VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Imagining the continent's future: China, India, and post-war Asia, 1937-1949
Keywords: decolonisation
Asianism
post-war
reconstruction
China-India relations
Asia
United Nations
India
development
Cold War
diaspora
Second World War
world-making
Asian Relations Conference
China

This thesis examines how in the late 1930s and 1940s leaders of China’s Nationalist Government and the Indian National Congress imagined post-war Asia and attempted to realise their ideas. Post-war Asia has been often understood in terms of nationalist movements without recognising how Asian leaders sought to shape their future on the Asian level. This thesis argues that China strategically sought an Asia where China would eventually be the dominant power; India aimed to, in some sense, create an Asia in its idealised self-image, where nations were relatively more equal in status. Both Chinese and Indian leaders supported the independence of Asian nations. Yet Chinese leaders thought that this would endanger the interests of the Chinese diaspora, while their Indian counterparts worried that new Asian nation-states could not defend themselves against the great powers. The Nationalist government insisted on diasporic Chinese being Chinese citizens and must be respected if not privileged by host governments; the Congress expected diasporic Indians to become naturalised citizens of host societies. Yet neither strategy resolved the discrimination diasporic communities faced. Decolonisation enabled majority national groups to enter into power but continued to marginalise minority groups. Both Nationalist China and Nehruvian India favoured planning and state-led industrialisation, but the Nationalists also anticipated China’s economic dominance in Asia. Moving beyond the perspective of superpower struggle, this thesis highlights China’s and India’s agency in shaping their region. Their ideas on Asia’s future were among the very first contributions from newly independent non-Western nations on how a post-war, post-colonial Asian state should be. Compared to the civilisational argument of early twentieth-century Pan-Asianism, Chinese and Indian leaders helped redefine Asia’s self-identity: from underdeveloped to prosperous and ‘modern’. Apart from the much-analysed border conflicts and geopolitical competition, the different visions for Asia helped contribute to the China-India divergence.
Church and state in late medieval England: the political activities of the English episcopate in the reign of Edward III
Keywords: ecclesiastical history
Edward III
bishops
medieval history
political history

This thesis explores the political activities of the English episcopate in the reign of Edward III. It argues that bishops served the king in a variety of different ways during the mid-fourteenth century, as administrators, diplomats, military leaders, propagandists, parliamentarians, and financiers of the crown. Moreover, it highlights how their roles were of great importance for the king and his regime, and how prelates were well-positioned to perform them. However, it also shows that the involvement of bishops in politics did not merely serve the interests of the crown, but also those of the realm, the Church, and the prelates themselves. Nonetheless, the episcopacy was not obliged to support the king, and was indeed capable of opposing him, as was notably the case in the reigns of both Edward II and Richard II. As such, this thesis posits that Edward III’s kingship was not marked by an oppressive expansion of royal authority over pliant religious leaders, but rather by a successful alliance between ‘Church’ and ‘State’, which stands apart from the tumult, discontent, and quarrels of his father’s and grandson’s reigns.
Encounters with Christ in later Middle English pastoral and catechetic texts
Keywords: pastoral literature
lay spirituality
catechism
Middle English literature
manuscript studies

This thesis explores believers’ encounters with Christ in the first half of the fifteenth- century, as portrayed in Middle English pastoral and catechetic writings circulating at the time. Scholarship to date has examined the christological nature of lyrics, eucharistic devotion, passion meditations, and mystical writings, while overlooking important pastoral and catechetic texts. This approach has propounded a religious landscape in England marked by personal and privatised piety, and results in an impoverished account of the fundamental locus of encounters with Christ: public worship.
This thesis addresses this inaccurate perception of fifteenth-century religious culture in England, and demonstrates that pastoral and catechetic texts—grassroot textual witnesses mostly neglected for their supposed lack of ‘literary merit’—were predominantly popular and common as variants indicate, thus shedding light on religious practices and beliefs centred on Christ and taking place within the social body of the Church. This thesis examines more than 250 manuscripts and contributes to scholarship by offering new taxonomies of three corpora of texts: Virtues of the Mass treatises, levation prayers, and creeds. It uses a substantial number of mostly unknown and unpublished archival material, indexes and classifies the texts, while also analysing their content, manuscript contexts, and affiliation to textual networks.
This taxonomic work is supplemented by an effort in contextualisation, so as to understand the writings in their historical, political, and cultural context. A significant argument of the thesis, supported by evidence in Chapters One, Three, and Four, is that encounters with Christ promoted within public worship resonated with and advanced the reformist agenda of Archbishop Henry Chichele’s church. Chichele’s agenda was implemented throughout and after the Council of Constance (1414–1418), and promoted unity and pastoral care, while advocating for a ‘wide’ church, in which diverging theological and ideological views could coexist through the unifying nature of public worship. The three corpora under scrutiny are very much embedded within the religious landscape of the Chichelean church. The thesis argues that these corpora demonstrate a symbiosis between Latin and vernacular writings, and between intellectual and parochial milieux, that reflect a pervasive and porous theological discourse across a religious ecosystem particular to the years 1420s to 1440s in England, centred upon encounters with Christ in public worship.
Dopaminergic signalling during goal-directed behaviour in a structured environment
Keywords: reinforcement learning
dopamine
striatum
midbrain
inference
reward
motivation
ventral tegmental area

During flexible behaviour, dopamine is thought to carry reward prediction errors (RPEs), which update values and hence modify future behaviour. However, in real-world situations where the statistical relationships in the environment can be learned, continuously adapting values is not always the most efficient way of adapting to change. Moreover, the environment is not always fully observable, and observations may provide only partial information about the current state of the world. In such partial observable structured environments, as is found in many real-world situations, it is not well understood what kind of information dopamine conveys or its causal role in shaping adaptive behaviour. To probe dopamine’s involvement in goal-directed behavioural flexibility in such environments, we measured and manipulated dopamine while mice solved a partially observable structured sequential decision task. In chapter 3 we show that mice solve such a task using state inference. In chapter 4, we recorded calcium activity from dopaminergic cell bodies in the ventral tegmental area and dopamine axonal projections in the ventral and dorsomedial striatum, as well as dopaminergic concentrations in the same striatal regions. Dopamine multiplexed a wide range of information. At different timescales dopamine signalling was consistent with carrying information about choice-specific RPEs, choice-independent reward history and lateralised movement signals. RPE computations were shaped by task structure and the inferred state of the task. Nonetheless, in chapter 5, we show that although dopamine responded strongly to rewards, optogenetically activating or inhibiting dopamine at the time of trial outcome had no effect on subsequent choice. However, in a different task context, we could show that the same stimulation had a substantial effect on animals’ choices. Therefore, we conclude that when inference guides choice, rewards have a dopamine-independent influence on policy through the information they carry about the world’s state.
Mutate & conjugate: a method for rapid in-cell validation of epigenetic targets
Keywords: covalent probes
chemical biology
target engagement
BRD4
target validation
HyTAG
covalent fragments
bromodomains
medicinal chemistry
covalent degraders
mutagenesis
PROTAC
protein pull-down
covalent ligands

A bottleneck in the drug discovery process is target validation. Target validation is the process of demonstrating that engagement with a cellular target is linked to the desired therapeutic effect, confirming that the target has a key role in the disease phenotype. Incomplete or incorrect target validation can lead to costly failures at the later stages of drug development. Consequently, techniques that enable rapid and robust target validation are of great value to those seeking to discover new medicines. The advantage of using small molecule ligands over genetic knockdowns, in target validation, is the temporal control over the “knockdown”. In this approach, reactive covalent fragments have been combined with a cysteine mutant of the target protein. It was hypothesised that covalent inhibition would circumvent the need to optimise ligand affinity, accelerating probe development, while also offering increased residency times that could potentially act as a functional knockdown, thus providing information on the function of the target.
The BET bromodomain-containing protein, BRD4, was chosen for proof-of-concept studies. Bromodomains are epigenetic ‘reader’ modules that recognise and bind to acetylated lysines on histone tails, and signal for the recruitment of protein complexes responsible for gene regulation. Owing to the conserved nature of the BET bromodomains, the development of single-domain selective ligands has proved challenging. Consequently, development of ligands that enable the probing of single domain function are highly sought after. Herein, the application of a ‘mutate & conjugate’ approach to enable selective biological probing of BRD4(1) is reported. A structurally stable and functioning mutant, BRD4(1)L94C, was designed, expressed, and validated. Using a structure-guided, and a fragment-based approach, ~270 reactive fragments were screened for C94 labelling. Subsequent fragments were developed and exhibited selective inhibition of BRD4(1)L94C over BRD4(1)WT in an AlphaScreen™ assay. Clickable analogues were used to evaluate proteome-wide selectivity, leading to the discovery of a covalent fragment with exquisite in-cell selectivity for BRD4(1)L94C. Finally, a ‘mutate & conjugate’ strategy was applied to the development of selective protein degraders. This work shows that the combination of reactive fragments and site-directed-mutagenesis could be applied to rapidly develop chemical probes for target validation studies.
Old English front vowel orthography in the 7th and 8th centuries
Keywords: runes
historical linguistics
old English
Roman alphabet
orthography
historical orthography
historical graphemics

This study examined the ways in which the three Old English front vowels /æ(ː)/, /øː/ and /y(ː)/ were orthographically represented in the 7th and 8th centuries. Data was collected from manuscripts, epigraphy and coin-legends; it was analysed first by Anglo-Saxon region before turning to consider wider, pan-Anglo-Saxon trends.
/æ(ː)/ was represented almost universally by ‹ae› in manuscripts. Allographic variation in the representation of this vowel was found to be systematic; it was suggested that the variation was symptomatic of the ecclesiastical background of scribes, with the ligature «æ» being disfavoured by scribes who had been trained in regions which had been reached first by Continental (rather than Irish) Christian missionaries. Despite the variety in allographs, an explanation for orthographic consistency was sought in the phonology of contemporary Latin, which contained a vowel acoustically very similar to Old English /æ(ː)/. In contrast, numismatic evidence returned significant variation between ‹AE› and ‹E›, some of which was understood to reflect limitations relating to the medium of writing.
The vowel exhibiting the most conspicuous orthographic variation was /øː/, for which ‹oe› and ‹oi› were both found to be common representations. While ‹oe› was used across Anglo-Saxon England, ‹oi› was limited to Northumbria, and was therefore considered to be a uniquely Northumbrian representation. The variation between ‹oi› and ‹oe› in Northumbria was associated, on the one hand, with competing traditions (Continental and Irish) in the teaching of Latin literacy, and the lack of a model in Latin orthography for the representation of /øː/ on the other.
The orthographic representation /y(ː)/ was discovered to be strikingly uniform both diatopically and diachronically. With very few exceptions, this vowel was represented by ‹y› in manuscripts and ‹Y› or ‹ᚣ› in epigraphy and coin-epigraphy. This uniformity in the use of ‹y›/‹Y› was attributed to the availability of Greek language education in the 7th century at Archbishop Theodore’s school in Canterbury.
Through the analysis of early Old English orthography, this study was also able to differentiate between related but separate Old English protothemes with important implications for our understanding of the Old English onomasticon.
Fully dynamic evaluation for conjunctive queries with free access patterns
Keywords: incremental view maintenance
databases

We study the problem of answering conjunctive queries with free access patterns under updates. A free access pattern is a partition of the free variables of the query into input and output. The query returns tuples over the output variables given a tuple of values over the input variables.
We introduce a fully dynamic evaluation approach for such queries. It is fully dynamic in the sense that it supports both inserts and deletes of tuples to the input relations. Our approach computes a data structure that supports the enumeration of the output tuples and maintains it under single-tuple updates to the input data. We also give a syntactic characterization of those queries that admit constant time per single-tuple update and whose output tuples can be enumerated with constant delay given an input tuple. Finally, for triangle and hierarchical queries with free access patterns, we chart the complexity trade-oﬀs between the preprocessing time, update time and enumeration delay for such queries. The trade-oﬀs are strongly or weakly Pareto optimal for triangle and a class of hierarchical queries. Their optimality is predicated on the Online Boolean Matrix-Vector Multiplication conjecture.
Rehabilitation after ankle fracture treatment (RAAFT): facilitating safe weight-bearing after ankle fracture surgery
Keywords: surgery
weight-bearing
ankle fracture
behaviour change
rehabilitation

For as long as orthopaedic surgeons have treated patients with ankle fractures, surgical dogma has enforced weight bearing restrictions on patients postoperatively.
These restrictions have perpetuated patients’ fear of pain, falls and re-injury, with subsequent muscle wasting, stiffness and delayed return to work and hobbies. This thesis explored the behavioural influences which underpin this delayed return to weight-bearing and established the components of ankle fracture rehabilitation requiring advancement.
Firstly, a systematic review found that existing rehabilitation interventions to improve ankle fracture recovery lack a theoretical grounding. Some interventions employed “Education” and “Training” techniques, but few attempted to modify underlying beliefs and behaviour to improve adherence and engagement with recovery.
An exploratory analysis built on previous research in the upper limb, finding association between unhelpful pain beliefs and worse medium-term patient-reported outcomes after ankle fracture surgery.
The gaps, inconsistencies and needs in rehabilitation were explored through interviews with patients recovering from ankle fracture surgery and healthcare professionals who treat them. Patient anxieties, uncertainties, and variable quality interactions with healthcare professionals were among many deficiencies identified and targeted during subsequent intervention design.
The components of a novel rehabilitation package were developed and prioritised through a series of online workshops and surveys. The findings were triangulated to establish theoretically congruent behaviour-change interventions. Surprisingly, the uncertainties and desires of patients were relatively simple. A small amount of information around swelling, weight-bearing and managing pain could be delivered with minimal additional healthcare professional resource.
Overall, this thesis challenges the dogma of weight-bearing restrictions and rehabilitation methods after ankle fracture surgery. It proposes methods for patients to self-manage their recovery, while highlighting some remaining barriers to implementation.
Medicine, time, and fiction in Rabelais
Keywords: temporality
time
Rabelais
medical humanities
early modern literature

In the prologue to Pantagruel, Rabelais’s narrator Alcofribas promises his readers that sufferers of toothache will find no better remedy than the book they have in their hands, once it has been infused with powder and pressed between hot linens. A reading influenced by the medical humanities might take Alcofribas’s hawking as indicative of Rabelais intentionally drawing a parallel between his professional identities of physician and writer, using his fiction as an alternative means of participating in the theoretical debates of his day or a vehicle for therapeutic laughter. This thesis, however, proposes that Rabelais’s fictions resist both an instrumentalist and biographical approach: reconsidering how medicine is represented across his works allows for reconsideration of the specific force of (his) fictional writing. It sets Rabelais’s fictions in relation to a range of early modern medical texts, written traces of Rabelais’s medical life, and critical histories of medicine. By focussing on different elements of the temporality of care and cure, it also proposes a new lens through which to understand the practice of medicine as a contingent and collaborative process, engaging not only the practitioner and the patient, but also the materials which mediate their encounter (including Alcofribas’s repurposed pages). Tracing Rabelais’s re-imagining of the stages classically involved in the medical encounter – Anamnesis, Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Cure – close readings will be supported by intertextual ‘suturing’ with classical and contemporary source texts, all in a bid to recover the specific animation (movement, energy, temporality) of Rabelais’s fictional writing, and the experimental, embodied, and interdisciplinary interpretative mode it prompts. This thesis is therefore an experiment in literary analysis, in the cultural history of medicine, and in the contemporary medical humanities: one in which Rabelais emerges as a powerful case study for reimagining the force of fiction from the early modern period to today.
The money multiplier and asset returns
Keywords: return predictability
macro finance
money multiplier
empirical asset pricing

In recent years, we have lived through times of unprecedented money and credit creation, which has prompted a new interest in the role of money and credit in the economy. In this work, I show that the money multiplier, the ratio of a broad monetary aggregate to a narrow monetary aggregate, captures the rate of money creation in the economy and robustly predicts stock, bond and currency returns. I link the predictive ability of the money multiplier to its economic interpretations as a measure of economy-wide leverage and an alternative measure of money velocity.
First, I look at U.S. stock and bond market and show that money multipliers robustly predict stock and bond excess returns over the period January 1959 - December 2015, and are priced in cross-section of stocks. These multipliers remain statistically significant after controlling for outside money growth and other well- understood predictors of stock and bond returns.
Then I extend my analysis to currencies. I investigate short-run and long-run relationships between bilateral exchange rates and broad money multipliers of ten countries. I motivate my analysis with the quantity theory of money and find a strong long-run relationship between the exchange rate, relative money velocities, relative money supplies of the two countries and their relative output. I argue that the money multiplier can be seen as an alternative measure for money velocity, as it accounts for propensity to spend money not only on real sector goods and services but on financial assets too.
Social sharing of emotions and bivalent emotions
Keywords: social cognition
emotion regulation
bivalent emotions
emotional ambivalence
mixed emotions
coping
online communication
social sharing of emotion
dehumanisation
heuristic-systematic model
intergroup relations
intergroup bias
infrahumanisation
social support
COVID-19
mental health

This thesis has two objectives: Investigating effects of sharing one’s own emotions with other people across different stressors and exploring bivalent emotions in interpersonal and intergroup contexts. Chapter One presents a general introduction to the theoretical foundation which my pursuit of the two lines of research stems from. Chapter Two presents Project 1, an online study (Study 1) that captured social sharing behaviour during a relatively early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic using prospective questionnaires. Results suggested that social sharing was associated with emotion-improving effects. Chapter Three presents Project 2, which involved two online experimental studies confirming that interpersonal encouragement of reconstrual, rather than of recounting, generally yielded more positive effects across stressors varying in time span (interpersonal conflicts vs. COVID-19 news; Study 2A) or induced specific emotion (angry vs. regretful conflicts; Study 2B). Chapter Four, switching the thesis’s focus to questions relevant to bivalent emotions, presents Project 3, an online study (Study 3) which explored motives for and affective outcomes of sharing this kind of emotional experience using prospective questionnaires. Results showed that motives and outcomes associated with sharing bivalent emotions were similar to those associated with sharing negative emotions. Chapter Five presents Project 4, an online experimental investigation of bivalent emotions (Study 4) that moved beyond into the framework of social cognition. Despite the new insights into the dehumanisation literature, this study failed to provide evidence that presenting outgroups’ bivalent, rather than univalent, emotions helped improve intergroup relations. Finally, Chapter Six presents a general discussion about the main findings from the above four projects, the limitations observed throughout my DPhil research, and the implications and future research directions indicated by the research reported in this thesis.