VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Essays on mobile money services, microenterprises and role models in developing countries
Keywords: mobile money
uganda
secondary school
microenterprise
microfinance
role models
risk-sharing

Mobile money services have rapidly expanded across East Africa, with 66% of people using an account actively. Understanding the impact of these services is therefore an important area of research, which the first two chapters of my thesis contribute to.
Chapter One of my thesis uses survey data from Tanzania to understand how mobile money services affect the risk sharing capabilities of households. I look at the aftermath of rainfall shocks at the village level, and examine how consumption has been affected for users of mobile money services, non-users who reside in villages with other users, and households that live in villages without access to mobile money services. I find that after a village-based rainfall shock, only users of mobile money services are able to smooth their consumption. Non-users, regardless of whether they have access to mobile money or not, experience a 6% fall in their consumption. This raises questions of who benefits from the introduction of new financial services.
Chapter Two looks at integrating mobile money services into a microfinance loan product and the impact this has on the businesses of women in Uganda. In a field experiment, I randomly assigned women applying for a microfinance loan to receive the loan on a mobile money account or as cash. I find that women who receive their loan on a mobile money account invest 11% more of the loan into their business and experience 15% higher profits. These impacts are greatest for women who experienced high pressure to share money with family and friends at baseline. This study suggests that the manner in which a loan is disbursed has important implications for whether women are able to control how the loan is used.
The third chapter of my thesis looks at a different topic: role models and how they impact behaviour. I study the impact of being randomly assigned to see a movie featuring a potential role model, Queen of Katwe, or a placebo movie, on the exam results of secondary school students in Uganda. Seeing Queen of Katwe results in lower secondary school students scoring 0.11 standard deviations higher in their maths exam, mainly because they are less likely to fail maths, and upper secondary school students scoring 0.13 standard deviations higher in their finishing exams. Impacts are largest for female students. Further research is needed to uncover the mechanisms by which a role model can raise exam performance, with both changing beliefs and raising aspirations potential channels.
Progressive ideals and the promotion of ‘high’ culture: classical music in British adult education, c.1945-1965
Keywords: music
Hans Redlich
Northern Ireland
Shropshire
high culture
Great Britain
college
the left
Geoffrey Bush
University of Birmingham
Belfast
extension
culture
Liverpool
Gerald Abraham
SAEC
Birmingham
musicology
extramural
adult education
classical music
twentieth century
progressive
WEA
universities
class identity
London
Iain Hamilton
Workers’ Educational Association
authenticity
Walter Bergmann
social change
reconstruction
Morley College
Michael Tippett
Walter Goehr
history
education
Queen’s University Belfast
William Glock
Thea Musgrave
democratisation
Denis Arnold
England
music education
music administration
individualism
political ideals
egalitarianism
cultural reform
Shropshire Adult Education College
Peter Racine Fricker
voluntarism
middle class
Anthony Milner
Wilfrid Mellers
University of Liverpool
intellectual culture
Mátyás Seiber
post-war
University of London

This thesis examines the promotion of classical music through adult education in Britain during the first two decades following the Second World War. In doing so, it illuminates the relationship between progressive political ideals (namely, democratisation and egalitarianism) and ideas about ‘high’ culture in Britain during the immediate post-war era. A number of prominent musical figures were associated with adult education institutions during this period. This thesis focuses on their activities at university ‘extramural’ departments and adult colleges.
In addition to possessing generally left-leaning political outlooks, these figures contributed to a common musical project. This sought to reorient the culture of classical music in Britain, and thus elevate British culture more broadly, by reforming music education in general and adult musical education in particular. Ultimately, it sought to place classical music in Britain on more secure intellectual, aesthetic, and social foundations.
Encouraged by developments within the expanding post-war adult education sector, reformist approaches to adult musical education circulated increasingly widely from the late 1940s onwards. The results draw attention to the ways in which both ‘high’ culture and middle-class identity were being re-thought in the immediate postwar era. They also present a picture of gradual cultural change during this period, with visions of cultural reform which centred on ‘high’ culture being guided by, and applying, progressive ideals throughout.
Both democratisation and egalitarianism, however, were defined in particular ways within adult musical education, and they were realised unevenly in practice. Examining adult musical education in the immediate post-war era also shows how progressive ideals, in shaping ideas about ‘high’ culture, were interacting with ideals of voluntarism and individualism. The degree to which both individualism and authenticity were emphasised within adult education’s promotion of ‘high’ culture, meanwhile, suggests that these ideals were shaping post-war British culture from the outset.
The social world of hunter-gatherers in early Holocene Lesotho: integrating method and theory
Keywords: Rockshelter
Stone Age
Archaeology
Africa

This thesis presents new early Holocene excavations at Ntloana Tšoana in western Lesotho and makes the case for reintegrating method and theory in southern African Later Stone Age archaeology. It is argued that the distancing of method and theory relates to discipline-wide economic and material culture biases. An alternative is proposed which focuses on the everyday residues and temporal relations of hunter-gatherer life in order to build an understanding of attachment to place. This approach, which is more accepting of the multi- temporal qualities of complex stratigraphies, is ideally suited to the abundant and well- stratified rockshelters of southern Africa. Importantly, tracing sequence in the construction of stratigraphic diagrams, the modelling of radiocarbon dates, as well as in studies of artefact production use and discard, remain central to the work presented here. At the same time, however, equal weight is placed on the durational and imbricated qualities of the archaeological record, which, it is argued, deserve to be repositioned as positive attributes. In this way of thinking sedimentation and erosion are vital to the human story and provide much of the movement and depth to the history-writing process. These insights are brought to bear on the 600–1700 calendar years of early Holocene stratigraphy at Ntloana Tšoana, during which time a complex history of social fragmentation and coalescence is traceable, sandwiched between, and partly overlapping with, two major flooding events. The site also becomes associated with a specific set of practices over many centuries involving the construction of large hearth features and the working of animal hides. Discussion revolves around the manner in which rockshelter residues may have acted as a stabilising force within the fluid socio-material world of hunter-gatherer groups and how this may have operated over an inter-generational timeframe.
Baptismal art and identity construction in the Western Mediterranean in the fifth and sixth centuries
Keywords: Late Antiquity
Romanness
Baptism
Spain
Romanitas
Art
Ravenna
Archaeology
Identity
Western Mediterranean
Afterlife of Antiquity
Portugal
North Africa

This thesis interrogates material sources from the fifth and sixth centuries to come to a nuanced understanding of what implications the association of Christianity and Romanness had for the conduct of late antique Christians’. I argue that Christian art and material culture shows us that in their lived religious practices, Christians treated Roman cultural techniques and Roman spaces, which high-ranking church representatives considered un-Christian or even pagan, as parts of Christian culture. The thesis demonstrates that very diverse Christian groups, some located on the rural edges of the Western Mediterranean and others in one of its imperial centres, Ravenna, allowed Roman visual culture, and even pre-Christian cult spaces, to shape baptismal art and architecture. Whether these manifestations of Romanness had an impact on Christian beliefs, i.e. their orthodoxy, can be shown by analyzing material culture only with great difficulty. Roman-Christian material culture does provide evidence, however, that late antique Christians privileged keeping Roman traditions alive over contemporary scholarship considers correct Christian conduct. Roman cultural techniques, officially deemed un-Christian, appear in the material record, and suggest that individual communities’ understandings of permissible and orthodox ways of performing Christianity were influenced by the cultural landscapes that surrounded them.
The Architecture of Nanoparticle Surfaces and Interfaces
Keywords: Heterogeneous catalyst
interfaces
Electronic modification
surfaces
Oxygen reduction reaction
Formic acid dehydrogenation
nanoparticles
Geometric modification

Heterogeneous catalysts are vital for many industrial processes, however the high compositions of platinum group metals mean that the catalysts are often expensive and are not always cost efficient. In many cases, although platinum is a good catalyst, an enhancement in activity can be seen when alloying with a secondary metal. In order to increase the cost efficiency of these catalysts, an improvement in activity and reduction in expensive metal mass is needed. One method of combining these factors is the production of core-shell nanoparticles, removing the highly expensive metal from the inactive particle core while maintaining the close contact of the active metal with the secondary metal.
This thesis provides an insight into two synthetic methods to produce designed bimetallic nanoparticles with tailored active sites for improving catalysis. The first method explored uses the polymer polyvinylpyrrolidone as a capping agent while subsequent deposition techniques are employed to tailor the surface layer. The second method uses a mesoporous silica (SBA-15) which induces the surface segregation of some secondary metals. These two synthetic methods are evaluated through extensive characterisation to better understand the metallic interfaces and through the use of the formic acid decomposition reaction to understand the changes in the active sites at the surfaces. The SBA-15 method was also used to produce a series of catalysts with enhanced activity for the oxygen reduction reaction. The research presented is a step towards highly designed nanoparticle catalysts, with the tailoring of active sites made possible through degree of interaction of a secondary metal.
Innovative scripts and spellings in Roman Egypt: investigations into script conventions, domains, shift, and obsolescence as evidenced by hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, and Old Coptic manuscripts
Keywords: Language Shift
Ostraca
Hieratic
Papyri
Script Shift
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Bilingualism
Language Death
Demotic
Script Obsolescence
Coptic
Multigraphia

Innovative Scripts and Spellings in Roman Egypt studies the hieroglyphic, hieratic, Demotic/demotic, and Old Coptic manuscripts which evidence the conventions governing script use, the domains of writing those scripts inhabited, and the shift of scripts and their domains, before the obsolescence of Egyptian writing during the Roman Period. Utilising macro-level frameworks from sociolinguistics, the textual culture from four case study sites of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE are contextualised within the communities of speech, script, and practice constituting the priesthoods that produced them. Utilising micro-level frameworks from linguistics, both the scripts of the Egyptian writing system written, and the way the orthographic methods fundamental to those scripts changed, are typologised. Additionally, this study treats the way in which logographic vs alphabetic orthographies are deciphered and understood by the reading brain, and the rationales behind (ortho)graphic shift, such as where conventional as opposed to innovative spellings sit along continua of orthographic depth. By analogy to language death in speech communities, current scholarship on script obsolescence in Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and Egypt is appraised, and by problematising generalised synoptic narratives of obsolescence, the phenomenon of domain-by-domain language and script shift is then compared directly to that of domain-by-domain obsolescence of the scripts of the Egyptian writing system. “Innovative scripts and spellings” are analysed at Oxyrhynchus, Tebtunis, Soknopaiou Nesos, and Narmouthis, and a synthesis of the evidence these provide for script conventions, domains, shift, and obsolescence is undertaken. In doing so, this study draws conclusions on how the unprecedented pressures on priestly populations during the 2nd century CE are evidenced in, and a cause of, the (ortho)graphic innovations attested, and how this informs upon the domain-by-domain shift in conventions and scripts, and eventual tip of hieratic towards obsolescence during the 2nd century CE.
The financial statecraft of debtors: the political economy of external finance in Africa
Keywords: Finance

How do countries' borrowing choices affect their foreign relations? More specifically, can access to new sources of external finance enhance countries' leverage when negotiating with their existing donors? This thesis investigates whether, and how, the greater diversity in African countries' portfolios of external finance in the 21st century has affected their negotiations with traditional donors and lenders. I focus specifically on the effects of Chinese lending and bond market finance, which have become the most important alternative to the development finance provided by traditional donor countries and development banks. I argue that alternative lenders act as an outside option that reduces borrowing governments' dependence on any one source of external finance, which ought to give them greater leverage in negotiations with their traditional donors. In this way, countries' borrowing choices become a basis for shaping their foreign relations, a phenomenon I refer to as the financial statecraft of debtors. However, not all countries are equally effective in translating their access to alternative finance into preferred negotiation outcomes. Both domestic political contestation in the recipient country and the significance of the recipient to donors shape variation in the success of debt-based financial statecraft. I adopt a mixed methods approach to support my argument. I use data on the terms of World Bank and US development finance to show that, across sub-Saharan African governments, access to alternative financing sources is associated with terms on traditional aid that are more aligned with government preferences. Three case studies based on extensive interview evidence --- Ethiopia, Kenya, and Ghana --- allow me to trace the mechanisms by which alternative finance affects negotiations with traditional donors and provide a comparison that demonstrates the conditioning effects of government and donor constraints. By explaining the potential benefits borrowing governments can derive from their portfolio of external finance, the thesis contributes to a better understanding of the international political economy of financial interdependence.
'Acting a part' in Jane Austen's fiction
Keywords: Theatre in literature
Acting theory
Jane Austen

Building on the recent studies on the influence of the theatre on Jane Austen’s fiction and the recent reappraisal of the links between the novel and drama in the eighteenth century, this thesis develops a specific aspect of drama in which Austen was invested throughout her life and which informs her understanding of character: the question of acting. By recovering the ways in which Austen weaves acting techniques from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries into her novels, the modern reader is able to understand how acting shapes Austen’s conception of social behaviour and communication. Acting in the eighteenth century was understood as the representation of human passions on stage. Actors used a system of theatrical gestures that visually translated the character’s internal feelings. Austen adapts these techniques in her novels in sequences where characters’ feelings are perceived as articulated through the body, placing them in a framework of theatricality. By exposing the theatrical dynamics that surround characters’ actions, Austen’s fiction problematizes the neat dichotomy between literal and metaphorical acting, blurring the distinctions between sincerity and duplicity. Most controversially, Austen’s novels demonstrate that even the truth must be acted. This thesis examines the question of acting in Austen from the Juvenilia to Emma by contextualising her novels within the contemporary theatrical culture of her time, through an analysis of contemporary acting manuals, theatrical reviews, and theatrical prints and portraiture.
Evaluation of the immunogenicity of a promising vaccine regimen to identify immune correlates of protection
Keywords: TB vaccines
TB
T cells

A vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), a disease resulting after infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), is urgently needed to prevent more than a million deaths per year. Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) is the only available vaccine against TB but its efficacy is variable throughout the world. A promising vaccination regimen composed of BCG prime, followed by vaccination with a chimpanzee adenoviral vector (ChAdOx1) and a modified vaccinia Ankara virus (MVA), both expressing Ag85A, was identified in our laboratory. This regimen significantly improved BCG efficacy in animal studies. Antibody, effector and memory T cell responses induced by BCG-ChAdOx1.85A-MVA85A (B-C-M), were evaluated, to identify immune correlates of protection. This regimen induced Ag85A-specific IgG and IgA responses as well as cytokine responses in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, both in the systemic and pulmonary system. To discriminate lymphocytes in the vasculature from lymphocytes in the lung parenchyma, a fluorochrome-conjugated antibody was injected intravascularly before harvesting the lungs. Lung parenchymal Ag85A-specific memory CD4+ T cells that were CXCR3+ KLRG1-, significantly increased in B-C-M immunised mice compared to BCG alone at 4, 8 and 20 weeks post vaccination but the cell number decreased at the latter time point. These memory cells associated with protection against M.tb challenge, which was observed at 4 and 8 weeks but not when mice were challenged 20 weeks post vaccination. These putative T cells may have an important role against M.tb infection and could be a target for designing a protective vaccine. In parallel, six novel M.tb antigens were selected and expressed individually in a ChAdOx1 vector. The immunogenicity and protective efficacy of these vaccines were evaluated. Three antigens were not immunogenic when expressed in viral vectors and DNA. The immunogenic antigens induced cytokine production but failed to confer protection when delivered alone or with B-C-M regimen.
Smyrna in your pocket: memory of Asia Minor in contemporary Greek culture
Keywords: Turkey
Asia Minor Disaster
1922
refugees
Greece
1923
Lausanne convention
Aivali
Greco-Turkish War
memory
Smyrna
population exchange
Izmir
Asia Minor Catastrophe

This thesis turns to a watershed in the history of modern Greece – its defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the population exchange that followed – as remembered in present-day Greece. On the one hand, it describes how family memories find their way into cultural representations and provide a language as well as a form for other reminiscences. On the other hand, it aims to show how those cultural representations participate in wider transformations that occur in the public sphere. Methodological tools developed in the field of cultural memory studies are coupled with insights drawn from history, psychology and anthropology. Within this interdisciplinary framework, the memory of Asia Minor emerges as reflective of present-day ideologies and responsive to contemporary concerns.
The introduction sets the discussion in a wider context, providing historical background of the Greco-Turkish War and outlining the ways in which its memory has been reworked in history and culture from 1922 until the present day. Different mnemonic communities that have assembled around the memory of Asia Minor are discussed in Chapter 2, by drawing on the controversy over a history textbook that ensued in 2006-2007. Chapter 3 uses an example of a graphic novel in order to foreground the aesthetic and memory practices that Asia Minor sets in motion when the relay of remembrance reaches the third generation. Chapter 4 discusses the memory of the cosmopolitan Ottoman port of Smyrna on theatre stage and proposes memory as a portable toolkit for bearing witness in the future. Chapter 5 puts this premise to the test in the context of the refugee crisis as it unfolded in Greece in 2015.
Mechanistic modelling to determine the limits of clinical and pre-clinical cancer immunotherapies
Keywords: CAR
T-cell
Clinical trial
Trafficking

Immune-mediated clearance of a tumour is predicated on successful activation, migration and engagement of cytotoxic CD8+ T-cells. There are numerous factors that may impede these processes and that vary considerably between patients. In this thesis, I describe the use of mechanistic models to quantify and identify mechanisms that limit immune responses and immunotherapeutics against tumours. I describe the use of a model of T-cell activation in the lymph node to quantify the impact of patient and vaccine-specific variables on short peptide vaccination success. The model is used to simulate a virtual clinical trial, with predicted patient responses consistent with IMA901, a clinical trial of a short peptide vaccination in renal cell carcinoma patients. This leads to the conclusion that the limited efficacy of IMA901 could be due to the short peptide off-rates, and to suggestions that could have improved IMA901's results.
I then describe an ODE model of T-cell trafficking through the bloodstream to quantify the maximum delivery rate of bioengineered T-cells to healthy tissue and tumours in different organs and species, and how these rates scale between species. Predicted absolute delivery rates of T-cells in mice are found to be much larger than equivalent rates in humans. This could explain why pre-clinical success of bioengineered T-cells in solid tumours has not translated to the clinic as it has for haematological cancers. Finally, this model is extended with PDEs to quantify the persistence of T-cells within organs and fit to lymphocyte localisation data in the rat. The advantages over the use of ODEs for describing T-cell localisation are discussed along with potential and planned future work.
I close by discussing results in an immuno-oncological context, and the extent to which mouse, mathematical and mechanistic models are representative or useful in human medicine.