VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Humanism, English Literature, and the Translation of Greek, c.1480–1560
Keywords: Roger Ascham
Humanism
Early Tudor literature
Thomas More
Greek
William Barker
Thomas Berthelet
Mildred Cecil
Thomas Elyot
Nicholas Udall
Mary Roper Clarke Bassett
John Skelton
Classical reception

This study reveals the underappreciated extent to which early Tudor literature was influenced by the Quattrocento rebirth of Greek scholarship. Combining close reading with source study, it shows how English translations from Greek change our perception of the diffuse character of Tudor humanism. Rehabilitating many understudied translations – some of which exist only in manuscript, lack modern editions, and have received scant attention – this thesis also calls for a radically more diverse view of the classical tradition and its evolution in early Tudor England. Developing previous scholarship that has focused on secular pagan literature, it focuses on translations of both ‘classical’ and early Christian Greek. There are six chapters. Chapter 1 sketches the background of Greek translation c.1400–80 through a case study of Lydgate’s works. Chapter 2 focuses on Skelton’s translation of Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheke, placing this work in new intellectual and political contexts in late fifteenth-century England. Chapter 3, picking up a theme that emerges from Skelton’s work, demonstrates how attentiveness to Greek translation in More’s Utopia highlights the mediation of Greek literature through Roman intermediaries. Chapter 4 surveys verse translations from Homer by Elyot, Ascham, and Udall and establishes the significance of these translations to the development of vernacular poetics. Chapter 5 argues that Berthelet’s marketing strategies for translations from Greek shed new light on the shape of the classical tradition in Henrician England. Chapter 6 examines translations of early Christian Greek works in Edwardian and Marian England, scrutinizing the relationship between humanism and confessionalization. The Conclusion summarizes how attention to Greek calls for new ways of thinking about early Tudor translation and humanism: it underscores the value of a model for classical reception that unifies the study of Christian and pagan sources, and which more readily considers more diffuse and less ostensibly classical vectors of reception.
Student perceptions of university sexual harassment policies
Keywords: students
sexual harassment
survey
policies
university
perceptions
HE2022
HE
mixed methods
interviews

Sexual harassment has been pushed back to the forefront of issues in higher education as the fourth wave of feminism grips the western world. In the United Kingdom, this can be seen through a study which was conducted in 2018, showing that the majority of both undergraduate and postgraduate students have experienced sexual harassment and violence (Revolt, 2018). When specifically observing the University of Oxford, there has been a continuous rise in reports from 2018-2021 for sexual harassment and violence (SVHSS, 2022). This study utilizes a mixed-method approach and is informed by the intersectional and feminist theory. It explores the student perception of the current harassment policy at the University of Oxford, and how they may be related to the students’ gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, age, degree level, department, enrollment status, and fee status. Data collected includes 41 student responses to an online survey distributed to all Oxford colleges, and 10 semi-structured follow-up interviews with students from diverse backgrounds. Five conclusions can be drawn from the findings of this research: (1) analysis of the survey results predominantly found statistical significance amongst postgraduate and undergraduate students, (2) analysis from the interviews show a lack of awareness surrounding the policy and resources due to insufficient promotion from the university, (3) high levels of confusion surrounding the policy, (4) significantly more feelings of negativity toward the university than neutral or positive, and (5) participants desire and find it necessary to have some form of mandatory trainings or seminars. These findings suggest further policy and procedural changes need to occur, further promotion of the policy and resources by the university, as well as offering more resources to students such as trainings, and finally creating a more cohesive relationship between the colleges and university to better understand the needs of students.
A qualitative investigation into the contributing factors of student consumerism. With a specific focus on international students in the University of Oxford
Keywords: semi-structured interviews
tuition fees
qualitative empirical investigation
critical literature review
HE2022
HE
students as consumers
international students
Purposes of Higher Education
University of Oxford

Increasing competition among higher education institutions (HEIs) in the global market continues to shape the functions of higher education (HE) and influence students' HE experiences. This study, which focuses on students at a selective research-intensive university in the UK, seeks to identify contributing factors that drive students to adopt consumer attitudes. Previous studies on the student-as-consumer (SAC) approach indicated students' complicated and ambivalent attitudes toward the consumerism of HE. Therefore, this study also aims to explore the interconnections among these influencing factors and better explain students' inconsistent attitudes toward student consumerism. The first part of the study focuses on the concept of student consumerism and reviews literature on this topic, leading to the research questions, and the research focuses. The study then draws data from 20 semi-structured interviews to explore the processes of identity change and formation that occur during students' higher education experiences. Of the sample 70% of students identified themselves as consumers of higher education and 30% of students held mixed and conflicting attitudes. A thematic analysis was conducted on their narratives. The findings suggest individual differences (students’ previous life experiences; age; motivation for participating in HE and various university activities; social and cultural backgrounds), group differences (fee differences between international students and local students; adaptation of international students), and perceived differences (students' expectations that underpin their (dis)satisfaction) that are associated with consumer identity adaptation. The discussion of the interactions between these driving factors, as well as the influence of the neoliberal knowledge economy and globalisation of HE, which underpins the marketisation of HE, suggests that all actors in HE should be aware of the cognitive and behavioural changes caused by the inculcation of a neoliberal and capitalist mindset, which has negative implications such as reduced attention to knowledge and the learning process, and the adoption of patriarchal values. To avoid the adaptation of the consumer identity, with all the limitations on the student experiences that this imposes, governments and HEIs should stop positioning students as consumers driven only by an assumed need to maximise their financial self-efficacy.
How to characterize flexibility requirements of highly renewable energy systems over multiple timescales
Keywords: storage duration
flexibility
energy systems
renewable energy
energy storage

This thesis addresses the question: Can we characterize requirements for flexibility over different timescales in electricity systems dominated by solar and wind power? Storage and flexibility play an increasingly important role, but there is great uncertainty about amounts of flexibility needed and how they depend on generation mix and demand, including electrification of heating and transportation. Furthermore, to inform investment and planning, it is valuable to characterize the timescales over which flexibility will be needed, as different resources can be used to shift energy over different time horizons. To address this problem, the analysis uses the novel application of three methods to disaggregate overall flexibility requirements into short-, medium-, and long-term requirements, without relying on assumptions about technology parameters or costs. These methods are illustrated using the case of Great Britain and results are used to draw insights into GB flexibility needs under future scenarios. Flexibility is required over multiple timescales, from less than hourly to interseasonal or longer. Overcapacity of renewables provides value in terms of avoided storage costs, particularly displacing requirements for the longest duration storage, though generation capacity beyond 120% of demand yields diminishing marginal returns. Heating electrification has a larger impact than EVs, though flexible heating can partially offset additional power capacity needs. In all cases, the capacity required to shift energy by up to a day was on the order of 1 TWh; this could account for over half of all energy shifted depending on flexible resource operation. Electricity systems with at least 80% of energy from solar and wind require 3-150 TWh to shift energy by weeks or longer. The required capacity to shift energy by more than one year could potentially be avoided using renewables overcapacity, dispatchable generation, or interconnectors.
Efficient neural network verification and training
Keywords: trustworthy AI
AI safety
neural network verification
robustness

In spite of their highly-publicized achievements in disparate applications, neural networks are yet to be widely deployed in safety-critical applications. In fact, fundamental concerns exist on the robustness, fairness, privacy and explainability of deep learning systems. In this thesis, we strive to increase trust in deep learning systems by presenting contributions pertaining to neural network verification and training. First, by designing dual solvers for popular network relaxations, we provide fast and scalable bounds on neural network outputs. In particular, we present two solvers for the convex hull of element-wise activation functions, and two algorithms for a formulation based on the convex hull of the composition of ReLU activations with the preceding linear layer. We show that these methods are significantly faster than off-the-shelf solvers, and improve on the speed-accuracy trade-offs of previous dual algorithms. In order to efficiently employ them for formal neural network verification, we design a massively parallel Branch-and-Bound framework around the bounding algorithms. Our contributions, which we publicly released as part of the OVAL verification framework, improved on the scalability of existing network verifiers, and proved to be influential for the development of more recent algorithms. Second, we present an intuitive and inexpensive algorithm to train neural networks for verifiability via Branch-and-Bound. Our method is shown to yield state-of-the- art performance on verifying robustness to small adversarial perturbations while reducing the training costs compared to previous algorithms. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive experimental evaluation of specialized training schemes to train networks for multiple tasks at once, showing that they perform on par with a simple baseline. We provide a partial explanation of our surprising results, aiming to stir further research towards the understanding of deep multi-task learning.
Perspectives and experiences of gender inclusion for STEM programs through an intersectional lens
Keywords: qualitative research
interviews
cross-cultural education
inclusive education
gender inclusion for STEM
intersectionality
DSC2022
DSC

Background: STEM is becoming increasingly important in determining a country's economic and social progress. Despite decades of research and advocacy, women remain underrepresented in STEM education and professions. Such STEM gender gaps, with certain regional and subject differentiations, nevertheless remain as global issues further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Informal educational initiatives on GIFSTEM (gender inclusion for STEM) emerged as part of the solution. In recent years, they also have attracted increasing partnership and investment interests from the public and private sectors. However, relatively little evidence exists to demonstrate how the impacts of GIFSTEM initiatives are experienced by different participants, particularly those outside the US. There are also increasing questions about the monolithic framing of gender in these programs.
Research Design: This research evaluates the experiences of learners and project leaders of GIFSTEM organizations in a range of geographical settings through an intersectional lens. In this qualitative study, data is collected through 13 individual online semi-structured interviews. Participants represent two groups, those who are learners (both past and present), and those who are project organizers and leaders of different GIFSTEM organizations.
Findings: Data from interviews show that learners find GIFSTEM programs helpful in three ways: community, networking-mentoring, as well as a broadened understanding of possible paths in STEM education and professions. Depending on their intersectional identities, learners also experience two barriers, heightened visibility and feelings of exclusion due to identity metrics other than gender, that make them feel uncertain about remaining in STEM. Furthermore, learner participants feel that GIFSTEM programs do little, sometimes even the opposite, in mitigating these issues. Project leader interviews demonstrate that, depending on the specific programming goals, different numerical metrics are used, in combination with qualitative data from individual participations, for impact measurements of their affiliated GIFSTEM organization. Project leaders also have to make a series of pragmatic considerations in the process of developing and implementing a sustainable GIFSTEM organization. For instance, decisions regarding target learner demographics, program contextualization, and navigating relationships with commercial partners. In the end, individual GIFSTEM organizations must make strategic and difficult decisions depending on their operational contexts to reach their respective end goals.
Acronyms:
GIFSTEM: gender inclusion for STEM
GIFT: gender inclusion for Tech (a specific subset of GIFSTEM initiatives)
CS: Computer Science
EE: Electrical Engineering
FAANG: An acronym describing five prominent American technology companies: Facebook(Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (Hobbs, 2022).
Co-designing augmented reality books: connections between student distributed cognition and technology design
Keywords: co-design
education technology
community knowledge building
distributed cognition
DSC2022
participatory design
participatory methods
DSC
augmented reality
technology design

This study focuses on the relationship between community-based knowledge construction and participatory technology design. Contextualized against digital divide research, the goals of this study are twofold: understand how students from a low socioeconomic background perceive an emerging technology as a tool to learn with and understand how the iterative and inherently reflective process of technology design may influence student knowledge construction. Grounded in distributed cognition theory, this study examines this relationship by co-designing an augmented reality book with an eighth-grade class in New England, USA. Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology that allows users to place virtual models into the physical world using a mobile device or headset. The students created a book about COVID-19 and worked with the researcher to build an iOS app that projected virtual models atop the book. The analysis answers questions about how students perceive and use AR as a tool to learn with, demonstrating that students use AR as an exploratory tool, first broadly across a diverse set of topics, and then deeper into specific details. The study also examines the influence of iteration, observing how students switched between roles of producer and consumer as they sought to improve the app, thereby encouraging critical reflection on the material. Ultimately, this study shows the ways in which individual students used the unique affordances of AR to contribute and modify information for the advancement of the community’s knowledge.
"For a quart of ale is a dish for a king"? Malting, brewing and beer in the Mid Saxon period: a case study of Sedgeford
Keywords: beer
extensification
Scandinavia
archaeobotany
East Anglia
early medieval
germination
Anglo-Saxon
functional weed ecology
brewing
correspondence analysis
malting
rye
malting kiln
crop rotation
charred assemblage
agriculture
immigration
mouldboard plough
stable isotope analysis
crop processing
Norfolk
ale
eastern zone

Primary documentary sources attest to ‘oceanic’ beer drinking in Anglo-Saxon England; however, corresponding archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence has, to date, been conspicuously lacking. Archaeobotanical and structural evidence have together recently been used to designate a crop-processing complex, securely radiocarbon dated to the Mid Saxon era, at the site of Sedgeford in northwest Norfolk as, more specifically, a malting complex (comprising a steeping tank, and multiple germination floors and kilns): the earliest known in Anglo-Saxon England.
The key archaeobotanical criterion signifying malting is abundant germinated cereal grains. The malting complex assemblage is, unusually, dominated by rye grains, and secondarily, free-threshing wheat. New methods for assessing germination in ‘naked’ grains such as rye and free-threshing wheat, based on external morphology as visible under a light microscope, are presented. Results are ‘triangulated’ with other novel analyses -- geometric morphometric analysis and scanning electron microscopy – for assessing germination in malting complex grains. Coherence in these results provides multi-stranded evidence for widespread germination, and hence malting, at Sedgeford. This study sets the malting complex in its broader socio-economic and cultural context: describing Sedgeford’s place in the contested Mid Saxon ‘agricultural revolution’.
Stable isotope analysis and functional weed ecology together evidence all three components of the mooted ‘mouldboard plough package’: heavy plough use, extensification and, perhaps, early crop rotation, in the arable land supplying the malting complex. Further, results suggest Sedgeford may have been a ‘collection centre’ for harvested crops from surrounding arable land. Cultural continuity between the ‘eastern zone’ of England and northwest continental Europe in the era is increasingly recognised, and evidenced at the site. Rye was then commonly cultivated on the continent. Importation of rye-husbanding and -malting customs by recent immigrants to Sedgeford from littoral northwest Europe is tentatively hypothesised.
The role of technology in the school to work transition of vocational students in China
Keywords: Interview
Vocational education
DSC2022
Technology
School to work transition
DSC

This dissertation examines the school to work transition of Chinese vocational students and how technology affects the transition. School-to-work transition is an important stage in an individual’s career development and is influenced by different factors. Technology's role in school-to-work transition, however, remains under-researched, especially among vocational students at higher educational levels. In China the employability of vocational students has been subject to various changes over the last few decades, leading to the stigmatisation of social inferiority and difficulties finding employment. Examining how technology impacts this group, therefore, may be illuminating, as technology has the potential to decrease social inequalities and facilitate social mobility and inclusion by providing a variety of access to information and promoting social networks. More particularly, technology may be able to help Chinese vocational students during their transition experiences, which offers better job opportunities and achieve social upgrade. Using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, this study surveys 22 students and one teacher on technology and school-to-work transitions, with results suggesting that vocational students tend to have a smooth transition with the aid of technology. While technology does not play a key role when applying for jobs, it is an important source of job-related information, showing that it is possible for them to gain useful information for the job hunting from the technology but may not fundamentally alleviate the social injustice on the students. Overall, the dissertation makes a new contribution to studies on technology’s contribution to school-to-work transitions in the Chinese context and vocational school employability.
From the mainframe to the flesh: Pedagogical approaches to conceptualizing human experience in bio-modeling
Keywords: Medical bias
Biomedical engineering
Device design
Computer Aided Design
DSC2022
DSC
Medical devices

The design of medical instrumentation is a vital aspect of Biomedical Engineering (BME) programs. Yet, no full-length study analyzing the consequence of pedagogical methods on a medical device’s final design has been conducted. Being that these technologies are created with a specific end-use in mind, an examination of instructional design is essential for ascertaining how the user has come to be understood by those drafting solutions on their behalf. As such, this thesis examines the ways that biomedical engineering programs conceptualize user experience through design instruction. It navigates essentialist questions like who is a user and evolves to investigate the theoretical crux of medical device making to ask why decisions are made and what apparatuses might inform these choices. Through this process, it discerns a lack of critical pedagogy in BME design curricula, and thus argues that biomedical engineering programs must take seriously the ideas of race, gender, and other social categories in the teaching of medical device design.
This work begins by reflecting on the socio-historical relevance of medical devices. In doing so, it outlines health, education, and illness as value-laden, multi-dimensional notions that are often singularized. This piece contends that such singularization limits the reach and effectiveness of design instruction, reifying the belief that science is distinct from social meaning. It then reflects on the use of technology in the development of medical devices. Here, it offers a generational description of mechanical Computer Aided-Design (CAD)—a band of software used to transform 2D sketches into 3D digital models. Finally, through a series of semi-structured interviews with six recent graduates of two top ranked BME programs, this work develops the concept of exclusion as enactment to describe the catastrophic impacts exclusion can have for those underrepresented in currently utilized instructional frameworks.