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In the field of language learning, the development of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) provides opportunities to engage learners in authentic situations and increases language exposure. This study focuses on using the virtual world of Second Life (SL) to support English learners (n=23) in Saudi Arabia. The study explores the participants' experiences in SL, including the potential of communicating in SL for communicative competence (CC) development, and analyses their perceptions of the experience. The study is a mixed-method case study involving both a quantitative aspect, in the form of a questionnaire, and a qualitative aspect, using semi-structured interviews and observation. The questionnaire's findings are reported using descriptive statistics. Interviews and interaction extracts are analysed thematically by drawing on the CC framework proposed by Celce-Murcia (2007). The findings indicate that the participants' engagement in SL varies and is associated with the value they put on SL, their commitments to regular inworld activities and their language level. The study reveals that SL is a rich environment that provides opportunities in which participants are active partners in a variety of conversational contexts. The study finds that participants have mixed perceptions towards their experience. It is found that linguistic competence outweighed other components of communicative competence as participants discussed it in greater length than any other component of CC, particularly learning vocabulary. The study proposes a model of CC development that shows the interrelationship of behavioural, cognitive and affective aspects. The model has five phases: (1) intention (2) potentials (3) engagement (4) communicative acts and (5) communicative competence. The success in developing CC is based on the learners' agency to activate their potentials by taking actions to use the language in a range of topics and contexts. However, learners need a degree of resilience to be able to thrive when they face challenges.

Following the 1834 inauguration of the William Hill organ in Birmingham Town Hall, England saw growth in the installation of organs in public buildings. These monuments to civic pride and ambition were constructed not just to entertain, but to improve, as local authorities sought to elevate the tastes and morals of their working-class population by providing affordable organ recitals as an alternative to other forms of leisure. This tradition, emerging amid the socio-cultural and musical tensions of the first half of the nineteenth century, was the product of a complex web of influences, rooted in the wider rational recreation movement, a secular organ tradition which had been evolving since the seventeenth century, middle-class mistrust of working-class leisure and the belief in the suggestive power of music. In this thesis, I have examined the origins of this tradition and its development in England between 1834 and 1901 by looking at the wider trends that led to its conception, and the ways in which it manifested itself in four case study towns: Kidderminster, Worcester, Wednesbury and West Bromwich. In each of these town, civic halls and organs were constructed and organists appointed, with the aim of producing regular, moral recitals for a working-class audience, with varying outcomes. The results of this tradition were not the broad moralising effect that its proponents intended, and its duration was limited by the march of technology and changing attitudes following the turn of the century. Instead, its lasting effects were a contribution to the democratisation of music and concert culture, to English organ-building and organ repertoire, and the construction of a large number of instruments throughout the country.

Global and national statistics suggest young people aged between 16-25 are overrepresented in the homeless population. Late adolescence and emerging adulthood are critical developmental periods for shaping lifelong health, well-being and social inclusion trajectories. Strengths-based approaches to tackling the health and developmental inequalities associated with youth homelessness are more likely to promote positive short- and longer-term change. The present thesis investigates a bespoke strengths-based intervention for young people experiencing homelessness, My Strengths Training for Life™ (MST4Life™). Grounded in theoretical and evidence-based approaches, MST4Life™ is an intervention co-designed between a team of sport psychologists and a youth housing service to improve outcomes in young people aged 16-25. Following a systematic review of the literature (Study 1), two qualitative studies of MST4Life™ were conducted. A realist evaluation was applied to investigate how and why the programme was perceived to be effective from key stakeholders' perspectives (Study 2). Additionally, an in-depth study of the outdoor adventure education (OAE) component was carried out (Study 3). Overall, MST4Life™ was perceived to support the development of psychosocial skills, improve perceptions of health and well-being, and foster intrinsically driven motivations. Central to promoting these outcomes were a needs-supportive atmosphere, experiential learning activities, and adaptive developmental regulations. A multi-theory approach to evaluating MST4Life™ elucidated novel implications that can inform applied practice and identify future research avenues to advance strengths-based approaches. Conclusions drawn from the present thesis can inform effective intervention approaches to improving health, well-being and developmental outcomes in socially disadvantaged young people.

The demands of soccer are multifactorial, from a physical perspective, the intensity of soccer match-play has significantly increased in recent years. The training methods that aree mployed by practitioners must constantly evolve to ensure players are in a position to cope with these demands across the season. Furthermore, to perform at the very highest level, an elite soccer player must excel in physical capabilities while concurrently demonstrating excellent technical and tactical skills. However, there is little information available regarding the physical development strategies that elite soccer clubs currently employ in order for youth soccer players to develop with the required attributes to be able to cope with the demands of senior soccer. Study 1 The first study aimed to understand the coach's perspective on the importance of physical development to the success of elite youth soccer players. A qualitative interview was conducted at an English premier league (category 1) academy. Fitness coaches, technical coaches, and an academy director were asked questions in an attempt to understand the training approaches in place and the rationale behind them, specifically concerning the physical aspect of the program. An understanding of the coaches' perspectives on the relative importance of physical development within the overall development program could then be observed. The present study's findings showed that elite coaches deemed the physical development of players as a key aspect in a holistic programme of player development. More specifically the following conclusions were made; the academy program is designed to prepare players for their first team squad, the coaches were keen to stress that developing good people was also a pertinent feature of the academy syllabus and that winning matches was not important in academy soccer (although it may be used a tool to successfully reinforce ideas to players). In addition, coaches were keen to stress that physical performance improvements would allow players to spend more time training due to less injury, therefore increased opportunities to learn and develop as a player. As aforementioned an important point that was raised was that match involvement was avital part of a player's development, however, winning matches within this academy setting was not, as coaches suggested that the match was merely an extension of the training schedule within this cohort of players. This study's findings allowed us to provide new insights into the different approaches used for physical development and potential barriers and future areas of improvement too within elite youth soccer. Given the expertise of the coaches interviewed, soccer practitioners could consider the findings useful for a better understanding of the methods of physical development integration in a holistic program. Furthermore, with the findings of both chapter 3 and 4 in question, the specific structure of chapter 5 was developed to attempt to understand if what the coaches perceived was important (i.e match involvement) was then reflected when it was analysed in practice. Study 2 The aims of the second study (chapter 4) were as follows; (i) to understand which physical tests are sensitive to identify changes across respective periods (ii) to understand the respective relationship of these tests with measures of internal and external training load. To investigate these aims, a systematic review was conducted. Five electronic databases were searched (PubMed Medline, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, CINAHL, and Scopus), with three additional studies identified from Science and Medicine in Football Journal. A total of 5683studies were identified after removing duplicates, with only 30 meeting the search criteria. The findings reported within this review, show that a maximal aerobic speed (MAS) test, YoYo Intermittent test derivatives and laboratory-based incremental running tests seem to be sensitive enough to detect aerobic and anaerobic capacity changes across respective training periods. The use of countermovement jumps (CMJ) to detect lower body power changes maybe useful, however, ensuring the correct variables such as jump height via impulse and flight time:contraction time are measured is imperative. Also, maximal sprint testing (>30 m) maybe used for speed-based changes. Findings from this study were then applied to study 3(chapter 5) of the thesis by providing invaluable information to design and implement the longitudinal tracking of training load and fitness change study. Following this review, it was clear that there is limited evidence in youth soccer that accurately monitors TL in relation to physical development. Therefore, further research is required to understand the best methods to track and monitor physical development allowing for a consensus of best practices to use within professional youth soccer to be made (chapter 5). Study 3 The study's primary aim was to quantify the accumulative training and match load across an annual season in elite academy soccer. In doing so, its effectiveness in relation to internal physical performance development across this time frame could be observed. Furthermore, this research aimed to understand how training influences athlete performance. Finally, an analysis of the key parameters which may provide correlations to allow for an understanding between TL and changes in fitness with the submaximal YoYo IE2 fitness test across an elite youth soccer season. In addition, an understanding of how much of the physical stimulus comes from the training prescription and how much comes from matches in periods two, four, and six weeks before the physical testing period. The key finding of this study was that when the starting status was accounted for concerning the examination of aerobic fitness; Starters had a consistently lower heart rate (HR) in the submaximal YoYo IE2 across the season (apart from Evaluation point 1; E1). Using Pearson's correlation, it was evident that there were moderate correlations with number of matches played, total duration of training, total distance (TD) performed and total high-speed running (HSD) between tests, with the strength of the correlation increasing the further from the test. At six weeks the correlations were strongest; Number of Matches Played (-0.33), Total Duration of Training (-0.45), TDPerformed (-0.51), and HSD (-0.42), Sprint SPR (-0.32) and total a/ds (-0.4) were found. This suggests that the more training and matches a player completes the lower the players maximum HR in the test. The findings of our study also demonstrate that there are significant differences in physical fitness for players who are consistently involved in match play in comparison with those who are not. Study 4 In order to provide information as to how to close the gap between players who play regularly in matches with those who do not in terms of physical stimuli, it was important to provide recommendations to do so. Therefore, the aim of study 4 was to provide a commentary which summarises the scientific rationale, current literature and practical recommendations to maintain and develop physical fitness in professional soccer. This was divided into six sections: 1) Evidence-based training load methodologies for maintaining and developing squad fitness; 2) How to keep players 'ready to play' who are not involved regularly within competitive match play; 3) How should interventions be implemented to close the gap between players who receive varied accumulative physical loads?; 4) What other methods could fitness coaches implement to allow for development/maintenance of fitness of players who are regular non-starters?; 5) Recommendations for effective implementation of top ups and post-match conditioning to prepare all players from a physical standpoint in applied soccer settings; 6) Limitations and future directions. The contemporary literature provides preliminary methodological guidelines for coaches and practitioners to use. The recommendations include; Individual periodization of training should be based on starting status (e.g. starters or non-starters) and match position demands in order to optimize recovery, match-day performance and overall physical development. Practitioners should understand how manipulating SSG variables such as pitch size and duration affect mechanical, metabolic and acute physiological responses to allow for appropriate top up protocols to be implemented. In relation to designing top up sessions, medium and large SSG can be used to ensure HSR and SPR exposure demands are met, with smaller SSG allowing for mechanical based adaptations. Isolated running drills may also be used within conditioning sessions to provide appropriate conditioning stimuli. Summary In summary, this research program provides novel information about the training loads and changes in physical fitness in elite youth soccer players. In addition, this work systematically examined the training load across a competitive youth soccer season to understand how significant the involvement in match play is for physical performance markers. Furthermore, it was the first study to conduct this type of qualitative interview with elite youth soccer oaches to further understand the relative importance of physical development in elite youth soccer. It is hoped that the findings from this research project can help applied staff understand the most appropriate practices surrounding match play in long term development programs for elite youth players.

The history of psychiatry has, by and large, acknowledged the existence of recreation as part of moral treatment, but it has never placed it at the centre of comprehensive academic inquiry. By analysing nineteenth-century treatises and medical publications as well as diverse archival material, this thesis explores the scale and purpose of the varied entertainment programmes at private, charitable and county asylums in England and Scotland. It will demonstrate that the range of these amusements was significant and became increasingly diverse; by situating this study in the broader history of leisure, I am able to draw comparisons to developments in wider society and will argue that we can see reflections of the so-called 'leisure revolution' inside the institutional walls. It also allows me to show that recreation was not just offered (mostly) in line with class and gender expectations, but that some lower-ranked patients in charitable asylums and some pauper patients in county asylums were often able to enjoy activities which may not have been accessible to them when sane. As the chaplain was responsible for most 'rational' recreations, such as reading and the library, lectures and educational classes, this thesis also focuses on another area of asylum life that has thus far been given little scholarly attention: religion. There was concern that religion might prompt mental breakdown, and religious insanity was frequently diagnosed; yet religious activities were also deemed therapeutic. This thesis therefore has also drawn attention to the importance placed on the role of religion in the nineteenth century asylum and the tension between religion as cause of mental disorder on one hand and as cure on the other. Nineteenth-century asylums are often portrayed as repressive institutions which allowed for no or little personal interactions and where attempts at cure or amelioration were abandoned as they grew larger. By contrast, this thesis has revealed that many asylums displayed a dynamic recreational environment within which patients were able to enjoy a variety of activities in interaction with fellow patients, staff or the outside world, and where importance continued to be placed on restorative aims. Recreation formed part of management, but also of therapy. This thesis thus also offers an alternative vision of asylums less dominated by despondency and gloom, but rather characterised by moments of recreation, agency and joy.

Identifying psychosocial factors that may influence illicit performance enhancement is important given societal concerns such as health, legality, and fairness. Two areas of concern are performance enhancing drug (PED) use in sport and cognitive enhancement (CE) in education. Grounded in Bandura's (1991) social cognitive theory of theory of moral thought and action this thesis aimed to investigate psychosocial factors facilitating use of performance and cognitive enhancing drugs in sport and education. Study 1, a scoping review of 30 studies, was conducted to assess the research related to potential rationalisation and justification as well as motivations and attitudes towards CE. Study 2 qualitatively explored whether student users (n = 9, n_female = 1,n_male = 8) of CE evidenced moral disengagement (MD) when explaining their reasons for CE. Deductive analyses revealed the use of six MD mechanisms and through application of Bandura's (1991) theory, the investigation demonstrated how students may use MD to rationalise and justify their off-label use of stimulant drugs to support their academic studies. Study 3 sought to add to our understanding of the prevalence of both PED and CE use in the UK, by estimating the 12-month prevalence using indirect questioning methods to assess doping PED and CE. Student-athletes (n = 732; M_age = 20.08 ± 1.56 years; 55% female) from UK universities completed a questionnaire containing UQM and SSC measures of PED and CED use, counterbalanced for order. Direct questioning of PED and CED use was also assessed. For PED use, 12-month prevalence estimates were 14.02% (11.60-16.45) and 7.83% (0.00-16.54), respectively, using the UQM and SSC; direct questioning lifetime prevalence was 2.77% (1.57-3.96%). For CED use, 12-month prevalence estimates were 16.26% (13.78-18.73) and 7.00% (0.00-15.55), respectively, for UQM and SSC; direct questioning lifetime prevalence was 5.10%. The non-trivial prevalence estimates for PED and CED use in student-athletes within the UK should raise concerns for - and encourage action from - policymakers in universities and sport governance. There was no significant difference between the use of the UQM and SSC technique though both appeared more appropriate for investigating PED and CED use than direct questioning. Study 4 utilised a latent profile analysis of student-athletes to provide an exploratory analysis via a person-centred approach to identify and characterise risk profiles for PED and CE drug use in student-athletes based on measures of doping MD, doping self-regulatory efficacy (SRE), empathy, anticipated guilt and self-reported doping. 732 (n_female = 400; n_male = 332) student-athlete participants were recruited with each participant completing a questionnaire assessing the aforementioned variables. The study identified a three-profile model: The Reduced Risk (0.47), The Protected (0.44), and The At Risk (0.10). The Protected profile combined high levels of doping self-regulatory efficacy and empathy with low doping MD and was significantly more likely to have higher levels of anticipated guilt and reduced reported doping in both contexts. The At Risk profile displayed lower levels of doping self-regulatory efficacy and empathy combined with higher levels of doping MD and were more likely to have lower levels of anticipated guilt and increased levels of reported doping. Finally, Study 5 consisted of a review of UK university institution policies relating to academic misconduct and drug policies was conducted to assess if and how universities regulated CE in education. All 174 registered bodies representing higher learning institutions in the United Kingdom were examined and not a single one considered or included CE as part of academic misconduct. The findings of the current thesis demonstrate that not only is PED and CE drug use in UK universities of some concern, but students also evidence the mechanism of MD when rationalising the use of CE and certain psychosocial risk profiles may influence the engagement in such doping behaviours. A greater understanding of psychosocial factors that facilitate such behaviour may be potentially useful in the development of prevention interventions while there are interesting considerations for policy in both contexts.

Research on lived experiences of female amateur boxers has increased over the years; however, the literature is still sparse. There is limited understanding of how female amateur boxers consciously or unconsciously use and view their bodies. This qualitative study sought to address the gap in the literature by exploring the embodied experiences of female amateur boxers in the UK. It aims to shed light on how boxing influences female amateur boxers' self-perceptions, including the ways in which their bodies exist in, and interact with, the world. To explore the embodied experiences of female amateur boxers, semi-structured interviews were used to gather data from eight female amateur boxers. An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the data. Four superordinate themes and fourteen subthemes emerged from the data analysis. The first superordinate theme, 'Mind-Body Dualism', captures how amateur boxing impacts the relationship between body and mind. The second superordinate theme, 'Boxing as self-healing', explores the links between embodiment and wellbeing. In the third superordinate theme, 'Having a female body in male spaces', participants describe their experience of being female in a male dominated sport. The final superordinate theme, 'Impact of Boxing on Relationships', explores how boxing makes an impact on other areas of life, such as on social life. The findings are explored in connection to previous existing research. Clinical implications for counselling psychology and other relevant professionals as well as recommendations for further research are discussed.

Greenspace has an essential role in influencing the concentration of pollutants in urban areas. The processes for improving air quality are dispersion and deposition, but their relative contributions to reducing air pollution are unclear. Temporal and spatial variability of pollutant concentrations from a roadside into a park were generated using diffusion tubes measurements. Sampling was carried out in urban park areas in Birmingham and London, UK, specifically in Cannon Hill Park, Tile Cross Park, University of Birmingham (UoB), and Hyde Park. The difference in NO_2 concentrations between the roadside and the park was 32% at Cannon Hill Park, 30% at Hyde Park and 38% at the UoB site, and was statistically significant (p < 0.01). Dispersion and dry deposition modelling were performed using the ADMS-Roads model. The set-up and evaluation of dispersion modelling are presented, incorporating the meteorological data, background concentration, emissions set-up, and the ratio of NO₂:NOₓ in the emissions. The evaluation of the model was performed using observational data from two different sites (BROS and EROS) measured by automatic analysers, and by comparison with the diffusion tube spatial profiles. NOₓ deposition velocities were estimated by the gradient method in a grassed quadrangle area of the Biosciences building at UoB, using an analogy with carbon particles which were used to estimate the eddy diffusivity. Although the method showed major weaknesses, the average value of NOₓ deposition velocity (0.0014 ± 0.0024 m s⁻¹) was in the range of literature values, which is from 0.0010 m s⁻¹ to 0.0067 m s⁻¹. The results of NO₂ measurements and the modelling of the dispersion and dry deposition processes provide an understanding that dispersion plays a dominant role in reducing pollutant concentrations in urban parks. The methods developed in this research have a useful potential role in the urban planning process with respect to the location of urban greenspace and parks. Special consideration needs to be given to the distance from major roads and the location with respect to prevailing wind direction.

This thesis provides an analysis of the uses and meanings of historical memory of the Siege of Colchester of 1648 in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The study has two main aims. The first is to contribute to historical understanding of the long-term significance of the history of the Civil Wars in British culture. The second is to deepen appreciation of how nineteenth century identity, both local and national, was constructed through active engagement with the past. Central to the argument of the thesis, is the recognition that the past needs to be viewed in pluralistic terms. Meanings of history vary according to age, gender, class and locality. They also shift over time and according to context. For this reason, the thesis takes a micro-historical approach that allows for a finely grained and multi-layered analysis of uses of the past that is sensitive to tensions between uses of the history of the siege by different individuals and groups, as well as between local and national historical narratives in the context of long-term processes of change. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that the Civil Wars remained an influential historical reference in both nineteenth century Colchester and more broadly in British culture. They challenge historical emphasis on a growing national focus of popular understandings of the past and argue that local history remained one of the most important sites in which memory was constructed. Meaning was tied closely to the local events of the 1648 siege as well as specific spaces, and people in Colchester associated with that tragedy, long after living memory was lost. While some remained indifferent to its legacy, for many the history of the siege remained a central component in the construction of Colchester's collective identity until the second half of the twentieth century.

In the last three decades, the historiographies of Scouting and Guiding have developed to explore gender differences, citizenship, imperialism, internationalism, and identity. Often absent from these studies, however, is the place of disability. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to tackle the omission of forgotten disabled young people in histories of the largest youth movements the world has ever seen. Exploring from their beginnings in 1907 to changing disability policies in 1970, the primary goal of this research is to uncover what provision was available and the limitations surrounding its delivery. In no way does this thesis aim to chart the entire history of disabled involvement, but it covers five important themes that help to illuminate this wider history. Citizenship, transnationalism, collective identity, adult leadership and institutional permeability and segregation are all familiar themes to disability historians, but they are used here to explore the participation of disabled young people within Scouting and Guiding. Focusing primarily on the north of England, it uses local, regional, national, and international sources, from both movements, personal collections, institutional schools, and hospitals, alongside material culture and photographs to reveal hidden narratives. Throughout these narratives, the importance of gender, disability categorisation and the structure of the movements in overall delivery of youth movement activity for disabled young people, are brought to the forefront of discussion. Ultimately, this thesis will argue that the ideals projected by the central members of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides were not always the reality of the ground level provision for disabled young people.

This thesis tries to interrogate the intertwined relations between race, ethnicity, citizenship, and national identity in the context of football in Hong Kong, with a focus on the experiences of local football fans and Hong Kong's naturalized footballers as they were at the centre of the heated debate related to identity politics between Hong Kong and China when the two teams were playing against each other in the World Cup Qualifying Stage in 2015. This study builds on the theoretical framework of Anderson, Billig, and everyday nationalism to explore how Hong Kongness and Chineseness are being represented, perceived, and negotiated in the case of Hong Kong's naturalized footballers. With the use of qualitative interview and Critical Discourse Analysis, the case of naturalized footballers becoming representatives of Hong Kong in football is a meaningful addition to the discussion of understanding (sub)national belonging when outsiders of the imagined community of Hong Kong eventually become representatives of the city and how their presence is being perceived by other members within the same imagined community. This thesis is written based on interviews with 10 fan groups representatives and 10 naturalized footballers of Hong Kong, with findings from a Critical Discourse Analysis of 589 selected news articles related to the representation of Team Hong Kong's naturalized footballers. It is argued while claims were being made regarding the 'Hong Kongness' of the naturalized footballers, the use of boundary setting categories in Chinese-language newspapers had consolidated the current hegemonic hierarchy of race and ethnicity in Hong Kong. The interview findings suggested a conditional acceptance of the naturalized footballers that is being masked by the articulation of Hong Kong's 'internationalness' and an instrumental mentality. And the case of Hong Kong's naturalized footballers suggested that 'Hong Kongness' and 'Chineseness' are imagined differently.

A great deal has been written about the theories of governance particularly agency, stewardship, stakeholder, resource dependency and managerial hegemony theories. More recently, scholars have reflected on the opportunities and benefits that a multi-theoretical approach may bring to framing corporate governance, including the governance of non-profit social enterprises. The work of Cornforth (2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2012) has been notably influential in this regard. Cornforth argues that the main theoretical perspectives on corporate governance when taken individually only illuminate discrete aspects of the Board's role and are rather one dimensional. He goes on to argue that a paradox perspective which draws on multiple theoretical standpoints offers a more realistic and pragmatic approach to understanding the governance of non-profit organisations. This approach has been further developed by Professor Naomi Chambers and colleagues and tested through an empirical study in the hospice sector (2010), the outcome of which has been the development of engagement theory (2012). This extends and advances Cornforth's multi-theoretical standpoint, comprising a triadic position of high engagement, high trust and high challenge and drawing together the applicable parts of more established theories. Despite these advances in the field a gap still exists in understanding the governance practices of Leisure Trust social enterprises and whether they recognise and adopt a multi-theoretical approach to governance practices. The aim of this research is therefore to draw upon and expand the work of Cornforth, reflecting also on Chambers' study, in order to test the application of a multi-theoretical approach for Leisure Trust social enterprises, an under-researched sector of the social enterprise domain. The research applies a pragmatic research philosophy and an abductive approach to theory development. The evidence from this study is that the theories identified by Cornforth, when taken individually, do only illuminate one aspect of a social enterprise Board's role and are rather one dimensional. This research has also confirmed Cornforth's proposition that a multi-theoretical perspective offers a more realistic approach to social enterprise governance, albeit that this is paradoxical. The research findings suggest that governance practices appear to be largely static and reactive without any formal protocols for review. Furthermore, it was noted that an external stimulus, including a crisis or impending crisis, often provided the catalyst for any governance review. Finally, it became clear that the strategic planning undertaken by the case study Trusts did not include a review of their governance systems. As such, links are not made between the organisations' future strategic and tactical plans and the governance oversight. A key contribution from the research is that governance practices in Leisure Trusts should be more dynamic, embracing paradoxes and explicitly linked to the organisation's strategic planning and forward focus. A contribution to practice is that a good practice guide be developed to provide Leisure Trust boards and their senior management teams (and social enterprise organisations more widely) with a methodology to become familiar with, and distinguish, the key elements of individual governance theories, together with the potential to connect these theories into a blended multi-theoretical approach within a strategic framework.

The inscription of sites as World Heritage is largely motivated by the need to protect, conserve, and communicate Outstanding Universal Value. This designation process has mainly been a top-down decision without considering how communities engage with their heritage and its local values and how these change in time. This thesis examines the relationships between a local community and their heritage in the remote and marginal city of Santa Cruz de Mompox (Mompox), Colombia, which was designated a World Heritage Site in 1995 as a colonial historical centre on the banks of the Magdalena River. Using a qualitative, participative methodology, this research explores the changes in the social fabric and spatial relationships that have unfolded in the town since its inscription on the World Heritage List. The study examines how the local communities - the Momposinos - have engaged and negotiated their heritage through the processes of development in social life and economic growth. The study reveals that the changes that have taken place in Mompox, including the development of tourism, have had little to do with World Heritage designation but rather have emerged in a slow evolutionary process and through wider networks. Indeed, the findings reveal a divergence between the heritage values embedded in the World Heritage designation and the heritage values that are practiced by the local communities. The communities displayed a lack of engagement with the meaning of World Heritage, but nonetheless valued functional aspects relating to it, along with their own sense of vernacular heritage including intangible elements. The thesis add to the debates that continue to challenge the meaningfulness of community involvement in the World Heritage process, and the over-simplified arguments that see inscription on the World Heritage List as leading to a series of development impacts irrespective of wider issues of normative community development.

This thesis considers the role of sports fandom in the lives of older adults who have left full-time employment. It looks at the centrality of the fan object in the (semi-)retired person's life, the ways in which it helps to structure life after full-time work, and the various ways in which it guides identity construction during the last life phases. Whilst we are starting to see more work focusing on fandom, ageing and the life course, 'there is a tendency in this literature to discuss aging and the life course atheoretically, ignoring a rich body of scholarship in gerontology, sociology, psychology and human development that examines how lives unfold over time' (Harrington & Bielby, 2010: 430). This thesis seeks to address such shortcomings by working with the ageing sciences - gerontology in particular - to help make sense of the relationship between fan and fan object across what are often very long time periods. The following thesis covers later life sports fandom in the context of everyday living, arguing that the fan object becomes embedded within the quotidian, helping to routinise fandom and nurture ontological security. It uses the gerontological notion of continuity theory (Atchley, 1989, 1993, 1999) to assess how older fans maintain very long fan-object relationships, arguing that the fan constructs internal "good" objects during their life course. It overviews the later life sports fan's use of nostalgia, with a particular emphasis on what I call 'reconstructive nostalgia' (based on Boym, 2001) as a means of manipulating the contemporary fan-text relationship. Finally, it considers notions of 'home', the dwelling in which fan objects are mostly engaged with, and fandom as an extension of the German concept Heimat, which contributes to the creation of 'Heimatic spaces' (Bennett, 2017) in which fandom in later life is experienced. The later life fan is a creative, imaginative individual.

The aim of this thesis was to understand Indonesian elite athletes' psychological demands, or social pressures on Indonesian elite athletes. Data were generated from a rigorous research design including 37 elite athletes and 9 sports practitioners in Indonesia representing 9 sports. The study utilised an ontological constructivist-interpretive reflexive approach, in-depth data collection methods of semi-structured interviews and photographic elicitation interview (PEI) to generate rich and robust data to explain the complexity and diversity of Indonesian athletes' psychological demands. Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019) used as the analytical technique, followed by member reflection process. Three themes illustrated three psychological demands relevant to Indonesian athletes: (1) temporality of athletic career, which consisted of subthemes: (i) relation to frequent movements between province and national status; (ii) vagueness of retirement, and (iii) the degree of exploiting body, including managing the risk of injury; (2) cultural appropriateness, consisting of subthemes: (i) religious negotiation; (ii) body as the social and capital of the family; and (iii) compromise to authority; (3) Interactions with organizational stressors, consisting of subthemes: (i) funding and human resources problems, the overlapping of sport organizations in province and national level; and (ii) athletes as epitome icon, or the pressure for athletes to win medals. The original contributions of this research are the detailed accounts of trends and patterns of Indonesian elite athletes in navigating their social pressures. The significance of this work is that the findings: (a) extend the complementary theory of the transactional approach for stress and coping (Lazarus, 1999); (b) instigate new areas of interdisciplinary research in sport psychology and sociology; (c) exemplify a holistic thinking of an athlete's identity in the sport as a multicultural site; (c) align with the recent global discussion on athletes' mental health, particularly in developing countries; and (d) bridge the gap of theory and practice of sport psychology in Indonesia. The key action and responsibility is to create a more positive climate to support growth and performance attainment through informing career transition assistance and mental health literacy.

This thesis examines the martial art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) through the concepts of 'race', difference, cosmopolitanism, conviviality, and carnality. Using immersive ethnographic fieldwork in combination with traditional observation that took place over a seven year period, the research is focused on a number of concerns. This study attempts to understand how a corporeality that is marked by tactility and a merging of bodies is experienced and negotiated by its practitioners. In doing so, this thesis gains a sense of the relationship between BJJ's affective resonances and the ways in which 'raced', gendered, and other body-subjects are experienced within its spaces. Furthermore, through its exploration of BJJ's historical Japanese and Brazilian roots, this study articulates BJJ's contemporary culture through processes of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and commercialization. Importantly, this thesis brings to life the relationship between BJJ practitioner interactions and forms of multiculture, cosmopolitanism, conviviality, and masculinity. By the bringing through of its corporeal emphasis, this thesis allows for a corrective to the otherwise centrality of the cognitive, representational, and symbolic that is generally foregrounded in prevailing debates about convivial and cosmopolitan possibilities. This thesis is therefore an ethnographic study that provides a comprehensive analysis of the martial art and combat sport (MACS) of BJJ, and its relationship to significant sociological and political concerns.

Focusing on the embodied encounter with place, this study investigates how sense of place manifests itself for residents of the heritage city of York and explores its implications for how individuals use the city's public spaces. Recognising the significance of the public realm for civic engagement, the research seeks insights into how residents may be engaged more effectively in debates about the city's future. The study views sense of place through the lens of stories, considering the interplay between the "big stories", told from positions of authority, and the "small stories" of the individual's everyday experience of place. The study takes a qualitative approach employing bricolage. It identifies the "big stories" of York in writings about the city and in social media whilst the "small stories" of everyday encounter with public spaces are captured in fieldwork, involving map drawing and "go-along" interviews, through which respondents address the question of what York means to them. The study draws on scholarship concerned with assemblage and, in particular, the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to elaborate a concept of sense of place as assemblage with three dimensions: the affective/sensorial, the political, and the temporal / mnemonic. Sense of place, seen as an opening up of oneself to the potentiality of the encounter with space, is characterised as a disrupting concept. In considering the implications of sense of place for the individual's use of public spaces, the study employs the notion of "urban nomad" to describe how the individual moves in smooth space, in spaces of "becoming" that are "in-between" the points of the city's topology designated by its "big stories". It is argued that, through reterritorialising the big stories of the city, the urban nomad uses them as a resource in the working out of their individual subjectivity.

The role of the leader in UK sport coaching systems has rarely attracted attention, either academically or within sport policy in the UK. Yet, individuals holding these roles within National Governing Bodies of Sport play a critical role in creating the structures necessary for the development of effective sport coaching strategy and coach education across the UK. This research addressed this gap by examining the experiences of effective change leaders within UK coaching systems, with the intention of gaining critical insights to inform future developments within the sector. Adopting a constructivist-interpretive approach within a collective case-study umbrella, this research used life-history interviews to co-construct individual narratives to 'tell' the stories of six effective coaching systems leaders. These narratives were then analysed to identify key themes for each individual, followed by a template analysis to generate five cross-case themes: 'I know who I am', Curiosity, Great People, Nurturing Environments and Courage. The findings are also synthesised in a new 'Model for Coaching Systems Leadership in the UK'. It is argued that the sport coaching sector in the UK would benefit from a new leadership narrative that views authentic leaders as an integral component of coaching system development at every level.

A professional football team represents a unique social environment where team members have to negotiate the omnipresent competition for places while working together towards a common goal. In this exceptionally competitive and high-stakes environment team members have to navigate their individual as well as collective team goals - which do not necessarily overlap. With this regard, sport psychologists, coaches and the media have long established team cohesion to be a central impacting factor for success - hence, on the whole, something 'positive' and measurable. However, the underlying conceptualisations of team cohesion in sports teams appear to lack empirical evidence in relation to what the phenomenon actually entails. Focusing on humour use and function, I offer concrete empirical evidence for the phenomenon in action illustrating it to be a dynamic, ever-changing process that is discursively negotiated by the interactants involved. To this end, this study provides a micro-ethnography of a male professional football team from Germany. Over 56 hours of audio-recordings of authentic interactions, 87 hours of observations and interviews with 13 players are used to analyse the ways in which team members discursively negotiate team cohesion among themselves. For this purpose, interactional sociolinguistics as an ethnographically led approach to discourse analysis is used. Findings show that group membership management and identity construction are central impacting factors shaping the ways team cohesion is negotiated in and through language among members of the football team. The value of both an ethnographic research design and discourse analysis for unpacking some of the complexity of the phenomenon is shown. Moreover, I argue that humour constitutes a useful discursive strategy through which to study and unpack team cohesion - ultimately illustrating the link between team cohesion and communication. Thereby, I am bridging the gap between mostly quantitative studies and discourse analytical work on team cohesion.

Dream ballets were a regular feature of Hollywood film musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, especially at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, but they have received limited academic study. An understanding and exploration of these dream ballets in the context of meaning created through dance and choreography is largely missing. There has been some critical debate about the nature of dream ballets within integrated film musicals but with limited understanding of dance as an abstract art form and its intention to communicate emotions. Mostly the existing scholarship offers psychoanalytic interpretation adapting ideas from Freud's dream theory. Focusing on dream ballets, this thesis will explore through primary research in American film archives and textual analysis, the creation of a new style of 'American' choreography and musical performance as core syntax within the integrated narrative musical. This research will examine how this new style and creative process impacted on the representation of male and female genders in dance, how it determined the internal dream protagonist's perspective, and how the complex layering of codes was employed to avoid the Production Code Administration regulations. The first dream ballet identified within the corpus is a ballet featured in the Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) choreographed by Albertina Rasch. The final dream ballet identified within the corpus is 'The Small House of Uncle Thomas' ballet choreographed by Jerome Robbins for The King and I (1956). The corpus includes over twenty musical films that include dream ballets.

This exploratory study investigates the issues surrounding athlete risky behaviour, an area which has been neglected previously. The term 'risky behaviour' refers to any behaviours which incur an unfavourable, and often harmful, risk including both illegal and legal behaviours (Trimpop, 1994; Turner, McClure & Pirozzo, 2004). Elite athletes can receive unabated amounts of media coverage for both on-field performances and behaviours outside of the sporting environment. Consequently, they have the potential to reach wide audiences and influence the general population, including aspiring athletes, and can be considered role models. Due to the lack of openly accessible statistical data, it is currently unknown which types of risky behaviours are the most common and problematic within the elite athlete population. Additionally, the issue has been long-standing, yet little is known about whether occurrences of athlete risky behaviour are actually more frequent than those in the general population, or whether it is the celebrity athlete status combined with the volume of media reports which creates the illusion of heightened rates. Furthermore, although studied in adolescent and collegiate athlete samples, there is a lack of previous work which has identified the influences or predictors of elite athlete risky behaviour. The thesis aims to address these issues and provide an exploratory view of these issues, whilst providing the foundations for the development of a new type of future research. The first empirical chapter addresses the deficiency in publicly accessible statistical data regarding the most commonly occurring problem behaviours. A database was created based on historical cases of elite athlete offending and risky behaviours and a Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) was conducted. Three behavioural themes were identified. Sexual Behaviours was the most common amongst the sample, with 'Sexual Offences by a Single Perpetrator' present in almost half of the sample. Additive Behaviours, and Violent Behaviour were the second and third frequent behavioural themes. The findings provide recommendations for the behaviours which should be given priority when devising interventions to reduce and prevent risky behaviours in the elite athlete population. The work then moves on to make comparisons between athletes and the general population with regards to general risk-taking tendencies. Moreover, the study compares the levels of each of the personal predictor characteristics of risk-taking, which were identified in previous research, in each population. Finally, the associations between these predictor characteristics and levels of risk-taking in each population were examined. Data was collected through an online questionnaire. It was found that the athlete population had significantly higher tendencies to engage in general risk-taking than the general population, particularly male athletes. Male athletes also scored significantly higher for many of the predictor characteristics such as sexual sensation-seeking, masculinity, psychopathy, and aggression alcohol expectancies. The associations between predictor characteristics and general risk-taking are discussed. The results suggest the possibility that environmental factors may also contribute to and influence heightened risk-taking tendencies in athletes. The findings support the results of the of Study One and highlight the need for the development of educational interventions regarding alcohol use outcomes and management of personal characteristics, such as aggression and sensation-seeking. The final study comprises of qualitative semi-structured interviews with a sample of athletes. This was done to provide support for and develop knowledge from the findings of the previous studies further. The study also aimed to explore the influences of athlete risky behaviours further, taking into consideration environmental factors which were not investigated earlier in the thesis. A thematic analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts and five main themes emerged from the data: impact of athletic involvement, athlete identities, athlete risky behaviour, factors which increase athlete risky behaviour, and factors which inhibit athlete risky behaviour. The findings support outputs from Study One and Two whilst providing additional insight into the issues surrounding athletic involvement and athlete risky behaviour, particularly regarding environmental influences. The findings offer a variety of practical implications, for example, encouraging increase fair play values and taking steps to reduce hyper-masculinity within the sporting environment. The implications are discussed further, alongside limitations of the work. These include, but are not limited to, the development of educational interventions, increased player welfare services, and the need for positive role models. To date, literature has predominantly focused on adolescent and collegiate athlete risky behaviours. The difficulty in accessing such a unique sample may have previously impeded the development of research into the behaviours of the elite athlete population. However, this exploratory research offers an insight into the issues within the population and future research would be beneficial to advance knowledge into the area further. Striving to reduce athlete risky behaviour may benefit athletes themselves, sporting bodies and practitioners, potential victims of risky behaviour, and the image of sport, as well as, aspiring athletes and the general population who may replicate elite athlete behaviour through social learning.

Background: Technologies that facilitate monitoring one's physical activity are potentially detrimental for people with high levels of eating psychopathology and compulsive exercise. Investigations in this area are complicated by the diverse functionality these technologies offer, and the varied ways in which a person can engage with a device or application. Furthermore, physical activity can be monitored without these technologies. Objective: This thesis aimed to develop a more comprehensive conceptualisation of physical activity self-monitoring in relation to eating psychopathology and compulsive exercise. Methodology: The research programme used diverse data sources (survey, semi-structured interviews, online forums) and analytical methods - both qualitative (thematic analysis) and quantitative (word-counts, network analysis). First, analyses of eating disorder forums investigated interest in, and engagement with physical activity self-monitoring-related technologies. Forms and focuses of physical activity self-monitoring were then captured through a survey, followed by interviews with people indicating high levels of compulsive exercise to investigate the nature of physical activity self-monitoring in greater depth. Last, further thematic analyses of eating disorder forums - conducted separately for people with high or low focuses on recovery - evaluated the comprehensiveness of the previous findings. Findings: The overall findings were grouped into five themes: Engagement and accuracy (the nature of physical activity self-monitoring); Comparisons (how and to what one's physical activity is compared); Monitoring non-physical activity focuses (e.g., how monitoring one's physique relates to physical activity); Cognitions, affect and behaviours (how specific psychological factors potentially relate to physical activity self-monitoring); and Interpersonal factors (how physical activity self-monitoring is enacted in relation to others). Implications: Future research is outlined, with the development of a measurement instrument being particularly emphasised. More immediately, the findings can assist clinicians and technology manufacturers in identifying aspects of physical activity self-monitoring that are potentially detrimental to people with high levels of eating psychopathology and compulsive exercise.

The English Country House is a recognised setting and symbol in film and television, representing a myriad of concepts and nostalgia for the past. This thesis proposes that real country house sites and the English country house on screen are part of a greater English Country House (ECH) meta-narrative, wherein all country houses are seen as one archetypal English Country House. The ECH meta-narrative and its representation are commercially and culturally valuable to producers of screen-media and producers of country house experiences. Utilising both cultural studies and grounded theory research methods, interviews and site visits were undertaken alongside materials analysis to understand the relationship between the ECH on screen and the production of heritage visitor experiences. What emerges is an analysis of both the power relations between the entities and the actions of heritage producers in engaging screen representations in the design, production and presentation of the heritage visitor experience. The ECH meta-narrative contributes to knowledge a structure of the relationship between the on-screen country house and the real country house. This work contributes to the understanding both practically and theoretically of the management of the production, presentation and design of screen related visitor experiences at country house heritage site.

This thesis explores the interconnections of music and performances of Brazilian 'national identity' and interrogates modes in which the nation uses music to perform itself in both official and unofficial narratives. It begins by tracing the discourses and ideologies formulated in modern Brazil as an attempt to define the nation, and investigates how a particular musical genre, namely samba, came to embody and perpetuate the national ideal within the notion of brasilidade, or Brazilianness. It suggests how these have been most clearly articulated though a specific version of samba, created in the early twentieth century, which continue to be perpetuated in official performances of the nation, like the FIFA and Olympic ceremonies performing Brazil. It then focuses on two contemporary case studies that have used music in oppositional ways, which challenge these formulations of the nation. The first example focuses on a dance performance called Baila Brazil and the second example on a theatre performance named Caliban: A Tempestade de Augusto Boal. These examples are analysed to explore how artists are negotiating and challenging official formulations of Brazilian 'national identity' through music in present-day Brazil. The thesis concludes by returning to the idea of Brazil officially performing itself through music in the exploration of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games' Opening Ceremony. In this analysis I consider how this official performance both reaffirms the early modernist formulation of the nation, while also exposing faultlines identified in the theatrical productions discussed in previous chapters.

University sports teams represent unique social environments where new members must not only find their place among teammates but also grapple with the challenges associated with starting university. For students this period is fraught with uncertainty, opportunity and a need to belong. Membership of a university sports team can be seen as relevant to all three. Situated at the interface of applied linguistics, social psychology and sport this project seeks to investigate the experiences of students joining such teams as a means of illuminating a hitherto under-researched context: transition in university sport teams and specifically a male football team. The interdisciplinary design of the project necessitated a broad, cross-disciplinary review of the available work which, in turn, provides a holistic understanding of the researched phenomenon. Drawing on data collected from members of a British university team over a period of three years this thesis aims to provide detailed insights into the complexities and nuances of transition as an ongoing process. Framing the team as a Community of Practice (Wenger 1998), 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants representing different annual intakes of "freshers" (first-year players) and senior players. Participant stories were analysed using both thematic and narrative analysis tools. The results illustrate the individual nature of transitions; drawing on the findings I argue that the exact nature of a player's transition to the team is determined by their degree of socialisation through participation in community practice. Hence, transition to the team is not viewed simply as either successful or not successful but specific to an individual's lived social reality. Indeed, the data show that the team constitutes a highly complex social structure that new players are required to navigate. Team practice is predicated on normative masculine behaviours enacted in a laddish guise, e.g. heavy drinking, risk taking, banter, etc. At the same time, member initiations to traditions, rituals and stories and their perpetuating or challenging them, leads to perpetuating or changing the team's dominant norms. In concluding the thesis, I will present a model of transition that accounts for socialisation, participation and practice, and constructs transitional experience as fluid and ongoing.

The process of recognising the laterality of an image depicting a hand (i.e. is a depicted hand a left hand or a right hand?) has been long considered to require motor imagery (MI) of the viewer’s corresponding limb. In recent years, these so-called left/right judgment tasks (LRJTs) have been adopted in clinical practice and extended to involve other body parts (e.g. shoulders, knees, neck, trunk). However, unlike images of hands (and feet), the ability of these other LRJTs to elicit MI is uncertain. For example, trunk-based LRJTs have been introduced into clinical practice for the management of low back pain (LBP) with the assumption that these tasks elicit MI of lateralised trunk movements, a situation that would see the tasks have therapeutic value. However, evidence to support this situation is currently lacking. This thesis presents a series of studies investigating whether MI of lateralised trunk movements is elicited by trunk-based LRJTs. The mechanisms underlying trunk-based LRJTs were investigated by adapting previous experimental approaches that were successful in demonstrating that hand-based LRJTs elicit MI. The first two experiments (Chapters 2 and 3) examined the effect of images depicting postures requiring different amplitudes of movement on the response time (RT) of related judgments. The third experiment (Chapter 4) examined the impact of participants assuming different trunk postures on trunk-based LRJT performance. Finally, experiment 4 (Chapter 5) examined LRJT performance in a group of people with LBP. Results from all 4 experiments consistently failed to support the ability of trunk-based LRJTs to elicit MI of lateralised trunk movement. The findings threaten the validity of using trunk-based LRJTs for their intended purpose in clinical practice.

In sports, athletes need detailed and individualised training plans for maintaining and improving their skills in order to deliver their best performance in competitions. This presents a considerable amount of effort and overhead for coaches, who not only have to set realistic objectives, but also formulate extremely detailed training plans. Automated Planning, which has already been successfully deployed in many real-world applications such as space exploration, robotics, or manufacturing pro- cesses, embodies a useful mechanism that can be exploited for generating training plans for athletes. In this thesis, we propose the use of automated-planning techniques for generating individual physical preparation training plans, which consist of exercises the athlete has to perform during training, given the athlete's current performance, the period of time, and target performance that should be achieved. Our experimental analysis, which considers general training of kickboxers, shows that apart of considerable less planning time, training plans automatically generated by the proposed approach are more detailed and individualised than plans prepared manually by a coach.

This thesis has two immediate, complementary purposes. Firstly, it studies the way that controversial game developer and publisher Rockstar Games interprets and represents American history. In doing so, it uses as case studies two of Rockstar’s most explicitly historical titles: Red Dead Redemption (2010) and L.A. Noire (2011), while making reference to specific titles in the Grand Theft Auto franchise (1997-). It interrogates the ways Rockstar have represented America’s past, and use references to wider popular culture – for example, cinema, television, and literature – to do so. Moreover, the second purpose of the thesis is to provide a foundational argument for studying the promotional discourses and paratextual materials of historical video games. By using Rockstar as a case study, it argues that we are better equipped to understand how video games represent the past by considering how these representations are framed and sold to players before they are released. This thesis therefore surveys the way that discourses of ‘authenticity’ were and are deliberately generated by Rockstar, attempting to manage the reception of their historiographical work. It studies the ways in which reference to historical ‘facts’ and primary evidence, as well as wider cultural genres like the Western and noir, are used to prop up these promotional discourses and generate expectations. While situated within the field of historical game studies, this thesis employs a distinctly interdisciplinary methodology, drawing on historical research, media studies, and theories of branding and promotion. Over the course of five significant chapters, it traces the influence of the ‘Rockstar Brand’ on their games’ representation of America’s past. It notes the way that paratextual discourses reveal the interpretations of the developer, as well as acting as sites at which game developers actively embody and perform the role of ‘developer-historian’. This thesis surveys corporate material and official communication, Rockstar-generated blog posts and other promotional materials associated with the release of Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire, and developer interviews published by the gaming and entertainment press. Ultimately, it argues that the pursuit of ‘authenticity’ leads to an oversimplification of historical complexities, while textual and paratextual content overwhelmingly privilege white masculinity, confining all others to the margins.

This thesis explores recreational running as a social practice using the tools of Bourdeusian field analysis. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, it maps and describes the social terrain of running, and explores the ways in which forms of running – and running per se – can be understood as symbolically potent performances of social position. The research methods include a large-scale survey of runners (n=2,637) and a series of in-depth interviews with runners (n=21). Running is also placed in its broader context as one of a wide range of forms of active leisure through a secondary analysis of data collected by Sport England. This study deploys Bourdieusian tools in a new way, using them to explode the ostensibly monolithic category of ‘running’ into its constituent parts, revealing a cosmos of socially distinctive (and even antagonistic) forms of running within it - a field of positions associated with distinctive cultural meanings and values. In mapping and analysing social and cultural differences within running, this study paints a new, more nuanced and complete picture of running culture as a dynamic, uneven and contested space through which social inequalities are reinforced and even justified. Key findings centre on the roles of class and gender in shaping running engagement through the mediation of access to capital and variations in habitus relating to tastes around the ‘healthy lifestyle’, body-shape and fitness ideals, ‘authenticity’ seeking, perceptions of competence, competition and ‘mental toughness’.

As with all heritage, World Heritage Sites vary tremendously in the ways they engage with interpretation for the wider public encompassing local communities, domestic and international visitors. Invariably, narratives used in site interpretation vary considerably, ranging from those that are officially constructed and ‘authorised’, to those which are more organic, unofficial and ‘disruptive’. This thesis focuses on the multi-vocality of interpretation relating to West Lake, a World Heritage Site near Hangzhou in China. It takes a narrative approach in examining the rich representations created and communicated by a wide diversity of stakeholders engaged with this cultural landscape. The study interrogates the plurality of narratives of West Lake, how they have emerged, how they compete and, the ways in which they surface amongst different audiences. In part this reflects the complexity of a large cultural landscape, but it also relates to the ‘life’ and symbolic value of West Lake before it was inscribed on the World Heritage List. While there are official narratives of World Heritage, these reflect more national rather than trans-national perspectives or the idea of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’. But there are also local narratives, that speak to the locality of West Lake and to ways in which the surrounding communities have adapted and continue to adapt, to its role in wider social and economic life.

Ballroom Dance in Hong Kong: Culture and Politics of Appearance analyses how ballroom dancers in Hong Kong transform themselves and the city with their bodies in motion. Ballroom dance is both the subject of study and a method in this research. The changing dance tradition and practices encapsulate the collective subjectivity of the city dwellers, their creative agency and everyday life as a transformative process. The analytic approach in the thesis acts, in part, as a counterargument to cultural theorist Akbar Abbas’ claim that Hong Kong culture appears in the form of dis-appearance. Formerly a British colony and currently under Chinese rule, Hong Kong’s existence is often imagined and narrated in terms of and in relation to the two powers. The persisting colonial structure of this reality, he argues, also prevents the everyday life and practices of the local dwellers to accumulate and be consolidated into social infrastructures and systems. By showing how local dancers transform the city through transforming themselves by participating in and creating a dance tradition, this research calls for a progressive understanding of Hong Kong that sees the city as built by its ordinary dwellers in their everyday life. The research employs archival materials from newspapers, journals, literary works, films and interviews to construct a cultural history of ballroom dance. Critical cultural theories are used to shed light on the contradictions and possibilities. Chapters of this research are chronologically aligned but periodized by the change internal to the dance tradition. Each chapter portrays a specific form of development in ballroom dance and interrogates particular political issues in its cultural production. This process of transition is, this research argues, propelled by the aesthetics of ballroom dance which constantly evolve in dancers’ active embodiment and seeps out of its original social and cultural contexts and physical spaces, thus transgressing the predefined demarcations.

The aim of this thesis was to examine Authentic Leadership (AL) in sport. In Study 1 AL was investigated through professional football coaches’ perceptions. This thesis also sought to investigate the links between AL, satisfaction, commitment, enjoyment and task cohesion, and potential mediators of the relationships between AL and the abovementioned variables. Trust (Studies 2 & 3) and autonomy (perceived choice) (Studies 2 & 3) were examined as mediators of the links between AL and satisfaction (Study 2), commitment (Studies 2 & 3) and enjoyment (Study 3). In Study 4, team sacrifice, and trust were investigated as mediators of the relationship between AL and task cohesion. AL was positively related to commitment, enjoyment and satisfaction. Mediation findings showed that trust and autonomy (perceived choice) may help explain the links between AL and the abovementioned variables. AL was positively associated with task cohesion. Mediation findings revealed that trust and team sacrifice may help to understand the link between AL and task cohesion. These findings suggest that coaches may benefit from being authentic as this may be beneficial for athlete and team outcomes.

Influenced by urban entrepreneurial economic development policy, new professional sports stadia have been widely advanced as flagship developments that can generate jobs and wealth, support place branding and culture-led strategies, and host mega-events that collectively boost the economic competitiveness of their towns and cities. Public funding for stadia developments has been secured on these bases but also increasingly challenged as stadia costs are under-estimated and the benefits, particularly for lower income communities, exaggerated. Responding to these criticisms and with greater policy attention on establishing sustainable communities, the social and community benefits of new stadia developments have increasingly been promoted to secure and justify public investment. In the UK, community stadia have emerged in this context. Community stadia are an intriguing phenomenon as, in theory, they enable professional sports stadia to deliver on community aims alongside their core sporting and commercial demands and the economic development aims stemming from their flagship development status. Public funding has followed with a number of community stadia built or planned; this despite the limited critical analysis of the stadium type and its impact. It is this gap in the literature that this research addresses, doing so through a critical realist, case study methodology of two community stadia: The Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster and The Falkirk Stadium, Falkirk. Specifically the research draws on the community-related literature and interviews with diverse stadia stakeholders to define community stadia by conceptualising the factors that characterise or influence community stadia, understand what communities they engage with and benefit, and critique whether they are a sustainable phenomenon that can genuinely deliver on sporting, commercial, community and economic development aims. The research finds that community stadia have the potential to deliver across these four aims, with stadia's association with the world of professional sport facilitating engagement with multiple, diverse and 'hard to reach' communities. However, they are also complex phenomena that require imaginative but effective design, planning, governance and operational management. Indeed, civic leaders and stadia officials need to be attuned to the concepts of inclusive design, co-production, and space and place; as well as having a diverse skill set spanning community engagement and partnership working to entrepreneurial and marketing skills.

This thesis seeks to outline new paradigms in the field of Critical Surf Studies applying critical theory to the systems of power used in the privatisation of professional surfing. In 2013, a private company, ZoSea Media Holdings (ZMH), assumed control of the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) and began a rationalisation process of the sport. This culminated in the creation of a re-imagined vision for the commercialisation of elite, professional surfing with the invention of the World Surf League (WSL) in 2015. Using Guy Debord's theory of The Society of the Spectacle as a lens through which to critically examine this transformation, the research adopts an experimental, qualitative research approach, combining data gathered through lived experiences, auto-ethnographies and key figure interviews. The central research questions ask; what does ZMH mean in seeking to professionalise surfing? How is professional surfing reified under monopoly and private ownership? What does this ownership mean for the wider culture of surfing? The key findings indicate little resistance to ZMH's global vision for surfing. The findings further identify a range of new media systems of power used to create a new spectacular surfing society. In branding the WSL as the self-styled 'Home of Global Surfing', these systems include wholly-owned digital media platforms and the construction of sophisticated marketing and promotional practices to meet the owners' political, economic and cultural objectives. These findings build on, and contribute to, previous work in this field examining the governance and hegemony of surfing. These processes have implications for the way in which lifestyle sports are appropriated, re-packaged and commodified by capitalist owners seeking to gain profit from the commercialisation of sport.

Existing literature suggests that numerous factors influence cancer survivors' physical activity (PA) levels, for example receiving specific PA information from health care professionals. Interestingly. research also suggests that health care professionals fail to promote PA to cancer patients due to a variety of reasons. However, qualitative research exploring how these factors impact or influence PA levels amongst cancer survivors and PA promotion amongst health care professionals is sparse. In addition to this, no known research has utilised an interpretative phenomenological approach which includes both breast cancer survivors and breast cancer nurses. This research study utilises an interpretative phenomenological approach to explore breast cancer survivors' lived experiences of physical activity (PA) and breast cancer nurses' perspectives and experiences of promoting PA. By utilising a phenomenological approach and involving both groups, I aim to illuminate the multiple perspectives of PA and understand the meanings of the participants' experiences of either participating in PA or promoting PA. This research involved two separate phases. During Phase One, I interviewed ten breast cancer survivors individually, using semi-structured interviews; exploring their individual lived experiences of PA. The findings were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach; the aim here was to illuminate the participants' individual experiences and meanings of PA. The themes identified were: 'losing and regaining control of the body', 'experiences and perceptions of support', 'the meaning of PA' and 'the importance of being with other people who were in the same boat'. During Phase Two, I interviewed five breast cancer nurses individually, using semi-structured interviews; exploring their perspectives and experiences of promoting PA. Template analysis was the method chosen to analyse the findings, the main themes identified were: 'Perceived responsibility for promoting PA', 'External services and resources', 'Nurse-survivor relationship' and 'Perceptions of breast cancer survivors' characteristics'. In Phase One: Varied experiences and meanings of PA amongst the breast cancer survivors are illuminated; however, it appeared that they utilised PA as a tool to help make sense of and adapt to their 'new normal'. In Phase Two: Differences amongst the breast cancer nurses with regards to their attitudes and perceptions of their roles and PA promotion were identified; it appeared that these differences caused inconsistencies with PA promotion. The findings from both phases of the research study were synthesised and explored further. The key findings which emerged across the two phases were: utilising PA as a tool to make sense of and adapt to a 'new normal', the importance of relationships and limited PA advice. The key findings illuminate the differences between the breast cancer survivors' and the breast cancer nurses' perceptions and attitudes. For example, the breast cancer survivors' meanings of PA were related to gaining a sense of 'normality' and control over their overall health and well-being. Whereas, the majority of the breast cancer nurses' focused on the medical benefits of PA, rather than focusing on the benefits of PA holistically. The unique insight into both sample groups, provides a deeper understanding of their experiences and meanings of PA and promoting PA. These findings may support and improve future research and PA promotion within oncology. It is recommended that more research is needed to develop further understanding of this phenomena which a) utilises interpretative phenomenological methods b) includes both sample groups, c) involves diverse sample groups such as; age, ethnicity, job roles etc. Further, it is suggested that specific education and training for breast cancer nurses with regards to their role and responsibility to promote PA, should be available as it may overcome specific issues relating to perception of their roles and PA promotion.

This thesis critically analyses twenty-first century televised performance magic, asking what aspects of its theatrical past practitioners have retained, and how they have used televisual elements in their work. It contributes to the field of theatre and performance by attending to the multiplicity of media within this underexplored genre of performance, analysing case study episodes starring magicians who have found success in Britain, namely David Blaine, Dynamo (Steven Frayne), and Derren Brown. This thesis builds on the work of scholars within theatre and performance and a range of cognate disciplines who have demonstrated the significance of technologically mediated elements in performance magic. It ultimately argues televised magic has generated its own discourses of reality and fiction, as remediated texts that are ambiguous about their fictional and real elements, and that further entwine notions of enchantment within everyday life. Blaine's 'street magic' shows and endurance stunts attempt to establish the reality of their spectacle, addressing both on-screen spectators and a community of viewers who are separated from the effects temporally and spatially, while remaining attached to notions of 'live' performance. The series Magician Impossible, starring Dynamo and influenced by Blaine's work, draws on discourses of reality and fiction from a variety of popular media genres to test the boundaries between these two categories. Brown's work more consciously refers to historical traditions of performance magic, producing hybrid texts that establish links to the past within the mediatized context of the present. The case studies considered in this thesis possess the potential for a range of engagements that include both belief and scepticism, adapting performance magic to astonish audiences in the twenty-first century.

This ethnographic study explores the ways in which a group of social actors participate in the everyday life of a woodland nature reserve, the relationships they establish with each other, the way they engage with the nonhuman materiality of the woodland and how they are affected by this engagement. An autoethnographic approach was taken which was based on the researcher’s immersion in the research setting. This made possible a deep understanding of the affective experiences of the research participants and facilitated an appreciation of the meanings of the woodland materiality for informants which were often ‘beyond words’. The study focussed on a group of staff and volunteers and the everyday practical tasks that they engaged in which were mainly coppicing the reserve’s ancient woodland and ecological surveying and monitoring of its woodland and wildlife. These activities are central to the everyday life of the reserve and take place in the context of the environment and wildlife conservation cultural fields. They are conceptualised as core activities and generate fulfilment for those who engage in them. The analytical framework used brings together the concepts of habitus (Bourdieu, 1997), dwelling (Ingold, 1993), and ‘becoming with’ (Despret, 2004; Haraway, 2008) and allows an understanding of how informants’ habitus (both general and specific) derived from the cultural fields they experienced during childhood and in employment, shape not only their participation in the everyday life of the reserve but also how this participation is experienced and their ways of being-in-the-woodland. These last are analysed as occupying a spectrum from an instrumental relationship, through becoming with and dwelling fleetingly to dwelling. Dwelling is associated with a woodland habitus. One of my key findings is that involvement in the practices of wildlife conservation immerses social actors in a nonhuman woodland world that for most transforms their way of being-in-the-world.

My thesis, a theoretical-based work, concerns the effects of globalisation and tourism in context of Thailand, which the selected case studies are Damnoen Saduak and Pattaya Floating Markets. I particularly look at Baudrillard's theory to investigate to what extent his concept fits in context of Thailand. Also, my work uses Baudrillard's theory to study and conceptualise the effects of globalisation on Thailand's tourism.

A third of over 65s have at least one fall per year whilst a quarter of over 45s endure foot pain. Footwear is associated with both fall risk and foot pain hence its investigation is of great importance. This thesis explores the potential benefits of minimalist footwear for the older adult population. Chapter 2 ascertained the kinematic and kinetic differences between walking barefoot versus in footwear whilst highlighting the limited research on minimalist footwear, older adults and muscle activity differences. Accordingly, Chapter 3 outlined that minimalist footwear is kinematically more similar to barefoot, irrespective of age, thus offering a viable alternative. Similarly, Chapter 4 showed walking in minimalist footwear and walking unshod exhibit similar lower leg muscle activation patterns whilst differences exist to conventional footwear. Chapter 6 demonstrated how increasing intrinsic foot strength improved functional and static balance whilst Chapter 7 showed promise for minimalist footwear improving foot strength, functional balance, balance confidence as well as reducing foot and joint pain in a sample of older adults. In conclusion, this thesis highlights the need for future work to continue to investigate minimalist footwear in both older adults and other age groups for benefits to stability, foot health and joint pain.

The aim of the current thesis was to investigate athletes’ perceptions of coaching effectiveness in team and individual sport. The introduction reviews the literature on coaching effectiveness of direct relevance to this thesis. This chapter also identifies a number of theoretical frameworks to the investigation of coaching effectiveness in sport, and subsequently uses these to inform the empirical studies that follow. The first of these Chapter 2, investigated a number of antecedents of athletes’ perceptions of their coach’s effectiveness, finding athlete sex, sport type (i.e., individual vs. team) coaching behavior were all predictive of athletes’ perceptions of their coach’s effectiveness. Next, Chapter 3 focused on outcomes of athlete perceptions of their coach, showing such perceptions of coaching effectiveness were predictive of athlete-level outcomes representing all four of the key outcomes. This was shown in two separate samples of athletes representing a range of team and individual sports, one from the UK and one from Malaysia. Then, Chapter 4 investigated whether athletes’ perceptions of coaching effectiveness mediated longitudinal predictive effects of perceptions of coach’s transformational leadership behavior on three different athlete outcomes. This study demonstrated the longitudinal predictive effects of appropriate role model behaviour on antisocial teammate behavior and individual consideration behavior on trust were mediated by athletes’ perceptions of their coach’s effectiveness in character building and motivation, respectively. Finally the present thesis extend the coaching effectiveness literature by furthering our understanding on antecedents and outcomes of coaching effectiveness in team and individual sport, as well as the possible processes involved.

The vestibular system provides vital information about head position and motion; which is used for the control of balance through vestibulospinal reflexes. Chapter 2 explores the process of transforming head position to body coordinates, with and without vision. The results show when vision is available, the evoked response is less precise. Chapter 3 explores the transformation process before and after 60 days of bedrest. After this period of inactivity, participants swayed more, and their EVS-evoked sway response was less precise. This decrement in precision appears to begin recovery 6 days postbedrest. Chapter 4 focuses on vestibulo-ocular reflexes rather than postural reflexes. Electrical vestibular stimulation is used to evoke measurable torsional eye-movements. The magnitude of the response is modulated by stimulus frequency. Results suggest that CNS interprets electrical vestibular stimulation as a velocity signal rather than a position or acceleration signal. This technique is an ideal measure of pure vestibular function, Chapter 5 utilised the technique in a clinical environment. Vestibular schwannoma patients, with known unilateral vestibular deficit, were tested to identify if the proposed technique can detect this deficit. Results showed that asymmetries could be detected, and, the test may be more sensitive than previously used measures of vestibular asymmetries.

This thesis investigates examining the effects of certain types of interdependence on motor performance in competition. In the first experiment, participants undertook a ball carrying and running task under varying levels of between-team resource interdependent condition in the individual competition. The number of balls that carried to the container decreased when between-team resource interdependence exists. In the second experiment, participants completed a basketball shooting and rebounding task under varying levels of between-team resource interdependent condition in a two-on-two team competition. Results indicated that the number of baskets made, the number of baskets attempted and the shooting accuracy was higher in resource independent competition. In the third experiment, participants undertook the same basketball shooting and rebounding task as the second experiment under varying levels of between-team resource interdependent condition and within-team reward interdependent condition. Results indicated effort-based performance was greater under resource independent condition and its interaction with low reward interdependent condition. In the final experiment, participants undertook a handgrip task in a four-on-four team competition. Compared to the no reward condition, performance was better under both high reward interdependent condition and low reward interdependent condition. Mediation analyses revealed that positive emotions, self-reported effort and pressure mediated the change of performance.

Urban green spaces are integral components of urban landscapes and the cultural ecosystem services afforded to human populations by these green spaces are of particular relevance to human and societal well-being. Urban green spaces provide opportunities for human interaction, physical activity and recreation, stress alleviation and mental restoration, economic opportunity, cultural activities and interactions with nature. To understand how these benefits are received by human populations it is vital to understand when and how individuals interact with urban green spaces. The rapid development and uptake of technologies such as smart phones, social networks and apps provides new opportunity to investigate the human interactions occurring in urban green spaces. Using the city of Birmingham as a case study, this thesis aims (i) to \(demonstrate\) the utility of data obtained from smart device enabled platforms (social networks and apps) in understanding socio-ecological interactions in urban areas and (ii) to \(evaluate\) the utility of these data sources for researchers and policy makers. The successful identification of a range of socio-ecological interaction suggest these data sources provide a viable method if investigating such interactions; however, there remain a number of limitations to consider to ensure they are employed appropriately in research contexts.

This thesis examines women’s everyday experiences of leisure in two neighbourhoods of urban Turkey, drawing on qualitative data derived from interviews and observations with women living in the city of Bursa. By examining the relationship between women’s leisure and their labour, everyday mobility, and socialisation at a neighbourhood level, the thesis contributes to contemporary debates on leisure within the wider feminist literature, as well as to the current growing interest in everyday life in Turkish social science literature. Examination of the feminist literature on women’s leisure suggests that contextualising leisure within the structure of women’s everyday as a whole is fundamental to an understanding of their leisure. The more contemporary feminist studies on women’s leisure focus on how to understand the dynamic and ever-changing nature of power struggles between different groups, with different capitals and identities, in a specific context. The newly emerging studies on women’s leisure within different country contexts, outside of the North American and European sphere, foreground the necessity to embed leisure experiences within socio-cultural aspects of the context, where additional dynamics, such as the role of religion or the meanings attributed to family and individual independence may significantly differ from Western societies. The current thesis builds on and expands these later works by projecting the empirical focus on Turkey and thereby shedding light on the relevance and limitations of the existing literature in explaining women’s leisure in other contexts around the world. It critically engages with the existing research on (women’s) leisure in Turkey, which is scant and embodies certain limitations. The findings presented in this study illustrate that the prevailing gender order, which confines women to the ideals of the heterosexual family, plays a central role in regulating leisure behaviour. Class, particularly, gives shape both to the existence of leisure spaces in one’s neighbourhood and constructs the “respectability” of social behaviour differently. The thesis makes an original contribution to the existing feminist leisure research in terms of rethinking traditional assumptions about leisure, broadening the definition of leisure and highlighting the significance of local cultural context. It also makes an original contribution to research on gendered everyday in Turkey by evidencing the usefulness of the concept of leisure as a lens to investigate the urban everyday, beyond the dichotomies of work time, free time, workspace, family space, production/consumption etc.

This PhD provides a theoretically-informed ethnographic analysis of how cultural workers at Southbank Centre relate to the layered histories of cultural work and to the complex historical legacies which co-exist at this organisation. The research identifies some of the key moments and different phases of cultural work connected to this organisation and examines in what ways awareness of these is used, recycled and reframed by cultural workers today. In the process the research brings together theorisations of cultural work, the production of cultural space and the subjective experiences of cultural workers, enriching understandings of all three realms and the imbrication between them. It generates insight into the ways in which contemporary cultural work is produced in relation to historical and cultural geographies and how these histories can be mobilised - ignored, commodified, and represented - in the present. By telling some of the stories of cultural work at Southbank Centre it unpacks tensions between the creation of a 'sense of place' and the diverse histories which coalesce at this institution. In a wider sense, then, the research aims to extend knowledge on the lived experiences of cultural workers in renowned cultural institutions and the ways in which the production of historicised cultural space is integral to their work.

Undertaking physical activity in the presence of a natural environment (termed green exercise) is good for health and wellbeing. Nevertheless, we need to understand more about what motivates people to perform green exercise. The literature suggests that beliefs may play a role in physical activity behaviours and outcomes. To expand on this, the aim of this thesis was to explore the role of beliefs on green exercise behaviours and outcomes. Specifically, the following research questions guided the experimental chapters: Do beliefs predict visiting local green space? Can beliefs be modified to encourage more green exercise, and improve outcomes? Chapter 2 found that subjective measures were stronger predictors of green exercise than quantity of local green space, showing initial support for subjective measures playing a role in green exercise behaviours. To explore this further, questionnaires to assess beliefs were developed (Chapter 3) and tested (Chapter 4). This was important because previous research has not explored what people think about green exercise. The evidence showed that beliefs about green exercise appear to predict intentions to perform green exercise and visit frequency to local green space. Chapter 5 used indoor vs outdoor methodology to assess the impact of a promotional video (attitude modification intervention) on the psychological outcomes of green exercise. This was important because assessment and/or modification of attitudes in a green exercise environment had not been previously examined. Chapter 6 used a promotional video in a four-week green exercise intervention. Overall, the evidence was mixed, however, there was some indication of expectancy effects. Regular green exercise can help with health and well-being. Evidence provided in this thesis highlights the importance of subjective measures (such as perceptions, beliefs, and intentions) on green exercise behaviours and acute psychological benefits.

One public health approach to increase lifestyle physical activity is increasing choice to climb stairs instead of using the escalator or lift. Nonetheless, pedestrians in the built environment tend to avoid it. Proffitt’s economy of action model explained that pedestrian locomotor choices might influenced by perception. The first study (n=870) revisited Shaffer and Flint (2011) by asking participants to estimate the angle of an escalator. Participants reported an escalator that was moving upwards as less steep than a stationary one or one moving downwards. The second study (n=849), conducted in Indonesia, assessed the potential effects of temperature and humidity on a) speed of climbing an outdoor staircase and b) estimates of the angle. Chosen speed is an index of the allocation of resources. As temperature increased, speed of climbing reduced. For perception, both temperature and humidity influenced the explicit estimate of the angle; as climatic variables increased, perceptions became more exaggerated. Study three (n=730) and four (n=307), in the UK, are a concomitant study that investigated pedestrians’ behaviour approaching the choice-point and examined the relationship between behaviour choice and perceived steepness of a staircase. Results revealed that individuals who climbed the stairs walked faster than those who avoided them. Unlike a previous study, exaggeration of perceived steepness of the stairs did not affect pedestrians’ choice behaviour. Collectively, these findings suggest that availability energetic resources influence the overestimation of perceived steepness. In addition, natural variation in climate not only affects explicit perceptions but also directly influence both walking and climbing behaviour.

Background The world’s ageing population is frequently cited as presenting economic and social burdens and critical challenges to healthcare systems, with falls and mental health featuring as two of the biggest burdens. Whilst physical activity is recommended for older adults to optimise functional independence and guidelines for the intensity, duration and frequency of physical activity exist, there are few guidelines on the specific types of exercises that are recommended. As a physical activity that incorporates the recommended aspects of aerobic, strengthening and balance work, the aim of this study was to explore the influence of ballroom dancing on the physical, mental and social health of community-dwelling older adults. Method A qualitative-dominant, concurrent mixed-methods design was utilised. Ethical approval was granted via the University of Huddersfield’s research ethics panel. Participants were community-dwelling older adults (over 55 years of age) who were recruited from local ballroom dancing classes in West Yorkshire. They participated in ballroom dancing classes for at least one hour per week for 12 months and were tested during this period at baseline, and after 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. Demographic details were collected at baseline and the incidence of falls, changes to medical history or medications and levels of exercise were recorded at each data collection point. Quantitative measures of physical function were assessed using the Functional Reach Test (FR test), Timed-Up-and-Go Test (TUGT), the Four Square Step Test (FSST) and Tinetti’s test. In addition, balance was specifically assessed using a Biodex Balance System SD (BBS). The Falls Efficacy Scale-International (FES-I) was completed alongside the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Examination-General Population (CORE-GP) for well-being. The qualitative aspect of the study used semi-structured interviews at baseline, 6 and 12 months. Forty-one interviews were performed with participants individually or in dancing pairs. Qualitative data were managed and analysed using the Framework Analysis approach. Results Of the 26 older adult ballroom dancers recruited to the study who consented to participate, 23 (10 male, 13 female) completed the 12-months of data collection (mean age 66.5 years (SD 5.96 years; age range 58-83 years)). Using a Framework Analysis approach, 4 key themes were identified amongst the sample of older adults. ’Active ageing’ considers physical health perceptions, the acceptance, adaptation and frustrations of ageing and maintaining an active body and mind. The theme ‘class commitment and congruence’ highlights factors that were deemed important to the success of a dancing class and would encourage participants to keep dancing. The ‘Social dance community’ theme considers the influence and dynamics of dancing partnerships and the importance of building social networks. Finally, ‘enjoyment’ acknowledges the role of ballroom dancing for well-being. This study demonstrated a low attrition rate, no adverse effects due to ballroom dancing and a low falls risk in this sample of older adults. The primary outcome was assessment of functional changes between baseline and 12 months, with the 3-monthly intervals serving as interim data collection points. Over the 12-month period, whilst not expected in a feasibility study, there were no significant changes in the FR test, TUGT, FSST or Tinetti’s test. For the CORE-GP scale 97.5% of recordings were within the ‘healthy’ well-being score range, and there was a 10% decrease in points-score for the FES-I, indicating a possible substantive finding for clinical practice. The BBS tests demonstrated women had a statistically significant better level of postural stability then men, and as a group, their scores on the FR test were significantly lower than normalised scores for their age group. Discussion The findings suggest that ballroom dancing should be promoted by health professionals as a socially inclusive,safe physical activity that provides considerable pleasure. In addition to the current literature, the ‘pleasure of practice’and the ‘pleasure of community’are two types of pleasure suggested to be associated with ballroom dancing. Ballroom dancing also enhances opportunities for physical, psychological and social resilience in older adults by resisting age-related physical decline, assisting with acceptance of the ageing body, providing a strong sense of enjoyment and well-being and helping to form strong social connections, which are all important factors for resilient ageing. It is recommended that future comparative studies are of an adequate power to detect group differences that may exist in quantitative outcome measures, such as assessing balance with the BBS. A control group should be used for comparison with the ballroom dancing intervention group, with the intervention group all starting ballroom dancing at baseline. Given the findings of this study that the participants appeared to be high functioning when performing physical tests, it is recommended that alternative outcome measures are sought that will discriminate sufficiently amongst community-dwelling older adults.

Exploring the stimuli of invention within the German Makers Community 'A piece of wood becomes, in the child's mind, a wand. A building block becomes a mobile phone. The child plays at being the mother in the home corner,' (Smidt, 2009, p. 105). The research on human creativity and the talent for the invention are long studied phenomena in the history of human evolution. Nowadays these two terminologies are often substituted by the notion of innovation. The work presented here, first of all, examines the question of how historically and culturally a distinction was drawn between invention and innovation. The work examines ancient German documents from the late eighteenth century, explores and defines a concept of the invention that is exempt from economic thought, and thus distinguishes the term invention from the form of innovation in use today, which was principally characterised by Joseph Alois Schumpeter in the 19th century in the age of Industrialisation. Therefore, the thesis is focusing on past, and contemporary research on the definitions of the invention to come up with a preconception for stimuli of invention. The work uses the process of the hermeneutic circle that moves from a precursory understanding of some parts to the whole the topic of human creativity and invention and a global understanding of the whole context back to an improved understanding of each part, i.e., the invention concept and the meaning of stimuli of invention. The invention concept has been developed further according to themes, in which historical and contemporary research findings on creativity, invention and innovation are incorporated. The invention concept will be placed according to time and structure, and deficiencies will be identified in present-day societal and cultural considerations because of the much expanded, economically shaped objectives. Also, a methodical approach will be used to define and apply the stimuli of invention, using the Systems Model of Creativity (SMoC) of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. While the systems model in its origin describes the information flow and the transformation of information between the three systems domain, field and the individual, the modification here includes the transactions of the three systems by implying factors that stimulate creativity and invention. New insights of contemporary creativity research then extend these number of stimuli of invention and the stimuli of invention are studied in the German Maker community. In general, the German Maker Community is about individuals that share their knowledge and ideas openly. Moreover, even if there is a focus on Makers living in Germany, these people are globally interconnected, and distribute and gather their knowledge from an engaged, global community supported by contemporary information technology. In addition, the context of the Maker community as an internationally recognised global movement for innovation and experimentation follows the thread to have potential people that give an insight about the stimuli motivating them to participate, contribute and share ideas, inventions and innovations in the Maker Movement, its communities, or its subcultural communities. The demarcation of the Maker Movement is still one of the open issues, therefore, the focus of the investigation was on people immersed in the 'Community of Making'. As a result, the descriptions included in this thesis may illuminate the issues why people are deeply devoted to the invention in this community, even without remuneration or economic benefit or even of own cost. The research question, which factors facilitate inventions in the German Maker Community, is being answered. On the assumption that the German Maker Community belongs to the international Maker Movement, the study illustrates that the German Maker Community has partly other roots according to the cases investigated. Nevertheless, the objectives, practices and concerns have converged to the extent that a comparison between research results on the international Maker Movement and the German Maker Community can be drawn. Based on the comparison and the detailed investigation of distinctions, new insights into the socio-cultural structure of the Maker Community have been obtained, which also serve to explain how the Stimuli of Invention (SI) operate within the maker community. In the last section, the question of how German Makers can improve their skills to invent is discussed in more detail. On the interrelationships of the three systems Domain, Field and Individual in the Systems Model for Creativity (SMoC), additional themes are presented which deliver answers about the German Makers and possibly also for the international Maker Movement how these individuals continuously improve their skills to invent to the better for upcoming generations. 'Ensure that you continue to offer children many opportunities to follow their passions and interests as the interaction with others, use cultural tools and solve problems,' (Smidt, 2009, p. 116). The profound insight about learning and education in this context of the German Maker Community is that the relations and interactions described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Systems Model of Creativity (SMoC) and the opportunity to influence these interactions by the usage of Stimuli of Invention (SI) are accelerating the processes of learning and education. The Maker Community itself offers the play area for young people and young at heard adults to live and foster their curiosity, and stimulating young people and their adults to be inventive and innovative in the long run.

This study develops and conducts a 15-month, high resolution 24/7 user counting exercise on an area of urban-fringe moorland. The results of this study are discussed and used to predict future land use. The results of this study are compared with results from lower resolution user counts in other wilderness areas. This study was conceived to address a gap in data around recreational moorland use and provide 24/7 data on user numbers in order to develop models to attempt to predict use of urban-fringe moorland from time and weather variables. The data collection strategies utilised were manual counts by an observer, supplemented by Arduino micro-computers and passive infrared sensors. These sensors were designed and developed specifically for the purpose of remote high resolution counting of visitors at low cost, producing reliable 24/7 data for 15-months. Time and synchronous local weather variables at 30 minute, 1 hour, 3 hour and 6 hour resolution were compared with 30 minute moorland user data to assess how these factors affected counts. The study found that the strongest variable affecting visitor counts was daylight. User counts were highest in summer, at weekends and during afternoons. Surprisingly, very little change in user counts was detected during school, bank or religious holidays. Generally, there are trends toward using the moor when temperature is higher and humidity lower. Cloud, visibility, wind chill, wind speed and wind direction had no influence on user counts. User counts, time and weather information were modelled using two approaches: (1) weighting factors and (2) multiple regression. The best model was able to explain 52% of variation in use. The predictive capability of the model increased to 58% during summer and on weekends. Data suggest that there are two groups of users on the moor. A group that have become acclimatised to the prevailing weather conditions and use the area regardless of the weather, this first group will use the moor regularly throughout the week. The second user group is more likely to use the moor during the weekend. These users are more influenced by time and weather factors. An important social discovery was made through anecdotal observation and discussion indicating that the urban fringe moorland is utilised by users beyond the expected dog walkers, hikers and cyclists.