, highlands, and islands of Scotland. Case studies were multiple and diverse: A community living initiative, a youth development project, a mental health initiative, a forestry management project, and a loose community of artistic, neo-shamanic and psychotherapeutic practitioners. To remain responsive to my research communities and their activities I have developed a framework for a serendipitous ethnography which is outlined within the thesis. This project adopted a transdisciplinary research strategy, engaging with a theoretical framework spanning psychotherapy, psychology and eco-psychology, sociology, philosophy, human geography, anthropology and outdoor education as well as landscape and performance studies. This transdisciplinary thesis contributes to understandings of human and nature connectedness providing an account of cognitive, social and cultural experience. Primarily, this research was concerned with the self, the perception of the ideal and ought self in relation to motivations to journey in this manner and the self as part of a group and within the landscape as a dynamic and relational subject. I have considered the sense of self within these experiences as a metaphorical liminal site. I have discussed the group collectively as a site of dynamism and thus liminality. I then argue that this allows for the way that the landscape is perceived to be a site of liminality. With this we see the importance of temporality and structure, or indeed anti-structure, within these excursions as something which aids in the perspective that they are transformative. I have considered notions of perceived affordance and how this changes throughout experience with the increasing ability to associate ideas and abstract experience within one’s personal narrative. I explain how each group differs in how they perceive the rural landscape as something to instrumentalise, personify or anthropomorphise. With this comes an exploration of complex anthropocentric mindsets and the influence of these ways of thinking on experience. I suggest that individuals choose to journey to ‘natural’ rural environments to self-verify an aspect of their ought or ideal self with a desire to re-imagine the self through engagement with others. In self-verifying one’s ideal or ought sense of self, finding a sense of belonging within a group and believing oneself to be doing something good in relation to the ‘natural’ rural space, individuals and groups experience a sense of personal and social transformation.

This doctoral research explores the ways in which UK law engages with embryonic processes, namely under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended). The research offers a fuller understanding of these elusive and evolving biological processes, and in particular, how they can, in turn, allow us to understand legal process and legal regulation more deeply. To do so, the thesis employs an anthropological concept - liminality - coined by Arnold van Gennep, which is itself concerned with revealing the dynamics of process. Liminality may be described as being concerned with the spaces in between distinct stages of human experience or with the process of transition between such stages. With this framing of liminality in mind - which is often characterised as a three-stage process of human experience - the research is divided into three parts, broadly reflecting the three parts of van Gennep's liminal schema: into, through, and out of liminality. It is argued herein that in regulating the embryo - that is, a processual liminal entity in itself - the law is regulating for uncertainty. Tracing the legal governance of the early stages of human life, from its inception to today's regulatory frameworks, the research diagnoses a 'legal gap' between the conceptual basis for regulation, and practical 'realities' of the 1990 Act (as amended). In particular, this 'gap' is typified by uncertainty surrounding embryos in vitro, and what this thesis diagnoses as 'legal stasis'. In order to situate this novel liminal analysis within existing paradigms, however, the thesis first frames embryos in vitro as 'gothic', building upon emergent analytical responses to postmodern forms of categorisation. This framing helps to articulate the nature of, and the reasons for, the above-mentioned 'legal gap'. This framing is nonetheless incomplete without a liminal lens, as it draws our attention to the dynamics of the processes occurring within this 'gap'. It is argued that considering the 'problem' in this manner enables us to move beyond conceptualisation, towards realisation. The gothic, and the liminal are thus used to critically assess legal representations of the embryo, and suggests that there are ways in which the law might better embrace the multiplicity of environments through which the embryo in vitro can travel, that is, either towards reproductive or research ends. It is argued that full recognition of these variable, relational liminal states of the embryo is important for the future of artificial reproduction and embryo research, and that this does not currently happen. In order for the law to reflect better the uncertain nature of embryonic processes, and the technologies that create them, the thesis posits a nuanced, contextual reframing of the embryo that captures the multiplicity of embryonic 'pathways' available within the 1990 Act (as amended). The overarching objective of this work is to consider a more coherent and robust intellectual defence of the ways in which we justify different treatments of in vitro embryos. It thus proposes a 'context-based approach' that embraces the variable, relational pathways already facilitated by the 1990 Act (as amended) in order to lead the embryo (and itself) into, through and out of liminality.

In 2009 four men were trafficked from their native Bangladesh to work in the Scottish Highlands. They were promised jobs as professional chefs. Instead they were forced into modern-day slavery. This is their story.

It is the aim of this practice-led PhD to explore the processes that attend to the production of a linocut relief print through a framework whose key concepts are liminality and embodiment. In this pursuit the thesis investigates the subjects of skin and surface as well as cuts and cutting through themes and issues of touch and time that include connection and continuity, 'direct' creative touch, artist-tool/technology relations, memory, repetition and rhythmicity, transmissions of time, translation, tracking, chronology and equivalence. These subjects and themes' liminal qualities and characteristics are mirrored by a methodology devised and employed throughout the research. This methodology employs the interpenetrative, interconnected, reflexive and autoethnographic methods of a durational, physically challenging repeat printmaking project, longhand letter writing, and the multiple-register writing of this thesis. It does so in a purposely oblique and 'wayfaring' (Tim Ingold, 2011) approach. Binaries and boundaries are thus explored without risking their further enforcement, allowing diverse aspects and subjects to flow into and between one another with the freedom to contrast, contradict, and manifest inconsistently whilst ultimately moving towards a more comprehensive understanding of the thesis' subjects. This liminal methodology contributes a set of research tools and framework propositions to the existing field of research in and of creative practice, including printmaking, and its embodiment.

This thesis contends that the image of fire is a multivalent and theologically valuable image for application in British Christian communities. My research offers an original contribution by contextualising the image of fire for Christian practice in Britain, and combining critical observation of several contemporary fire rites with theological analysis. In addition, I conduct original case studies of three Scottish fire rituals: the Stonehaven Fireball Ceremony, the Beltane Fire Festival, and Up-Helly-Aa in Lerwick, Shetland. The potential contribution of fire imagery to Christian practice has been overlooked by modern theological scholarship, social anthropologists, and Christian practitioners. Since the multivalence of the image has not been fully recognised, fire imagery has often been reduced to a binary of ‘positive' and ‘negative' associations. Through my study of non-faith fire rituals and existing Christian fire practices, I explore the interplay between multivalence, multiplicity, and liminality in fire imagery. I demonstrate that deeper theological engagement with the image of fire can enhance participation, transformation, and reflection in transitional ritual experience. I argue that engaging with the multivalence of the image of fire could allow faith communities to move beyond dominant interpretive frameworks and apply the image within their own specific context. First, I orientate the discussion by examining the multivalence of biblical fire imagery and establishing the character of fire within the British social imagination. Second, I use critical observation of community fire practices in non-faith contexts to build a new contextual framework for the analysis of fire imagery. Finally, I apply my findings to a contextual analysis of existing Christian fire practices in Britain. Throughout, I argue that sensory and imaginative interaction with the image of fire provides a way to communicate and interact with theological ideas; experience personal and communal change; and mediate experience of the sacred.

Pervasive games are an experimental game design practice that engages with technology development and everyday space. These experiences range from technology experiments to avant-garde performances to explorative urban play. This PhD is an ethnographic exploration of two questions. First, how does the technocultural situation shape the history and future of pervasive games? Secondly, how does this technocultural situation shape and affect the enactment (the design, play and performance) and the core experience? This thesis is comprised of ethnographic research carried out at pervasive gaming festivals, analysis of games and interviews with designers, artists and technologists working in the field. It reflects a historical situation in an emerging and dynamic field of practice. The work develops a set of methods that uses the concepts of liminality, materiality and practice to inform an assemblage of data gathering and analysis techniques that are specifically intended to engage with new technocultural forms. This is intended to deliver an understanding of these forms in a wider cultural relationships as well as give insight into how they are experienced. It uncovers a framework of tensions that explain the underlying nature of the play experience and design of pervasive games. This research uncovers overlooked aspects of the practice of pervasive gaming. Firstly the ways in which the social and cultural background of the players and designers moulds the form, content and meta-narrative of these games. Secondly that the overlooked, and often unexpected or invisible, materiality of these games shapes the ways in which they have developed. The often unconsidered physical materials of the games take on rich and vital meanings through design and play. The relationship between designer and the mesh of object agencies have led the practice in unexpected directions and charted a trajectory away from technology experiment and into experience design exploration. It is in this wider context of the design of experiences that the practice will have the longest-term impact.

By setting the writings of Etel Adnan, Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robinson and Rebecca Solnit into dialogue with those of the New England Transcendentalists, this thesis proposes a New Transcendentalism that both reinvigorates and reimagines Transcendentalist thought for our increasingly intersectional and deterritorialized contemporary context. Drawing on key re-readings by Stanley Cavell, George Kateb and Branka Arsić, the project contributes towards the twenty-first-century shift in Transcendentalist scholarship which seeks to challenge the popular image of New England Transcendentalism as uncompromisingly individualist, abstract and ultimately the preserve of white male privilege. Moreover, in its identification and examination of an interrelated poetics and politics of liminality across these old and new Transcendentalist writings, the project also extends the scope of a more recent strain of Transcendentalist scholarship which emphasises the dialogical underpinnings of the nineteenth-century movement. The project comprises three central chapters, each of which situates New Transcendentalism within a series of vertical and lateral dialogues. The trajectory of my chapters follows the logic of Emerson s ever-widening circles , in that each takes a wider critical lens through which to explore the dialogical relationship between my four writers and the New England Transcendentalists. In Chapter 1 the focus is upon anthropological theories of liminality; in Chapter 2 upon feminist interventions within psychoanalysis; and in Chapter 3 upon the revisionary work of Post-West criticism. In keeping with the dialogical analogies that inform this project throughout, the relationship examined within this thesis between Adnan, Dillard, Robinson and Solnit and the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists is understood as itself reciprocal, in that it not only demonstrates how my four contemporary writers may be read productively in the light of their New England forebears, but also how those readings in turn invite us to reconsider our understanding of those earlier thinkers.

In my thesis, I aim to show that a focus on liminality in contemporary Scottish fictional texts illustrates underlying developments of relevant social phenomena with regard to class issues, gender and sexual identity. The anthropological concept of liminality looks at a situation of “being between”. The liminar faces a situation of having to renegotiate their values and perceptions in order to proceed. Liminality always involves the existence of limits which have to be transgressed and against which the individual negotiates a personal situation. I further hypothesise that the transgression of limits can be seen as an instrument to create order. I take an anthropological approach to my thesis. Arnold van Gennep’s early studies on rites of passage and Victor Turner’s study of liminality originate in the observation of tribe-internal, social structures of personal development. Van Gennep assumes a tripartite structure among which liminality is the middle stage, the phase in which the initiand has to perform tasks to re-enter and become part of the community. Turner isolates the middle stage and transfers this concept to western societies. This theory is taken up and developed further by several literary critics and anthropologists. While the transgression of limits is often regarded as a violation of those norms which regulate societies, the transgression of limits in a rite of passage and connected with liminality is a vital aspect and socially necessary. Several concepts are related to this theory, which will play a major role in my thesis: Turner’s permanent liminality, Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque as well as Foucault’s transgression. In the first chapter, I contrast two of Alasdair Gray’s novels, stating that the most powerful message of social and capitalist criticism is not just visible on the surface of the hyperbolic texts, but particularly prominent in liminal passages. The theories of Bakhtin and Turner plays the most important role in this chapter. In the second chapter, A. L. Kennedy’s novels are contrasted. In So I am Glad a difficult psycho-social issue is solved by a liminal trigger-figure, Paradise is an example of the destructive and restrictive effects of permanent liminality. In chapter three, I deal with the issue of passing and an individual redefinition of gender identity. The performativity of masculinity reveals ambiguous definitions of gender and morale. The Wasp Factory portrays a form of masculinity which has destructive effects on the individual and its environment. It is the tension in the liminal situation of a gender myth, a brutally performed masculinity and the character’s biological sex which expresses a harsh criticism of society’s definition of masculinity. In Trumpet, the binary model of gender is questioned. The text suggests a different definition of identity as fluid, passing between the two ‘extremes’, formulating the possibility of a state of being ‘something in-between’. It is the confrontation with this ‘otherness’ which provokes a wave of rejection and protest in the environment of the individual passing as a member of the ‘other sex’. In this case, it is not the obvious liminal individual, but his son who undergoes a process of change and thus a process of renegotiating his strict value system. The final chapter deals with liminal spaces and how these reflect and support the internal development which the protagonists undergo. The choice of Orkney as a mystical place and the fictional setting in a war game show that liminal spaces – both real and fictitious – trigger a personal development and reconnect present day life in Scotland with historical events which have had a shaping role for Scottish and European life.

This thesis investigates the commitment bonds of individuals through the lens of liminality. While workers are able to commit to multiple targets and this has been linked to important performance outcomes, previous study of commitment in the workplace is almost exclusively concerned with organisational contexts and employer-employee dyads thus neglecting the increasingly fragmented and diverse world of work. Commitment is developed here by examining it in a liminal position, a term often applied to cross-boundary knowledge workers due to its ambiguous and uncertain nature but also the freedom of being 'betwixt and between' organisations, professions, and clients. Indicative of this liminal position are independent consultants, a growing army of self-employed freelance knowledge workers who use their tacit knowledge and high levels of human capital to solve complex problems for multiple business clients. Independent consultancy is a growing area and as self-employed independent contractors they are an increasingly important policy battleground. They are vital to our understanding of a changing world of work where existing theories and frameworks are becoming stretched, distorted and perhaps even irrelevant. Adopting a pragmatist research philosophy and making use of a reflexive metamethodology, 50 semi-structured interviews using critical incidents and participatory visual methods were conducted. Thematic analysis was used and a new method of visual metaphor analysis pioneered. The resulting findings focus on three areas. Firstly important targets of commitment are identified; clients, professional bodies, and collaborators. I argue that these act as substitutes for commitment to an organisation because they perform a similar role. Secondly, these bonds of commitment are underpinned by the inherent freedom of a liminal position. Although this freedom is evident in various ways, a more critical reading suggests that it is more complex and relational rather than total. Finally, this freedom from organisational ties and structures can cause conflicts of commitment based on knowledge, time, and contractual issues. Devoid of an organisational employer and many of the accompanying administrative and support mechanisms these conflicts are resolved at an individual level by turning the conflict into a synergy, preventing, avoiding, or in extreme cases changing the nature of the bond altogether. The primary contributions to knowledge are the development of substitutes for organisational commitment, the detailing of conflicts of commitment and their resolution, and the inherent freedom of a liminal position which underpins these. Furthermore, this thesis offers the first investigation using the Klein et al. (2012) reconceptualisation to investigate commitment outside of an organisational employment setting. This context and aspects of liminality are used to further problematise the extant literature and theory around the volition inherent in commitment and the isolation and measurement of targets. Understanding of liminality is advanced in terms of freedom, which is often assumed but rarely explored, and anti-structure by arguing that liminality is full of structure in the form of commitment bonds which act as important anchors and reference points to help minimise the ambiguity.

This exploratory study was inspired by the author’s voluntary work with streetconnected children and youth in Kenya. It develops an understanding of the experiences of young people leaving the street in two provincial Kenyan towns. Although there has been extensive research concerned with street-connectedness, there has been a limited focus on young people’s transitions away from the street. Participants were identified with the help of three organisations: fifty-three young people, aged 12 -28, participated in semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and visual methods, during two field research visits to Kenya, in 2012 and 2013. The study found that their experiences of leaving the street were influenced by their day-to-day interactions with family, friends and other members of the communities into which they transitioned. These interactions influenced how accepted the young people felt and the extent to which they believed they were supported economically, physically and psychosocially, especially with regards to their relationships with family members. The participants’ interactions with school-based peers and teachers were particularly important in schools and training centres, where they struggled to develop a sense of belonging. Being street-connected is an integral part of the identities constructed by young people after they leave the street and establish places for themselves in their families, schools, local communities, and wider society. Such street-connectedness can be a strength: the resilience and skills developed on the street are useful attributes in adapting to new situations, potentially providing income-generating opportunities later on. However, the stigmatisation and resulting marginalisation they experienced on the street can have lasting effects. Barriers to inclusion experienced on the street influence a young person’s ability to develop a sense of belonging to their new situation after leaving the street. This study makes a conceptual contribution. Street-connectedness begins when a young person first arrives on the street, and continues until what could be years after they leave it. This street-connectedness can be characterised by three liminalities. The first is associated with living in the physical space defined as being on the street: a physical embodiment of liminality. The second, describes the process of being in transition as a young person newly arrived on the street, or having recently left the street: each being a liminal phase. The third liminality is described by an identity-forming social space, associated with being, and having been, street-connected: a liminal identity. This liminal identity, associated with being street-connected, impacts upon young people (re)entering home communities and, in particular, education, and highlights a need to consider and address the effects of these impacts.

This thesis examines the dual identity of the Church of England priest employed as an NHS healthcare chaplain. In 1948, full-time NHS chaplains provided a Church of England ministry of liturgy and pastoral care. Their twenty-first century counterpart delivers existential spiritual or pastoral care. Though Church of England chaplains are licensed by the Church, their work is shaped by the NHS and the Trust which employs them. They are accountable to the Church and the NHS even though each promotes different values and serves different ends. Published literature alludes to the chaplain’s sense of marginalization from the Church and within the NHS. Interviews with twelve full-time NHS chaplains, who are Church of England priests, focused on how they interpreted their dual identity as priest and chaplain, and the impact the two institutions had on these identities. This I framed using the theoretical model, ‘communities of practice’. Analysis of these interviews confirmed that chaplains thought they were disconnected from the priorities and values of the Church. This they described as ‘marginalization’, a term which appears elsewhere in published literature sometimes interchangeable with ‘liminality’. I claim that liminality is not only conceptually different but makes a distinct contribution to understanding the work and identity of chaplain and priest. I argue the existence of liminal intelligence and its importance in the ministry of the chaplain. I maintain that ministerial priesthood needs to be faithful to its liminal credentials. These I trace back to the liminality of the cultic priesthood outlined in the Hebrew bible as well as the liminality of Jesus, his teaching and the communitas of the early Church. I propose that the role of the ministerial priest is not only about recalling the institutional Church to its liminal roots but that liminality is the essence of priesthood.

The transitions of young people to adulthood in the UK are a political threshold that has received much public attention. The trend for young people to abstain from elections relative to older generations is one example of the many reasons young people’s politics have come under the microscope of researchers who claim that the manner of young people’s transitions to citizenship represents an incipient crisis for the UK as a democratic system (Farthing, 2010; O’Toole, 2015, p. 175). This thesis responds to calls for more research into young people’s lives as sites for political subjectivity as well as, in the UK, for explorations of the main question in the field of young people’s politics: the extent and nature of young people’s relative disengagement from politics, and their marginalization from institutional politics in general The theoretical basis for this research project is a constructionist framework based on Bourdieu’s methods for uncovering social worlds (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 1) that also attempts to approach young people as equals in a political sense (Rancière, 1991, p. 229). Focus groups with young people at one vocational college, one secondary school and one youth group in the UK, utilizing participant photography as a data generation technique, provide the data for this study in an everyday politics approach. Young people’s perceptions of their everyday worlds are developed into broader discussions of political subjectivity, perceptions and actions.

It is widely accepted that Higher Education should provide students with a challenging experience. Research on threshold concepts provides a framework for exploring challenging content within a discipline and has contributed to understanding how to support students with conceptual difficulties. However, less is known about how individual students experience challenge and difficulty in their academic studies, in particular how they respond and feel when they become stuck. This study explores students’ experience of challenge, difficulty and stuckness, how they responded and managed challenges and any associated feelings. The study, carried out in a university in the Southwest of England, used a Qualitative Longitudinal Research design to follow 16 students through the second year of a degree for Allied Health Professionals. Data were collected using the semi-structured and email interview methods. Data were analysed longitudinally and cross-sectionally using a constant comparison process. The findings and discussion are presented using a ‘natural’ style which aims to capture the student journey over the academic year. The study found that some form of challenge, difficulty or stuckness was commonplace in the students’ educational experience. The value of challenges which create uncertainty in education is recognised, particularly where students are grappling with boundaries around knowledge. Variation in students’ experiences was partly explained by their ‘spiky profiles’ (influencing factors such as prior education and work experience) and partly by differences in factors relating to strategy use. The students were creative and resourceful in developing a range of specific and generic strategies in several areas: the use of time and space; the management of expectations and acceptance of feelings; and monitoring and reflection. The study adds to current understanding of stuckness through an examination of the liminal spaces students encountered. The discussion argues for a more nuanced and holistic approach to understanding students’ engagement with a complex cycle of challenges and strategy use, which creates a range of expectations, tensions, feelings and opportunities. It identifies implications for Higher Education practice and calls for an understanding of the impact and interconnectedness of factors influencing students. It stresses the importance of providing structures for students to explore how they learn and develop their academic practice, in addition to discipline specific knowledge and skills.

The paranormal industry in Edinburgh has become a thriving niche within the country's tourist market. While ghost walks have been explored in anthropology from the perspective of spectacle, this thesis investigates and analyses the cultural framework which has furthered the success of the industry. Namely, the ways in which the paranormal industry have appropriated the beliefs and practices of an overarching ghost culture: a community of believers, investigators, mediums, and all those who actively attempt to engage with the paranormal. The increased visibility of the paranormal within popular culture has spurred a wide interest in the unknown and unexplained. Ghost hunting television shows and the prevalence of ghost stories has inspired the desire for unique experiences, and for audiences to contextualise the supernatural within their own lives. The paranormal industry has grown to accommodate this intense, active enthusiasm for all things spectral, and belief has become a commodity. This burgeoning fascination in ghosts has become an important aspect of how Scotland is sold as a destination. While commercial paranormal industries exist in other cities around the world, the historical perception of Scotland as other has created a precedent for the connection between Scottish national identity and the spectral. This thesis further investigates the ways in which the tourist industry continues to solidify the connection between Scottish heritage and the paranormal.

In April 1997 Kainos Community in HMP The Verne, Dorset, England became the first faith-based prison unit to be established in the Western world. The foundations and ethos of Kainos are based on Christian concepts of ‘loving your neighbour’ and forgiveness. The community operates as a hybrid therapeutic community (TC) and cognitive behavioural programme (CBP). It is open to and inclusive of prisoners of all faiths and none. The aim of this study is to explore the Kainos community ethnographically, guided by the principles of grounded theory and thematic analysis, in order to investigate whether or not Kainos ameliorates some of the de-humanising aspects of prison, and if so, how it rehumanises the prison space. Theoretically, this study highlights the dehumanisation of imprisonment, and illuminates the role that a holistic, Christian-based approach can play in terms of making the prison environment ‘more human’. My findings reveal that on Kainos there are physical, liminal and spiritual spatial mechanisms, in which a family of sub-themes interact to enable flourishing to occur. Kainos has created a physical space in which spaces of architecture and design; sensory experience; movement; and home interact to enable flourishing, whereby prisoners feel ‘more homely’, ‘free’, safe, and calm. Kainos has created a liminal space in which spaces of atmosphere; identity; home; and creativity interact to enable flourishing, empowering prisoners in their self-expression; as a cathartic tool; and as a means of regaining or creating a new identity. Kainos has created a spiritual space in which spaces of Christian activism, love, and forgiveness enable self-worth, healing, transformation, and meaningful change. The implication is that Kainos has created spaces of flourishing, safety and peace within an otherwise dehumanising carceral space, and this plays an important role in the process of transformational change imperative in the desistance process. If society must have prisons, this study concludes that Kainos provides a model for how they should be.

This thesis explores the embodied topography of Mount Athos, emphasizing the conditions of liminality – the nature of different kinds of boundaries and intermediate zones within it. Mount Athos is a valuable case study of sacred topography, as it is one of the largest monastic communities and an important pilgrimage destination. Its phenomenological examination in this study highlights the importance of embodiment in the experience of religious places advocating also for a deeper understanding of the boundaries in it. The thesis seeks to convey a more primary insight into the phenomena found there, examining also how ritual and pre-reflective embodied movements explore the topography in a meaningful way. Combining elements of different disciplines (philosophy, theology, anthropology, and architectural history and theory) with primary sources from archives and fieldwork, the thesis constitutes an original contribution to both Athonian studies and sacred topography scholarship. By focusing on the spatial, temporal and aural boundaries and intermediate zones as perceptual phenomena of an embodied topography, it suggests an alternative to the usual art-historical, objectifying examination of the case study. Liminality refers to the intermediate zones between two or more components of a sacred place. It allows the reciprocal communication between them, carrying the character of both departure and return. In using liminality as a focus of investigation, the thesis provides a new understanding of the way religious places are interconnected through cyclical rituals, the strangers’ travel and silent meditation. Following the archetype of the journey, these movements are also studied according to their particular power to “map” places in a more primary way than the modern cartographic method. Starting from the periphery of Athos, the study presents a variety of in-between zones, the passage through which contributes to the sensual realization of a multi-layered meaningful topography. Annual pilgrimages to the peak of the mountain, silent meditation in isolated caves, wandering asceticism and walking along the footpaths provide different ways to narrate the natural landscape of the peninsula. Moreover, ritual choreographies being inscribed in the courtyard and church of a coenobitic monastery, meals and death services ritually perform the place. Through their investigation, this study illuminates important aspects of the topography, such as its multi-sensual aural environment in which silence plays a key role. The analysis concludes that the different liminal zones of Mount Athos are always undergoing a condition of penetration, alteration, and even violation, allowing the integrity of the topography to be enacted.

This thesis uses a narrative approach to explore how hallucinations are understood by people with dementia, their carers and community mental health nurses. The study aims to make visible the multiple enactments of realities of hallucinations as they are practiced within a community mental health setting. While existing research shows a growing body of research about experiences of dementia, the experience of hallucinations has been unexplored. Research about hallucinations has predominantly focused on epidemiology or pharmaceutical interventions. The research was conducted in one area of Scotland, using three triadic case studies comprising a person with dementia living at home, their carer and community nurse. Data were collected through conversational interviews. In this study realities are conceptualised as enacted and multiple. The study was informed by an ethic of care approach which critiques the view of people as isolated individuals. People are understood to live in relationships within which they co-construct narratives. It provided an ethical framework to research relationships and data analysis. Data were analysed using voice centred relational analysis, which uses four separate ‘listenings’ for each interview. This method identifies the multiple voices speaking and allows a high degree of reflexivity. I-poems were produced for each of the interviews and some visual illustrations were used in different ways to illustrate the analysis and allow an alternative interpretive perspective on the data. The analysis reveals that people with dementia and their carers contextualise their understanding of hallucinations into their narrative identity. They strive for continuity but also experience them as potential threats. Ambiguity and uncertainty are characteristic of the experience of hallucinations of people with dementia and carers and I suggest that liminality is a useful concept to understand this. Community nurses have multiple, and fluid understandings of hallucinations; they negotiate these different hallucinations within a situated practice enactment. Their decision to act on hallucinations does not depend on whether they relate to consensus reality, but whether they cause distress. The findings of this study highlight the complexities and ambiguities of hallucinations within dementia and shows how they are managed in practice. The theoretical perspectives of enacted realities and ethic of care, alongside creative methods enhances understanding of the ephemeral nature of hallucinations. This study adds to literature challenging the exclusion of the people with dementia from research by demonstrating that they are able to talk about their experiences of hallucinations. The study contributes to the story of hallucinations in dementia by disrupting the fixed boundaries of the dominant discourse that views hallucinations as a clear cut break with reality.

Sacerludus, a performative (textual) art work in its own right, provides a self-reflexive ground against which to analogically consider art praxis as a tactical ritual process. Drawing on the distinction between Ritual (generatively, subjunctive ‘as-if’ in character), and Ceremony (descriptively, indicative ‘as-is’ in character), Victor Turner’s work on ritual liminality is applied as core theoretical concept: this generates the seeds and models of future society. Alongside the socio-political bias that liminality carries in bricolaged, makeshift and sensory orchestration, de Certeau’s concept of tactics is enlisted to reinforce potentials of counter-cultural resistance and subversivity. ‘What is Ritual?’ is considered before dealing with art praxis in its situated, exhibitional contexts, as they draw on ritual tactics. Art praxis and production is proposed as a subjunctively performative, ritual occasion, in opposition to the traditional conception as indicative, autonomous object. The contemporary form of installation is explored to reveal its incarnate implications for performative participation. The ritual approaches tactics and processes adopted in conceiving and executing the works are articulated, before, in a form of post-scripted lettering, the contexted concerns of the submitted works are addressed. Sacerludus concludes that the framework of Ritual can be productively foregrounded in art praxis, as in its subversive-loading, it engages a participatively inclusive, generatively resistant process for contemporary aesthetic production.

For Christian professional youth workers, the transition from student to employee positions them at the interstices of convergent and competing discourses. This thesis argues that Christian youth workers can position themselves within these discourses by articulating an authentic faith integrated with professional practice. This positioning is produced and reproduced by performative expectations and the influence of relations of power. The notion of one, unitary professional identity is deemed futile as Christian professional youth workers mobilize a complex range of identities within a range of liminal spaces. Youth workers are suspended within an extended liminal state, which opens up different possibilities for professionalism within Christian professional youth work. This thesis contributes to knowledge particularly for the sociology of the professions and specifically with regard to training and subsequent employment of those within professional occupations. Theoretically, this thesis develops Turner’s thinking in relation to the three phases of separation, liminality and reincorporation and how they apply to the understanding of transition from training to employment. Turner’s phases appear to be incomplete for the understanding of the particular issues that individuals face in the forming of identity in late modern contexts. His thinking on separation and liminality adopt a more nuanced meaning in that the statuses are not as clearly defined as would be initially thought. Likewise, reincorporation is elusive, since Christian professional youth workers are suspended within a permanent state of liminality. This thesis redeems the notion of professionalism from a secular liberal ideal, allowing spirituality to flourish once again. A Christian professional can, and does, express an authentic sense of self within different discursive domains. The crossing of discursive boundaries allows for creativity and experimentation that enriches faith and professionalism. The two influence each other in productive ways. Professionalism as the profane becomes the sacred through the experiences of Christian professionals. Of course, professionalism becoming sacred is not the domain of the Christian only. This is pertinent for a person of any faith belonging to a professional occupation and seeking to express their faith through their work.

This thesis offers a new approach to the work of the British filmmaker Shane Meadows. In contradiction to the conventional reading of his work as part of the long tradition of social realism in British cinema, this thesis offers a new approach which argues that the term ‘liminal realism’ best describes both the in-between nature of the texts and Meadows’ place in British screen culture. In order to construct this alternative reading of Shane Meadows, this interdisciplinary study draws upon work from anthropology, folk culture and myth to describe the particular ways in which Meadows’ work demonstrates liminality, most especially via the Jungian archetype of the trickster. The thesis argues that the figure of the trickster describes the cultural construct of the filmmaker himself which can be described as being in-between, whether critically positioned between the mainstream and art-house; between the cultural imaginaries of the British north and the south, residing in the liminal elsewhere of the Midlands; and moving between autographical and biographical registers, arguing how he responds to that positioning with a tricksterish sensibility. Focusing on the ways in which masculinity and class are represented, the thesis explores the centrality of homosociality in Meadows’ work, explaining how it demonstrates a particular dynamic of desire which operates between men. The first chapter identifies the reason existing paradigms for Meadows inadequately describe the particular, liminal quality of both Meadows’ films and the positioning of the filmmaker himself. Chapter Two explores the tradition of social realism in British cinema and how it works as a discourse. It goes on to argue why this conventional paradigm is not adequate as a way of understanding Meadows’ work. Chapter Three demonstrates how the production of the films is liminal, positioned between art-house and commerce, and how a reading of the body of the filmmaker as a text is a productive way to approach the representation of masculinity and class. Chapter Four analyses the film texts using a Jungian archetypal framework to explain the ways in which they are liminal. The study concludes that Meadows can be best understood through the concept of liminal realism, a new paradigm with potentially wider applications for analyses of screen culture.

America’s ‘long early twentieth century’ (1890-1945) was a period of intense industrialization, urbanization, and immigration which fundamentally altered the character of the nation. Between 1900 and 1924, which saw the curtailing of immigration from southern and eastern Europe via the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act (successor to 1921’s stop-gap Emergency Quota Act), more than 14 million people flocked to the U.S. in search of economic opportunity, social equality, and freedom from religious and political oppression. Descendants of these ‘new immigrants,’ as they were called, were by the late twentieth century a staple of white American suburbia, but their progenitors were variously considered ‘off-white,’ ‘dark-white,’ or non-white, with attendant connotations of mental, physical, and moral inferiority. This research examines texts, authored by Jewish immigrants such as Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Rose Cohen, and Mary Antin, which were published between 1890 and 1930, when the onset of the Great Depression saw a rise in anti-Semitism that contributed to the decline in popularity of ‘up by the bootstraps’ Americana whose narratives chronicled, ostensibly, social assimilation and cultural integration; it considers the ramifications of writing in English for a native audience, which frequently alienated Jewish immigrants from their peers, and analyzes the manner in which the United States’ shifting social mores coincided with—and facilitated—new immigrants’ reappraisal of religion, education, commerce, and family life in the ‘new world’ of the west. It argues that the ambivalence contained within many of these texts was both a reaction to nativist prejudices and an effort to expose misconceptions present on both sides of the wildly popular Americanization movement, as well as exploring the way that such narratives attempted the redefinition of American philanthropic, educational and civic paradigms—the preponderance of which passionately espoused rhetoric of equality while reinforcing the stratification of the United States’ class system—into modes of interaction that accommodated difference while seeking to establish common ground upon which could be built a more inclusive, multiethnic future. Finally, it addresses the continuing relevance of these works as texts which both predict and presage modern modes of social interaction and discusses their future in an evolving literary canon that has, historically speaking, been an agent of western patriarchal hegemony.

Placed deposits have received increasing attention over the past 30 years, particularly in prehistoric British archaeology. Although disagreement still exists over the definition, identification, and interpretation of placed deposits, significant advances have been made in theoretical and methodological approaches to placed deposits, as researchers have gradually moved away from relatively crude ‘ritual’ interpretations toward more nuanced considerations of how placed deposits may have related to daily lives, social networks, and settlement structure, as well as worldview. With the exception of comments on specific deposits and a recent preliminary survey, however, Anglo-Saxon placed deposits have remained largely unstudied. This thesis represents the first systematic attempt to identify, characterize, analyse and interpret placed deposits in early to middle Anglo-Saxon settlements (5th–9th centuries). It begins by disentangling the various definitions of ‘placed’, ‘structured’, and ‘special’ deposits and their associated assumptions. Using formation process theory as a basis, it develops a definition of placed deposits as material that has been specially selected, treated, and/or arranged, in contrast with material from similar or surrounding contexts. This definition was applied to develop contextually specific criteria for identifying placed deposits in Anglo-Saxon settlements. Examination of 141 settlements identified a total of 151 placed deposits from 67 settlements. These placed deposits were characterized and analysed for patterns in terms of material composition, context type, location within the settlement, and timing of deposition relative to the use-life of their contexts. Broader geographical and chronological trends have also been considered. In discussing these patterns, anthropological theories of action, agency, practice, and ritualization have been employed in order to begin to understand the roles placed deposits may have had in structuring space and time and expressing social identities in Anglo-Saxon settlements, and to consider how placed deposition may have articulated with Anglo-Saxon worldview and belief systems.

This thesis explores the experiences of applicants for Refugee Status in the United Kingdom who had, at the time of the research, waited for between two and nine years for the conclusion of the asylum process. Despite extensive lamentation of the delays endured by asylum applicants in having their claims assessed, little social scientific scholarship has substantively and critically engaged with this phenomenon, or even with waiting as a universal condition. The present study fills this gap in knowledge, conceptualising waiting as an informative, consequential phase in the quest for protection, hope and security. The study is based on twelve months of participant observation among asylum seekers living in Glasgow under the dispersal regime. Narratives and tacit aspects of everyday life are presented to both draw a multi-dimensional ethnographic picture and acknowledge the asylum seekers’ agency. Their waiting entails a focus on negative and positive, concrete and symbolic objects, which are located in the future. However, their inability to affect or predict the arrival of these objects produces uncertainty and passivity. Asylum seekers narrate overwhelmingly negative experiences of asylum policies, such as dishonouring encounters with immigration authorities; social dislocation; enforced poverty; interrupted life cycles; and an inability to settle and belong in the UK. Yet despite the mutually reinforcing effects of UK policy and of waiting, asylum seekers have benefited from formal support structures provided under Scottish policy. Individuals have been able to re-construct social ties; pursue educational opportunities; enhance personal security; gain greater control over their ‘cases’; and undertake selective socio-cultural adaptation. They have also utilised a discourse of ‘integration’ circulating in Scotland to garner public support for their struggles for recognition and the right to remain. The thesis concludes by reflecting on changes occurring after a form of Leave to Remain was granted, and assesses the extent to which people were able to realise the ‘normal lives’ for which they had been waiting.

This study of the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath goes beyond the usual practice of labelling these writers either as reticent or Confessional. Instead, it places greater emphasis on their visual poetics which privileges the process of creativity – the different modes of seeing – over ethical and political considerations. I begin by discussing what each knew of the other and proceed to examine their common interest in perception and interpretation. Bishop and Plath seek to understand the depiction of ‘reality’ and the various forms that this takes: the concrete fact, the object or the authentic experience modulated by historical data, whether symbols, mythical forms or religious conventions. In their poetry the self objectifies the world, discovering and simultaneously defining observed phenomena. Alternatively, personal identity is determined as part of a symbolic order because the present is deemed inadequate in itself and, therefore, frames of reference need to be expanded, analogies drawn, historical parallels established, myths invoked. This historicised art is complex, stylistic and culturally established. Bishop’s poetry, for instance, distinguishes between customary ways of seeing; the symbolism of medieval painting and the untrained eye of individualism (Primitive art). Her poetic ‘transparency’, language which corresponds faithfully to actual experience, calls attention, by its very directness and apparent simplicity, to the various parts of a synthesising imagination that could, potentially, infringe upon pure vision. The analysis of Bishop’s language and its development is based upon her published and unpublished material. Bishop and Plath underscore differences between description and meditation, empirical enquiry and symbolic transformation, the tangible and the abstract. They further consider religious beliefs ephemeral and place their faith in the primacy of the material world. Bishop is especially distrusting of symbolism in Christian imagery. Plath admired Bishop‘s poetry for being ‘real’, that is intimate, but not self-obsessed, concerned with aestheticism and ‘pleasure-giving’. This was the type of poetry she aspired to write. The reading of Plath uses autobiography sparingly, while arguing that her work – including poems in Ariel – demonstrates the creative strategies of, what she termed, a ‘pseudo-reality’. This precludes the automatic designation of her poetry as fully Confessional. Visual poetics is broadly defined to include a discussion on surrealism. Bishop was fascinated by the movement‘s expression of the numinous and transcendent but recoiled from its illogical thinking. Plath was equally drawn and repelled by male surrealists’ portrayal of the woman subject. In her poetry the misogyny of this art is countered by the appropriation of more positive imagery found in female surrealists such as Leonor Fini.

Modern conflict transformation emerged after World War II as a discipline and a field of academic research. Since the early 1990s it has increasingly concerned itself with psycho-social issues (e.g. trauma treatment or reconciliation) in the aftermath of violent protracted social conflicts. Within this psycho-social space there has been a growing interest in the use of music in conflict transformation to improve relationships between in and out-groups. However, the field of music and conflict transformation is still nascent, with little in-depth research available. The majority of studies have been undertaken by interested parties or relies on anecdotal evidence from organisers and musicians with little concern for the context of the music use. Participants, whose attitudes and relationships to out-groups are the focus of conflict transformation interventions, are largely overlooked and their views are rarely discussed. Furthermore, there are few detailed studies on exactly how music affects conflict transformation outcomes. Instead allusions are often made to terms such as “the power of music” which act as a black box intended to explain how music “works”, but patently fail to do so. This thesis attempts to fill these two gaps in the literature by focusing on the participants’ experiences in two different conflict transformation contexts, a multi- cultural music project for school children in Noway and the casual music use in a settlement of internally displaced persons in Sudan. Through qualitative research methods, rich descriptive data from different parties is gathered. The data is analysed using grounded theory. As a result a very different and more complex picture emerges that enriches the current understanding of how music is used and perceived in conflict transformation contexts. In particular, how participants view these activities and how power relationships, though rarely mentioned, affect the music use is explored in detail. Some tentative suggestions indicate that music works best when used in longitudinal bottom-up activities and that music can augment conflict transformation activities rather than replace them. Additionally, it is proposed that music may work as a form of benign interruption in conflict transformation activities and that musical events provide a liminal space where the real work lies in the process of bringing any changes in attitudes from the liminal space into everyday life.

The focus of this study is revelation at the limits of communication. It considers the way in which (biblical) apocalyptic literature prominently figures the interconnection between liminality, revelation, and representation. The methodology asserts an indissoluble association between theology, philosophy and literature. As such it is interdisciplinary. A preliminary theory (and theology) of liminality interweaves the theological and philosophical contributions of, amongst others, Karl Barth, Graham Ward, Jürgen Moltmann and Jacques Derrida, thereby initiating a revised perspective on the constitution of literary apocalyptic text production and interpretation. Theorising the limen begins to describe the Trinitarian economy at work in Christian apocalyptic processing of scripture. I begin with the idea that revelation (apokalypsis) is the experience of the limen itself (in a coincidence of opposites). Thus the limen (as an actively divine space) incorporates that which stands on both sides, in vertical and horizontal, linear and cyclical, spatial and temporal movements. I then propose that apocalyptic literature re-presents this complex economy in which the end is rehearsed simultaneously as limit, threshold, and rupture. Theologically, this complicates inter-relational notions of ‘apocalyptic’ and eschatology, and stimulates a debate on a metaphysics of violence in communication (between God, man and Creation). I conclude that, at the extreme limit of human understanding (where words fail), those with faith in God’s love are opened out to revelation in the apocalyptic textual performance of the liminal economy, and thus to hope and forgiveness. Stressing the importance of reading apocalyptically, I begin to demonstrate the relationship between Christian-canonical narratives and the broader western literary canon, the critical process having invited an exploration of those literary characteristics (of tone, mode and genre) shared by (biblical, modern and postmodern) texts. An important principle in the literary analyses is the association between apocalyptic text production and hermeneutics. Christopher Rowland’s description of a ‘visionary mode’ explains how this process works. Thus the preliminary theory leads into a close reading of recent Russian and American works by Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Pynchon. These are compared to, and worked through, Mark’s and John’s gospels and the Book of Revelation. The interpretative approach widens the often self-limiting study of apocalyptic literature, and broadens theological debate on revelation. Thus it begins to show how the rhetoric of apocalyptic makes belief compelling.

The challenges faced by survivors of trafficking are harsh and devastating. Service providers in the anti-trafficking movement also face obstacles, as they navigate through systemic inequities and other barriers. Through ethnographic research, I interviewed trafficking survivors and service providers in order to try to understand and amplify the stories about the challenges they face. By doing so, I explore reframing rites of passage, as it operates within a framework that I suggest includes the concept of “cruel optimism”. As themes emerged, it became evident that survivors and service providers both battle uncontrollable factors within systems, inadequate social services, inflexibility of services, transient services, and a rigid anti-trafficking movement that limits growth and positive change. While there are tangible recommendations, there is also an overarching need for a space for grace and reframing survivorship. Empathy is the key to moving toward such compassionate frameworks that may make tangible recommendations possible.

Ready, Player Juan utilizes an interdisciplinary approach centering Latinx studies in conversation with video game, gender, film, and performance studies to analyze themes of borders, whiteness, and criminality. I combine US Latinx cultural and media studies with lived experience to conduct close readings of how developers include Latinxs. Instead of characters who generate identificatory connections with the player via complex narrative, Latinxs manifest through an amalgam of stereotypes I call Player Juan. Latinxs appear as mostly non-player characters (NPCs) whose identities are based in discourse accepted as “truths” by AAA game developers who are mostly white men (≈ 85%). Player Juan takes inspiration from Shira Chess’ Ready, Player Two which argues how male developers include women not based on lived experiences, but on perceptions about their play which creates the designed identity Player Two. Thus, my term equates to a framework challenging how AAA games include Latinxs through stereotypes and discourse.I begin recounting personal connections to video games, Loteria (Mexican Bingo), and storytelling to examine cultural lessons in games. The introduction engages Christopher González’s Permissible Narratives and how audience expectations dictate what is and is not permissible for Latinxs telling their stories through literature. The idea of permissibility weaves throughout this study as game developers continue to limit the permissibility of non-White identities, especially Latinx identities. I posit video games are borders through an examination of stereotypes in popular game titles, such as Tomb Raider: Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Red Dead Redemption 2, and The Last of Us 2. As an example, I theorize “crossing” to argue how players cross into games and how players can cross with or through characters they play or interact with.For example, players cross through Latinx characters and cultures in the introductions to Tomb Raider and Uncharted 4 as Latinidad is only included as a tutorial space to overcome. I conduct a transmedial analysis of Miles Morales’ presence in two games by Insomniac studios and the film Into the Spider-Verse. I argue not just anyone can wear the mask because of the Peter-Spidey binary which always affirms Peter Parker as Spider-Man and vice versa. In addition, I argue Miles’s story is not permissible without proximity to Parker’s whiteness.By examining the suturing of players to characters through the player-character fusion and through deploying Latinx theories, I interrogate the ways players interact with developers’ decisions when it comes to representing Latinx masculinities. I probe how players navigate Life is Strange 2’s narrative as Sean Diaz. For example, I argue how players cross into games inhabiting a liminal 3rd space where lived experience/knowledge collide with developers’ worldviews. I call this space digital mestizaje, which aims to document the perspectival shifts that occur when cultures collide via play, challenging players, scholars, and developers to introspect on the ways they inhabit video games’ borderlands.

This creative thesis strives to research and implement the overlap of liminality found within Children’s Literature, especially those works that exist through the screen. The critical component of this thesis explores the ways in which childhood development and maturity, a theme commonly found within Children’s Literature, embodies its own “right of passage” associated with the liminal. The journey of the Children’s Literature protagonist is often wrought with this movement from familiar boundaries to a sense of new development. The critical analysis emphasizes the methods Children’s Literature genre uses emotion, familial connections, symbology, space, and even elements of the monstrous to capture the passage of childhood immaturity into adulthood or mature growth. The creative component, a full-feature length screenplay, serves as an illustration of these liminality-grounded techniques. As a result, the screenplay demonstrates the ways in which the screenwriting craft and writing can implement, embody, and further genre research.

I finesse the atmospheric value of objects— the gestural systems brought forward in their material and forms. As Baudrillard describes, the tools we use and the furnishings we live among are increasingly defined by their formal adherence to systems of control. Individual function is suppressed for the sake of a homogeneous interrelationship between multiple objects. Through the use of a gestural system that prioritizes effort instead, objects are defined by instinct as opposed to cultural connotation. Material is liberated from the increasingly abstracted contemporary discourse surrounding its use and the object as a whole is allowed to retake an anthropomorphic status. Every material is thus valued for its innate qualities— what it is on its own, instead of what it has come to represent in relationship to other materials. In the end, the formal presence of muscular energy reifies both the object’s dependance on and function for the productivity of humankind. Muscular energy in this case is used in the specific and heterotopic cultural ritual of “art- making.” The materials used and the resulting forms into which they are arranged are intended to reflect their nature as an “art-object,” which is used in the separate but parallel cultural ritual of “art-viewing.” Within this relationship the art-object, like any other tool or furnishing, has its atmospheric value, its cultural relevance and productivity within the environment it is used, defined by gestural systems taken on during its production.

Peace is usually studied through nation-states operating in the international system, but recently, peace scholars have underscored the need to research peace as a part of everyday life. I argue that communication scholars should join the new conversation about everyday peace. I discuss major peace theories in broadcast and digital media that either replicate the state-centered approach or struggle to find ways to reach reconciliation. Nevertheless, I argue that communication scholars are well equipped to study everyday peace by focusing on mediatized manifestations of everyday life in popular culture and digital platforms. I demonstrate my claim by analyzing visual and sonic manifestations of everyday peace in Israel/Palestine. I investigate two Israeli television shows, Fauda and Arab Labor, focusing on Jewish and Palestinian men who try to pass members of the other community. Their identity work proves that national and ethnic identities are not stable but remain in flux, undermining Zionism which strives to silo Jews and Palestinians into separate categories. Nevertheless, Fauda and Arab Labor do not prescribe easy solutions to the conflict in their plots. Instead, they allow characters to work through the hardships of the conflict and its implications in their everyday lives. I study the texts of both television shows, illuminating the power of fiction to discuss taboo subjects at the core of the conflict. Moreover, I analyze the production of both shows. Based on interviews with creative workers, I contend that making quality TV is in itself a form of peacemaking because it brings Jews and Palestinian together, galvanizing them to process trauma and explore possible connections between the two communities. I study the sonic expression of everyday peace through a second case study — Border Gone, a digital activist project publishing stories of ordinary Palestinians from Gaza in Hebrew online. I trace the project’s evolution, which initially centered around translating stories written by young adults with the help of hundreds of Israeli volunteers. The stories reveal the humanity of Palestinians, undermining the Zionist perception that all Palestinians are terrorists. Ultimately, Border Gone transformed into an independent news outlet; the managing team was resolved to provide the appropriate political context to Palestinian stories, showcasing how the Israeli occupation of Gaza affects everyday lives. I conducted interviews with Border Gone’s managing team, and with members of its volunteers’ community. I analyze posts appearing on the project’s Facebook page and investigate the various comments uploaded to the page between December 2019-May 2021. May 2021 marked the peak of the project’s operation during a devastating war in Gaza. During the war, I joined the project’s managing team, conducting a participant observation on its news reporting process using the transcripts of a WhatsApp group where we communicated with each other. I conclude that Border Gone affords nonreciprocal listening to Palestinian stories, wherein Jews educate themselves about the reality of Palestinian life without expecting the other side to do the same. The stories captivate Israeli listeners and encourage them to engage in meaningful solidarity by insisting on lively descriptions of Palestinian experiences. Border Gone, as well as Fauda and Arab Labor, prove that peace is possible between Jews and Palestinians who use media to write and tell stories of everyday peace; moreover, media making draws members of these communities close, helping them process the horrors of violent conflict together.

In this paper, I explore the making and recording of “Offering,” the first track of Rajna Swaminathan’s 2019 debut album Of Agency and Abstraction. Performed by RAJAS, a set of musicians who are differently situated in diverse musical practices, the album provides an opportunity to understand and imagine improvisational possibilities across cultural space. Rather than trying towards an understanding of technical details, I use an examination of Swaminathan’s improvisational strategies, tensions between notation and enacted sound, and the varying musical subjectivities of the members of RAJAS to inform a broader theorization of musical liminality. While Swaminathan’s work is oftentimes characterized as a point of intersection between “Indian music” and “Jazz,” I would like to propose a more fluid reading, one that does not take any named musical tradition as a prior truth. As such, I focus on how “Offering” exists liminally amidst the multiple and specific stylistic tendencies of the musicians who perform it rather than as an intersection of separate, originary wholes. Further, using the critical theory of Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak as a theoretical framework and building on the scholarly work of Vijay Iyer, Elisabeth Le Guin, and George Lewis, this analysis posits Of Agency and Abstraction as a model for musical theorization that is grounded in the body.

Sociological research has long documented the ways in which individuals make sense of who they are and where they belong in the world. This thesis seeks to take up this age-old question and apply it to the experience of transnational adoptees from Guatemala. Transnational adoptees, due to their unique experience of moving across normative familial, racial, cultural, and national borders–all at the same time–must navigate their transgressions of these social identities in order to construct a sense of self. In other words, Guatemalan adoptees occupy unique positions within their adoptive families due to their non-biological but very real familial ties; within the US racial system, sometimes cast as (honorary) White, and other times as people of color; within Latinidad because of their divergent lived experiences from other Latinx folks; and a unique connection to their country of origin, with claims to both their birth cultures and adoptive cultures.To better understand these experiences, this thesis makes use of the social psychological concept of reflected appraisals that help explain how one’s sense of self is based in how we perceive and imagine others to perceive us. Additionally, this thesis theorizes the formulation of the Other, the alienation and ostracization of individuals who do not meet a socially constructed, normative identity. These constructs help illuminate how the transnational adoptee’s sense of being and belonging is different from non-adopted individuals, as well as from that of their White counterparts, communities of color, and their national kin. I identify and analyze four instances in which my 33 respondents feel as if they “don’t fit in”–when they are positioned as an adoptee Other, a racial Other, a cultural Other, and a national Other. Each of these instances are associated with Othering experiences and reflected appraisals, moments when the adoptee’s difference is made salient to them. Adoptee Othering is located in the doctor’s office and other biologized interactions, in adoptee microaggressive encounters, and in their comparing themselves to non-adopted persons. Racial Othering is experienced during racial microaggressive questions, racialized gendered experiences of exotification, and via explicit racism. Cultural Othering is made salient through Guatemalan adoptee’s relationship to Spanish language, being institutionally forced to identify as Latinx, and when navigating their relationship to Latinidad. National Othering is brought up when the transnational adoptee is made aware that they were born somewhere outside of the US, when they have to consider their relationship to immigration, and when interacting with Guatemalans living in the US. Through an analysis of these experiences, I show how Guatemalan adoptees challenge normative understandings of identity categories. I find that they confound social roles–despite their membership in adoptive families and adoptive communities, their role as child, brother, friend, or student, Guatemalan adoptees are set apart from others in their predominantly White communities because of their adoptive and racial differences. I also identify how Guatemalan adoptees disrupt our understandings of achieved and ascribed identities. As they move across (and between) race, Latinidad and national borders, Guatemalan adoptees challenge us to reexamine our assumptions around fixed categories, revealing (il)logics of identity politics in the21st century and the continued relevance of racial, cultural, and national fault lines that undergird identity formation and navigation in the age of color evasiveness (Annamma et al. 2017), post- raciality, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. At the same time that transnational adoptees teach us about identity formation, they are personally challenged to make sense of their identity differences. Throughout this thesis, by centering their lived experiences, I show how Guatemalan adoptees constantly navigate their seemingly tenuous claims to family, race, culture, and nationality. Seemingly tenuous in that it is socially normative categories of fixed identity that adoptees have internalized (reflected appraisals) and are reinforced by external interactions (Othering) that tell them they are different. This perpetual sense of difference (or at least, the uncertainty of when they will need to defend of legitimate their sense of self to others) is unique to transnational adoptees and essential to understand how they move through the world on a day-to-day basis. I conclude with a theorization of the adoptee third-space in relation to “coming out of the fog.” I argue that the adoptee third-space is a psychic-social location that the transnational adoptee finds themself returning to over and over again due to their constant Othering and sense of difference. I suggest that their continued presence in the third-space is one way in which transnational adoptees might connect their individual lived experiences to the structural oppressive systems that allowed for their in-betweenness in the first place. This presence and connecting of the dots is akin to “coming out of the fog,” to borrow a phrase popular in the adoptee community, adoptee’s coming into critical conscious. As the only study, to the author’s knowledge, that offers empirical qualitative evidence of Guatemalan adoptee’s experiences, the contribution is significant to both critical adoption studies and Latinx/Central American studies. Through my theorization of identity formation processesand the ways that Guatemalan adoptees challenge our understanding of identity categories, as well as my concluding thoughts on liminality, this thesis also makes a significant contribution to social psychology and social identity theory.