VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Democratization from below: citizen-activated participatory democracy in Colombia's extractive industries
Keywords: armed conflict
participation
mining
peace
Colombia
democracy
social movements

Political participation is widely accepted as a crucial element of conflict prevention and successful transitions from conflict to peace. Indeed, participatory institutions are often included in peace agreements. Yet we still know little about their use in practice. How are participatory reforms activated? Can they upend exclusionary power structures? This thesis explores these questions by examining the unlikely case of civil society-led participatory democracy in Colombia’s extractive sectors. Historically, contention between communities, the state, and private businesses over land use in Colombia has mirrored the country’s violent conflict. Yet beginning in 2013, civil society groups began turning toward the state and its participatory institutions—specifically consultas populares—to contest the development of new mining and oil projects in rural regions. While only ten communities succeeded in implementing the consulta, those that did transformed exclusionary dynamics of Colombia’s extractive sector, if only temporarily.
Combining analysis of an original dataset of extractive-related consultas populares with in-country fieldwork and online interviews, this thesis uses mixed-methods to examine when and how civil society can activate and implement participatory democracy from below. I apply the analogy of Archimedes’ Lever to explain the rare successes of consulta implementation. With the right tools (participatory institutions) and the right circumstances (de jure support and weakened veto players), weak actors can lift the heavy weight of transformative participation.
Exploring Bangladeshi learner’s understanding of form, meaning and unction in L3 rench: the case of the subjunctive mood
Keywords: Grammatical Judgement Task
French as foreign language, subjunctive in French, explicit and implicit knowledge, Grammaticality Judgement Task, Elicited Imitation Task
Elicited Imitation Task

This study aimed at exploring Bangladeshi L3 French learners’ understanding of the form, meaning and function of the subjunctive in French and their ability to use them in productive skills. The study adopted an exploratory sequential mixed method research design. The quantitative data were collected through Grammaticality Judgement Task (GJT), Elicited Imitation Task (EIT), spontaneous writing task and spontaneous oral task. The GJT and spontaneous writing task were administered to check learners’ explicit knowledge of the subjunctive in French while EIT and spontaneous oral task were administered to check learner’s implicit knowledge i.e. their competence in using the subjunctive mood spontaneously and subconsciously. The data were collected from 38 tertiary level students who have been studying for a BA or an MA in French Language and Culture (FLC). A semi-structured interview was also conducted among 6 purposefully selected participants based on their performance in the GJT and EIT. The analysis of quantitative data revealed that the learners performed very well in the GJT task implying that they have developed explicit knowledge about the French subjunctive. On the other hand, they have used only a very few subjunctives both in writing and speaking tasks. The study also identified their tendency to use non-subjunctive structures in the contexts where the use of subjunctive structures could express the same meaning. The study further revealed that the participants lacked proficiency in speaking and writing in French in general.
The contamination of the soul: Plato on evil
Keywords: evil
Plato

In this essay I want to explore the concept of evil in the sense of badness within Plato. I suggest that Plato had a theory of evil, and I will articulate and discuss its main features. Plato can be shown to have had a theory of evil in the sense that he had a coherent view about the nature of evil, how it is possible for things to be evil, and how these ideas fit together to explain the nature of more specific forms of evil such as, say, vice. I argue that Plato’s theory of evil is a very early version of the so-called privation theory of evil, according to which evil is the absence in a thing of what ought to be there given the essence it has as the kind of thing it is. The discussion will focus upon Plato’s doctrine of due measure as found in, among other places, Statesman, Timaeus, and Philebus.
Single molecule mass photometry of DNA and DNA-protein interactions
Keywords: DNA-protein interactions
crystallisation of MOFs
surface passivation
interferometric scattering microscopy
single molecule detection and quantification
mass photometry
loop extrusion
cohesin

Mass photometry (MP) based on interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT) is a novel, label-free imaging and quantification approach, which allows for the accurate mass measurement of biomolecules as well as the quantification of protein-protein interactions in solution. In this work, we show that this approach is equally applicable to DNA and DNA-protein interactions.
After illustrating iSCAT's ability to visualise the crystallisation events of non-biological systems, including alkali-metal halides and metal-organic frameworks, we switch to demonstrating the capability of MP to directly measure relative concentrations by molecular counting in complex DNA mixtures. Using a dsDNA ladder, we find a linear relationship between the number of bases per molecule and the associated imaging contrast for up to 1200 bp, enabling us to quantify dsDNA length with up to 2 bp accuracy.
We then present an experimental assay to measure the key interactions responsible for the cohesin assembly, its interactions with DNA, and their modulations by ATPase cycle, providing new insights into studying complex biomolecular assemblies and interactions with the multimeric nature.
Lastly, we introduce surface passivation to control the binding density of biomolecules to cope with increasing measurement complexity, introducing a path to detect low-abundance biomolecules of interest without a pre-purification step, also with the potential to measure low-affinity interactions.
These results together highlight mass photometry as a label-free, rapid, and accurate single molecule method complementary to existing techniques for characterising and quantifying DNA and DNA-protein interactions.
Characterisation of fluorescent concentrators in visible light communication
Keywords: Fluorescent Concentrator
Visible Light Communication
Optical receiver

Visible Light Communication (VLC) has gained significant attention in the last few years. In VLC, light from existing solid-state light sources is used as a data carrier. The maximum capacity of a VLC channel, like other communications systems, is dependent upon two key factors i.e. the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver and channel bandwidth. VLC systems rely upon light-emitting diode (LED) and lasers as the light sources. Unfortunately, due to the limited bandwidths of most commercial LEDs, a higher data rate can only be achieved by increasing the SNR at the receiver. One simple way to increase SNR is to use a large detector, however, this results in larger capacitance which consequently reduces the bandwidth of the detector. Previously, optical concentrators such as parabolic and compound parabolic concentrators have been coupled to the detectors to concentrate light onto the detector, however, these concentrators are limited by the conservation of etendue. Alternatively, a relatively new approach is to use fluorescent concentrators (FC) which do not conserve etendue and can provide much higher optical gains.
In this thesis, the performance of several types of FC is characterised for use in VLC links which includes gain, bandwidth, absorption-emission spectra, FOV and maximum achievable data rates. The selective absorption of different wavelengths by the FC means that they act as natural filters, therefore, the performance of a blue filter was compared to an FC. Experimental results are presented which show that the FC not only increased the FOV but also increased the maximum achievable data rate. In addition, the feasibility of enabling a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system with FCs is discussed. More importantly, a wide FOV receiver for a smartphone that was designed by coupling a commercially available fluorescent fibre to an APD is presented. This receiver provides a wide FOV of ±120°, for a smartphone application. Finally, a method to predict the OOK data rate is described with the experimental results.
Educators’ interactions with refugee pupils: knowledge, attitudes, and practices
Keywords: practices
refugees
teachers
asylum seeker
migration
educators
attitudes
knowledge

The value of school for refugee and asylum seeking children is well established, in terms of their right to education under international law, their socio-emotional well-being, and their adaptation to living in a new country and culture. Yet there is a critical gap in our understanding of refugee education from the perspectives of educators – the people who interact with young refugees on a daily basis and influence the quality of their educational experiences. This mixed-methods study employs a survey (n=295), interviews, and participant observation to investigate how educators’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices interact when working with refugee and asylum seeking pupils at schools in one county in England. It explores: 1) the knowledge educators have about refugee pupils and how they acquire this knowledge, 2) the attitudes educators have towards refugees and refugee pupils and how these attitudes are formed, and 3) the practices educators employ when teaching refugee pupils and how these practices are shaped. Throughout, it considers the ways in which educators’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices interact – that is, how they affect each other in multi-faceted and multi-directional ways.
Educators with more previous experience of refugees – or pupils with similar characteristics – had a range of relevant knowledge and felt better prepared to teach refugee pupils. Formal training played a role in educator knowledge acquisition; however, educators emphasised previous experience and interactions with experienced colleagues as more important sources of information. Educators’ attitudes towards refugee pupils were complex, reflecting the heterogeneity of the pupil population, but overall tended strongly towards the positive. Across the study, previous experience teaching refugees was associated with more positive attitudes towards refugee pupils. At the case study schools, educators displayed a range of holistic practices related to refugee pupils’ academic and non-academic well-being. These practices were influenced by educators’ knowledge and attitudes, as well as by their school environments and larger, structural factors. Based on these findings, a novel conceptual framework – the Integrated Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices framework or IKAP – is introduced.
Overall, the thesis builds on literature showcasing positive practices with refugee pupils, adding the less-studied perspectives of mainstream educators alongside specialists. The study also contributes to literature showing that educators with more experience of refugee pupils have better knowledge about teaching refugee pupils and more positive attitudes towards refugee pupils. Finally, the study adds to knowledge by considering how educators’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices are formed and how they influence each other, via the KAP and IKAP frameworks. The findings have key implications for policy and practice, at the level of the individual, school, and education system.
The socio-ecosystem of South-Western Asia Minor in the Roman period
Keywords: Social Network Analysis
Roman Provincial Coinage
Palynology
Asia Minor
Pamphylia
Environmental History
Climate
Panarchy
Roman Early Imperial Period
Roman Empire
Pisidia

The aim of this thesis is to explore the characteristics of the socio-ecosystem of south-western Asia Minor in the Roman period. I propose a new narrative anchored in complex systems approach reconstructing the co-evolution of the human populations and their environment with the main focus on the ancient regions of Pisidia and Pamphylia. This experimental work combines recent developments in a number of scholarly fields. The previous historical narratives on the regions, both ancient and modern, have been deconstructed. The numismatic material serves firstly as a starting point for the synthesis of the history of the region, and then as a material for performing Social Network Analysis of Anatolian ‘poleis’ and the creation of multiple graphs. The climatic framework of the Roman period has been discussed with the special focus on the proxies relevant to south-western Asia Minor. The past landscapes and their changes have been reconstructed with the use of palynology. My main hypothesis is that in the Roman Imperial period Anatolia operated not only on the basis of independent micro-ecologies, but also on the level of meso-scale entities. These were formed along river systems from their springs in the high mountains through upland and coastal plains to their outlets to the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas. Such regional socio-ecological systems were more connected internally than externally, characterised by hierarchical structures and developed thanks to both cultural and natural drivers. The cultural drivers included the interplay between imperial and local politics and economy, changes in land ownership patterns and land use practices. The main natural drivers were the shape and cycles of the local hydrosphere and climatic variability. The potential and connectivity of the regional and supra-regional socio-ecological systems of Anatolia had been accumulating over a longer period of time, but it was particularly encouraged and accelerated by the conditions created effectively by the Pax Romana, and this proved later to be the basis of the resilience of the Roman Empire in Anatolia. My reconstruction tries to grasp the dynamics of these processes in Pisidia and Pamphylia and add nuance to earlier syntheses on the region.
A diagrammatic approach to unitary representations of rational Cherednik algebras
Keywords: Unitary representations
KLR algebra
Rational Cherednik algebra
Cyclotomic Hecke algebra

This thesis investigates the image of modules of rational Cherednik algebra under the KZ functor and its the compatibility with the unitarity conditions of modules of cyclotomic Hecke algebras. The special case of type A has been well-studied in the literature. Here we aim to generalize the result to rational Cherednik algebras of G(l, 1, n) with generic parameters, and postulate that the KZ functor preserves unitarity. The approach is via the isomorphism between the KZ functor and the direct sum of generalized weight space functors, which leads to the introduction of weighted Khovanov-Lauda-Rouquier (KLR) algebras encoding the action of the intertwining operators. The cyclotomic Hecke algebra whose representations are images under the KZ functor is isormorphic to the cyclotomic KLR algebra as a subalgebra of the weighted KLR algebra. We use this subalgebra as a bridge to discuss how the image of the direct sum of generalized weight space functors becomes a representation of the cyclotomic Hecke algebra, and show that KZ (Mc(λ)) ≅ Vλtr for generic parameters. Then we pass the *-operation on the rational Cherednik algebra to the cyclotomic Hecke algebra. We compare the *-operation with the star-operation that defines unitarity of cyclotomic Hecke algebras. Furthermore, we prove a stronger statement by equating the asymptotic signature of the Hermitian form βc,λ of rational Cherednik algebras with the signature of Hermitian forms of cyclotomic Hecke algebras.
Advancements in galactic chemical evolution
Keywords: ISM
Collapsars
Stellar Parameters
Neutron Star Mergers
Galactic Chemical Evolution
Galaxies
r-Process
Chemical Abundances
Nucleosynthesis

In this thesis we examine several improvements which can be made to the canonical under- standing of Galactic Chemical Evolution (GCE) models in light of modern developments in stellar physics and new modelling techniques. Not only is GCE a vital component of our understanding of the history and composition of the universe in its own right, but since it incorporates physics on the scale of the cosmological to the subatomic, it may also be used as an independent probe and constraint on physics across many different fields.
We develop two brand new, state-of-the-art models for studying galactic chemical evo- lution under two differing paradigms: the Simple Analytical Chemical Evolution Model (sacem) which allows for rapid and complete scans of the high-dimensional parameter space associated with GCE, and the updated version of the Radial Migration in Chemical Evolution Simulation (RAMICES II), which emulates the underlying physics chemical evolution as faithfully, and completely, as possible.
These models allow us to investigate the origin of r-process nucleosynthesis within the Milky Way, in particular, identifying the ability of 'collapsar' events to contribute meaningfully to the global r-process budget. Utilising the sacem code, we are able to evaluate in excess of 1012 potential models of the galaxy, and evaluate them against intentionally weak constrains on the resulting chemical and temporal properties, and hence provide a strong upper bound on the ability of such events to contribute to the r-process abundance of the Milky Way at late times.
We study the impact of advances in stellar evolution modelling on GCE models, utilising new rotationally-resolved stellar evolution codes and nucleosynthetic yield grids. We show that the output from these new stellar models is fundamentally irreconcilable with observed data, and hence develop a number of tools which allow future stellar modelling to be rapidly diagnosed as incompatible, providing a new constraint on the internal evolution of stellar bodies.
Finally, we apply our new RAMICES II model to briefly study the phenomena of metallicity- offset, strongly peaked curves in the gas-phase abundance diagrams – so called 'caustics' – and how these imprint themselves in non-trivial ways on the stellar abundance plane, using them to inform future studies of both r-process nucleosynthesis and the assembly history of the galaxy.
Informational self-determination in context: privacy and data protection in the age of big data and surveillance capitalism
Keywords: Data Protection
Technology
Human Rights
Privacy
Law

This thesis focuses on the problem of widespread and sophisticated data collection and processing by private commercial entities, and the threat these practices pose to individual rights and freedoms. This work is directly concerned with European data protection law, and the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the right to informational self-determination, which seeks to ensure individual persons, or ‘data subjects’, are able to exercise control over their personal data. As will be discussed, this concept is of crucial importance in this context, and is overwhelmingly threatened by the social, economic and technological circumstances of the information age.
The initial discussion will elaborate the problematic nature of the data economy, including the unprecedented scale of this issue and its detrimental consequences. Thereafter, this account will explore fundamental rights, proceeding with the right to privacy, which – despite its renowned importance – is significantly limited and thus unable to effectively respond to a threat of this character. The focus will then turn to data protection, and the need to recognise this right’s independent value distinct from privacy. Informational self-determination is essential in this regard, as the importance of data protection is demonstrated through its unique potential to: confer data subject control; and address the overarching power imbalances which currently render such control unfeasible. The success of data protection law relies upon fully developing both of these aspects. Legislative developments have made valid progress with respect to the former, but failed thus far to sufficiently address the latter. Therefore, the final chapter of this thesis will discuss how data protection can evolve to confront the information and power asymmetries of the digital age, in order to create an environment in which individual persons are both protected and empowered.
Dressed to the nines, stripped to the bones: the symbology and rhetoric of YHWH’s acts of investiture and divestiture of dress in prophetic literature
Keywords: transformation
acts of clothing
nakedness
shame
acts of unclothing
ancient Near East
exile
Israel
suffering
Judah
clothing
divestiture
identity
dress
agency
destruction
investiture

The last four years has seen a renewed interest in dress in biblical studies. Much of this work focuses on dress as object – what it is, looks like, and who wears it. A consequence of this is the symbolic and rhetorical function of dress in metaphors being reduced to its function in “real life.” In response, I treat dress as subject. My research explores the conceptualization of dress and nakedness in prophetic texts within the Hebrew Bible where YHWH is the investor/divestor of dress, and personified Jerusalem/Zion is the recipient of his actions. The texts include Jeremiah 13:18-27; Isaiah 52:1-2, 7-10; 61:10-11; Ezekiel 16:35-43. My work distinguishes itself from previous scholarship through its interpretive shift from what dress is to what it is doing. To my knowledge, no one has studied acts of investiture and divestiture of dress in prophetic literature. I argue that the conceptualization of dress grants meaning and function to the suffering and destruction of the 6th century BCE. My philological methodology brings dress into focus by exploring how the movements of it on or off Jerusalem/Zion are crucial to understanding her as woman and city. At the same time, the shift to what dress is doing and my focus on it as a concept allows me to identify constellations that hold these metaphors together with respect to suffering and destruction. Through Jerusalem/Zion, a divine/prophetic perspective on suffering is made recognizable: the conceptualization of dress reorients the audiences to see suffering and destruction as the place of self-reckoning, shame, and unbeing (Jeremiah 13 and Ezekiel 16), or as the moment of transformation, revelation, and recovery (Isaiah 52 and 61). I conclude that acts of investiture and divestiture are crucial to the audiences’ identity and formation and effacement and deformation. Dress and its conceptualization are a means of perception management.