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Additional file1. Additional quotes for each theme

Improving the sexual health of homeless young people in hostels Background Eighty-six thousand young people are estimated to have approached Local authorities in the United Kingdom because of homelessness or risk of homelessness in the 2016/17 period. Young people under 25 years are known to have higher rates of Sexually Transmitted Infections than any other groups and although the rates of teenage and unintended pregnancy in under 20-year olds have reduced in recent years, there is still room for improvement, especially in deprived areas. Little is known about the sexual health needs of homeless young people. The aim of this study was to improve homeless young people’s sexual health because of the high risk within this vulnerable community of Sexually Transmitted Infections and unintended pregnancy. This thesis explores the knowledge and attitudes towards sexual health and contraception use of homeless young people accommodated in hostels in London. A review of policy, homelessness, young people, sexual health and underpinning research in middle or high-income countries was undertaken. Despite limited evidence overall, current and past trauma and abuse were noted to be of significance, and revealed the need for further research. Research design: A constructivist theoretical framework was used to underpin an ethnographic case study following Burawoy’s extended case method. To reveal new knowledge about young people’s attitudes about sexual health, semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of 29 homeless young people and five key workers were conducted, audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Insider observations of the participants in their natural settings and during hostel residents’ meetings over a five-month period were also carried out and documented. This amounted to a total of 48 hours of observation undertaken in the research setting (ranging from 1.5 – 5 hours per session). Data analysis was thematic, guided by Braun and Clarke’s thematic framework and QSR International’s Nvivo 10 Software. Findings: Analysis of data from the young people and their key workers, observations and documentation highlighted three significant themes. These were overarching, and not expected; they related to attending to the basic physical, emotional and mental needs of this population before sexual health can be effectively addressed. The themes were: risks and extreme vulnerability to danger, exploitation, shame, and mental illness; relationship and communication difficulties; and a consequent emergence of a culture of homelessness. Analysis of demographic data added significant detail to the findings which included gender differences, sexual health and service awareness, and ethnicity. These themes represent new knowledge and understanding regarding the complex needs of homeless young people. The study provides new insight into the lives of these young people who, due to their extreme vulnerability and the harshness of their circumstances, have to prioritise basic requirements before attending to the higher cognitive aspects of living. Consequently, an emergent model and cycle of care arose from the data, both are proposed for practice so as to enhance the outcomes for homeless young people. Implications for practice: Homeless young people require specialist delivery of sexual health care, in safe surroundings. This should focus initially on an assessment of their ‘current state of being’, through to establishment of trusting relationships between staff and young people and ongoing vulnerability awareness. A multidisciplinary approach is required with mutual shared learning across the disciplines, and support for key workers in addressing sexual health amongst the population. Only then can a reliable sexual health risk assessment be undertaken which will address the individual support requirements to achieve screening and contraceptive care for this group.

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. This qualitative study explores the relationship between the engagement in prison education and desistance from crime. As a practitioner, I saw a disconnect between the growth learners appeared to experience over time in class and the dominant deficits-based policies, curriculum and pedagogical practices. Education was being understood as a criminological factor based on neoliberal ideas around increased employability leading to reduced reoffending. It felt such an understanding may not sufficiently capture the value of education for learners in prison nor its impact. This thesis applies the theoretical lenses of learning and desistance to adult male learners’ experience of intensive prison education to develop a more robust understanding of its impact on incarcerated learners and the value of quality education within prisons. Significantly, this thesis adopts atypical prison education research methodology, drawing on a strengths-based, more socially-just Appreciative Inquiry approach, together with ethnographic case study and thematic analysis to explore the self-identified best learning experiences of and impact on thirteen adult male learners in full-time basic skills education. The unique purpose-built Intensive Learning Centre in a medium security prison in New South Wales provided an exceptional opportunity to research the learning process when the conditions of learning space, program, staff relations and equal pay opportunities are optimal. Findings indicated that even the most reluctant learners seemed to experience attitudinal shifts towards their capacity to learn, capabilities, and both the desire and ability to desist from crime. Three key themes of Being, Becoming and Belonging were identified as significant to the learners, especially in relation to their experiences of place, culture, identity and basic skills acquisition which were bound by a sense that the educational space, programs and relationships were profoundly normalising and emancipatory. This thesis shows that engagement in high-quality prison education, even at the basic skills level, within fit-for-purpose learning spaces does much more than increase learners’ employability by raising their literacy and numeracy levels to a ‘functional’ standard. In addition, basic-skills education in prison can support the development of learners’ hope, capability, agency, empathy and an interest in civic engagement–characteristics mirrored by successful desisters. Accordingly, this has important implications for prison education policy, programs and pedagogy as well as staff professional development. This thesis suggests that understanding desistance as a learning process and learning as a capability-building process beyond employability may help us support our learners better, develop and deliver better prison education and, ultimately, better prisons in which the desistance process can be catalysed and assisted.

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Access to the full text of this thesis is restricted due to the inclusion of 3rd Party Copyright material. This version includes only the introduction, an exegesis and bibliography. This thesis reconstructs the life of petty criminal Iris Webber (1906–1953) and opens the gap into which queer women fall in a context where male homosexuality is criminalised. Under police scrutiny from 1932 until her death, Iris Webber’s epithet is ‘the most violent woman in Sydney’. Whilst lesbianism in Australia wasn’t a criminal offence, authorities branded queer women ‘sex perverts’ and persecuted them. Iris did not identify as a lesbian but was open about at least two relationships she had with women, including prostitute Maisie Matthews. Twice married, twice acquitted of murder, she made her living as a busker, thief and sly-grogger. All these occupations are explored in the creative component of this thesis, and her star-crossed affair with Maisie Matthews is a central narrative thread. In the exegesis, I build a timeline of Iris Webber’s life from the primary sources of police files and media stories. As these are written by men of authority, about a female queer criminal, they are necessarily interrogated. Particular attention is given to tabloid crime reporter Vince Kelly, whose chapter on Iris in Rugged angel, his 1961 biography of Sergeant Lilian Armfield, has underpinned all narratives about her since. I also examine the context of violence in society at that time, along with legislation and policing methods that affected Webber and her associates. Finally, I consider the historical novel, and the creative component of this thesis uses this form to bring Iris Webber to life. In the creative component, I have focussed on the years 1932 to 1937. With the novelist’s attention to psychology, atmosphere and intimacy, I conjure Iris’s life as I imagine she experienced it. Giving equal attention to her inner and outer worlds, depicting the personal and the everyday alongside the external forces of the law in a socio-political context, I take advantage of the ellipses in the primary sources. The creative component consists of vignettes from Part 1 of a two-part novel project. Living in poverty in a time of ingrained brutality, some perpetuated by women such as brothel madam Tilly Devine and sly-grog queen Kate Leigh, Iris was the most reviled of these women, and I explore why this is so. Both aforementioned crime bosses appear as characters in the creative component, alongside other criminals of the time. Through them, I observe the economies of the night – blackmarket drugs, alcohol and sex – which threaded through every tier of society. The invisibility of women in public life, and history, is compounded by non-heterosexual lifestyles. Yet the number of fierce female protagonists in Sydney’s sly-grog era is remarkable. Iris Webber was the least known, most marginalised, and undoubtedly most radical of these, providing a fresh aperture through which to view a fascinating time and place.

The small GTPase Rab25 has been functionally linked to tumour progression and aggressiveness in ovarian cancer and promotes invasion in three-dimensional environments. This type of migration has been shown to require the expression of the hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF-1a). In this report we demonstrate that Rab25 regulates HIF-1a protein expression in an oxygen independent manner in a panel of cancer cell lines. Regulation of HIF-1a protein expression by Rab25 did not require transcriptional upregulation, but was dependent on de novo protein synthesis through the Erbb2/ERK1/2 and p70S6K/mTOR pathways. Rab25 expression induced HIF-1 transcriptional activity, increased cisplatin resistance, and conferred intraperitoneal growth to the A2780 cell line in immunocompromised mice. Targeting HIF1 activity by silencing HIF-1 beta re-sensitised cells to cisplatin in vitro and reduced tumour formation of A2780-Rab25 expressing cells in vivo in a mouse ovarian peritoneal carcinomatosis model. Similar effects on cisplatin resistance in vitro and intraperitoneal tumourigenesis in vivo were obtained after HIF1b knockdown in the ovarian cancer cell line SKOV3, which expresses endogenous Rab25 and HIF-1a at atmospheric oxygen concentrations. Our results suggest that Rab25 tumourigenic potential and chemoresistance relies on HIF1 activity in aggressive and metastatic ovarian cancer. Targeting HIF-1 activity may potentially be effective either alone or in combination with standard chemotherapy for aggressive metastatic ovarian cancer.

Background\ud Ovarian cancer is the most fatal of gynaecological malignancies, usually detected at a late stage with intraperitoneal dissemination. Appropriate preclinical models are needed that recapitulate both the histopathological and molecular features of human ovarian cancer for drug-efficacy analysis.\ud \ud Methods\ud Longitudinal studies comparing cisplatin performance either alone or in a novel cisplatin-based delivery-system, cucurbit[7]uril-encapsulated cisplatin (cisplatin@CB[7]) were performed on subcutaneous (s.c.) and intraperitoneal (i.p.) xenografts using the human ovarian cancer cell line A2780 stably expressing the small GTPase Rab25, which allows A2780 intraperitoneal growth; and luciferase, to allow tumour load measurement by non-invasive bioluminescent imaging.\ud \ud Results\ud Rab25 expression induced cisplatin resistance compared to the parental cell line as assessed by the MTT assay in vitro. These findings did not translate in vivo, where cisplatin resistance was determined by the microenvironment. Subcutaneous xenografts of either parental A2780 or cisplatin-resistant Rab25-expressing A2780 cells presented similar responses to cisplatin treatment. In contrast, increased cisplatin resistance was only detected in i.p. tumours. Treatment of the cisplatin-resistant i.p. model with the novel cisplatin@CB[7] delivery system resulted in a substantial reduction of i.p. tumour load and increased necrosis.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud Poor clinical performance of novel chemotherapeutics might reflect inappropriate preclinical models. Here we present an ovarian i.p. model that recapitulates the histopathological and chemoresistant features of the clinical disease. In addition, we demonstrate that the novel cisplatin-delivery system, cisplatin@CB[7] may have utility in the treatment of drug-resistant ovarian human cancers.