VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Coming of age and changing institutional pathways across generations in Rwanda
Keywords: Children and youth
Generations
Institutional theory
Marriage
Genocide
Africa
Ethnography
Youth bulge

This thesis offers an account of children's lived experiences in Rwanda (1930s-2016) in four key domains: kinship, education, economic transitions, and marriage. Based on historical and ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban Rwanda from 2012 to 2014, this work explores how three generations of young people have experienced and navigated childhood and coming of age at the interface of 'traditional' and 'modern' institutional systems. Rather than focusing narrowly on 'crisis' childhoods, individual agency, or exogenous forces, as studies of young Africans and social change tend to, this work examines young people's 'everyday' actions – intentional and unintentional, individual and collective, compliant and non-compliant - and locates them within their broader historical, relational, and institutional environment. By focusing on the intensely reproductive period of childhood and coming of age, on Rwanda’s unexceptional majority rather than its exceptionally vulnerable minority, and on children’s everyday actions rather than the strategic actions of elites, this thesis shows us how children shape the institutions of childhood and marriage and, in so doing, influence how society is reproduced and changed.
Theoretically, this thesis explains how children and their institutional environment are mutually constituting: it examines how and why young people experience rapid change and structural violence differently and it traces how they reproduce and change these structural conditions as they engage with institutional mechanisms in (un)intended ways. The research reveals that children in central Rwanda navigate constraints and opportunities by drawing on established kinship relationships and institutions while also opportunistically engaging with modern institutions and their actors. However, in this context of 'institutional multiplicity', traditional and modern institutional systems each need Rwanda’s young majority to reproduce their institutions over others', and as intended, to achieve their power-distributional goals. This makes children’s actions particularly consequential and demands that we redefine what political action – and political actors – look like.
Numerical algorithms for differential equations with periodicity
Keywords: PDEs on the sphere
Choreographies
Periodic Differential Equations
Stiff PDEs
Nonlinear ODEs
Stiff ODEs
Fourier spectral methods

This thesis presents new numerical methods for solving differential equations with periodicity.
Spectral methods for solving linear and nonlinear ODEs, linear ODE eigenvalue problems and linear time-dependent PDEs on a periodic interval are reviewed, and a novel approach for computing multiplication matrices is presented.
Choreographies, periodic solutions of the n-body problem that share a common orbit, are computed for the first time to high accuracy using an algorithm based on approximation by trigonometric polynomials and optimization techniques with exact gradient and exact Hessian matrix. New choreographies in spaces of constant curvature are found.
Exponential integrators for solving periodic semilinear stiff PDEs in 1D, 2D and 3D periodic domains are reviewed, and 30 exponential integrators are compared on 11 PDEs. It is shown that the complicated fifth-, sixth- and seventh-order methods do not really outperform one of the simplest exponential integrators, the fourth-order ETDRK4 scheme of Cox and Matthews.
Finally, algorithms for solving semilinear stiff PDEs on the sphere with spectral accuracy in space and fourth-order accuracy in time are proposed. These are based on a new variant of the double Fourier sphere method in coefficient space and standard implicit-explicit time-stepping schemes. A comparison is made against exponential integrators and it is found that implicit-explicit schemes perform better.
The algorithms described in each chapter of this thesis have been implemented in MATLAB and made available as part of Chebfun.
Human-induced lateral excitation of public assembly structures
Keywords: human-induced vibrations
horizontal ground reaction forces
human-structure interaction
lateral swaying
public assembly structure
negative damping

Excessive human-induced vibrations of assembly structures have been reported more frequently over the past two decades. In the automotive industry, the evaluation of the response of the human body to vibration is an important and active research area due to its significance in design safety. For example, the results of on-going research has led to the establishment of a number of models for predicting the effects of sitting posture, vibration magnitude and direction on the response of the human body when it is exposed to different types of vibration motion. However, research focusing on structural engineering applications remains scarce, leading to inadequate design standards. For example, current structural design guidelines focus on human-induced vertical forces and assume linear structural behaviour, however, the most widely publicized problems have involved horizontal vibrations and many real-life structures are characterized by nonlinear behaviour. Following a brief investigation of vibration perception and comfort for subjects occupying a vibrating rig-structure, this dissertation focuses on human-induced horizontal forces and examines the effect of nonlinear structural behaviour.
Dynamic horizontal loads of individuals performing predefined manoeuvres such as swaying and vertical jumping were measured in a laboratory setting. The fundamental force due to swaying occurred at the activity frequency. By contrast, the fundamental horizontal force due to vertical jumping did not always occur at the activity frequency. Furthermore, tests conducted for swaying were used to establish the relationship between the side-to-side force and the velocity of the subject's centre of mass. A customized footswitch system was also developed to monitor synchronization among individuals performing as a group in order to form a crowd loading model.
Models of analytic forces were derived based on measured data and used to evaluate structural response by focusing on a finite element model of a demountable grandstand characterized by nonlinear structural behaviour. The frequency spectra of displacement and acceleration responses showed clear peaks at the fundamental and the third harmonic of the swaying force, demonstrating the capability of the horizontal force to excite resonance. The resonant frequency decreased at higher levels of excitation, indicating a reduction in the stiffness due to the onset of nonlinear behaviour. Finally, load cases assuming synchronized and perfectly periodic group forces produced a significantly higher response compared to unsynchronized and imperfect group loads.
Pu Songling and Liaozhai zhiyi
Keywords: textual
zhai
zhi
biographical
Liao
yi
Songling
literary
transmission
antecedents
Pu

The first chapter of this thesis examines the textual transmission of Pu Songling's collection of tales, Liaozhai zhiyi, and through a study of extant manuscripts and editions concludes that in its original format the work consisted of eight volumes. After a review of evidence for dating the composition of the collection, the two volumes of earliest and latest date are identified and their contents analysed. There is traced a pattern of development from relatively simple supernatural and romantic stories in Pu's early work to more complex character configurations in the later stories, where social criticism also plays a more conspicuous role.
The second chapter focuses on the life and times of Pu Songling and discusses the process by which the social realities of Shandong in the early Qing period - famine, military campaigns, bandit raids - and particular aspects of the author's personal experience — examination failure, observation of administrative abuses, professional activities, and family and personal relations - intrude persistently into his stories. Special attention is paid to Pu's examination career and the institutional factors which impeded his progress; his criticisms of the selection system are shown to be qualified by passive acquiescence.
The third chapter questions conventional definitions of Liaozhai zhiyi's place in literary tradition. After a survey of the Classical tale from l500 to l700, it is demonstrated that Pu's work can be distinguished from the early-Ming story, and should be regarded as a development of existing trends in late-Ming and early-Qing fiction. In its romantic orientation, realistic detail, and prose style, Liaozhai zhiyi has a kinship with its immediate literary forebears. What links it has to vernacular fiction concern thematic and descriptive emphases rather than the occasional use of colloquialisms. Methods of determining the derivation of plots and motifs in Pu's tales are critically examined, and a distinction is drawn between analogues and written sources.
The moods of modernity: Germany in the age of telegraphy, c.1830 - c.1880
Keywords: State-building
Communication
Telegraph
Nineteenth century
Germany

This thesis investigates the origins and impact of electrical telegraphy in Germany between 1830 and 1880, situating them within the context of long-term transformations in the theory and practice of communication. It uses the development of telegraphy as an analytical lens through which to explore the connections between actors at the heart of the socio-economic transformations taking place in Germany during the period. Both as an innovation and as a tool of communication, this thesis argues, the telegraph epitomised the simultaneously growing interdependence and differentiation between people and places which was a defining characteristic of modernity.
By exploring the motivations and interactions of scientists, entrepreneurs, state officials, and ordinary users who engaged with the technology, this thesis highlights the diverse expectations which were placed upon telegraphy, and the many different directions in which its development was pulled. In doing so, it reveals the ties between the ‘modernising’ processes with which the technology has been associated. It challenges linear narratives of technological innovation which focus exclusively upon individual or state actors, emphasising the cooperation and collaboration across society which was necessary to produce the telegraph. It similarly questions triumphalist interpretations of the 'communications revolution' so often attributed to the nineteenth century, emphasising instead the tensions and divisions which it also generated. Revisiting the themes of industrialisation, capitalism, community and bourgeois class-formation in nineteenth-century Germany in this light, this thesis emphasises their intrinsic interdependence, and the inevitable mixture of hopes and anxieties, expectations and frustrations, which it produced.
Real-time monitoring of ultrasound and cavitation mediated drug delivery
Keywords: PCD
Confocal
Ultrasound

Drug delivery plays a crucial role in the chemotherapeutic treatment of cancerous solid tumours. A drug, no matter how potent, is only truly effective when it can be delivered to all targeted cells. In recent years it has been recognised that the poor response of tumours to chemotherapy is in part due to inadequate drug delivery. Numerous strategies have been developed to overcome this issue. Of particular interest to the present work is the application of ultrasound and cavitation, which has been shown to be capable of enhancing drug delivery in solid tumours. These enhancements are attributed to the acoustic cavitation of microbubbles and the effects cavitation induces in the surrounding tissue.
To better understand how ultrasound and cavitation can enhance drug delivery, an instrument was developed that is capable of monitoring in real-time and in-situ the effect of ultrasound and cavitation on drugs and drug analogues within flow channel models. The developed instrument was used to investigate the effect of ultrasound and cavitation on drug-eluting beads used for chemoembolisation, the effects of drug loading on microbubble dynamics, the effects produced by different cavitation agents, and the performance of passive acoustic mapping as a means of cavitation monitoring.
The findings of the above investigations include: more physiologically relevant characterisations of drug-eluting beads pharmacokinetics, the possibility of significant changes in microbubble dynamics due to drug loading, a lack of general correlation between detected cavitation activity and induced effects, and the potential of passive acoustic mapping for monitoring cavitation and ultrasound induced effects. These and other findings also demonstrate the utility of the developed instrument for studying the many facets and applications of ultrasound and cavitation mediated drug delivery.
Of the soul and emotions: conceptualizing 'the Ottoman individual' through psychology
Keywords: Late Ottoman modernization
materialism
spiritualism
History of Psychology

This thesis examines late Ottoman discourses on the soul and emotions as reflected by a large corpus of psychological literature under the umbrella of ilm-i ahval-i ruh (the science of the states of the soul, psychology) in relation to the rise of the rhetoric concerning the ‘new man’ – an imaginary ‘Ottoman individual’ educated in ‘new schools’ to be in complete harmony with Ottoman modernization. It posits that the ‘new man’ was subjected to a process of design as a producing unit whether in possession of a soul or not, while the conceptual framework of the ‘individual’ was being formulated.
The secondary literature on Ottoman modernization has illustrated intellectual efforts for designing the ‘new man’ in relation to the formation of national identity. In doing so it has focused on the process of indoctrination and the dissemination of normative accounts. Drawing on that literature, this thesis intends to complicate the picture and look beyond the normative accounts. By approaching the debate between materialism and spiritualism as a psychological argument and revolving the story around the metaphors of ‘man as machine’ and ‘man as animal’, it aims to display the influence of the scientific and technological changes that shaped the material as well as the intellectual culture these authors experienced. In an attempt to go beyond what lies beneath the national and religious underpinnings of the imagined ‘new man’, this thesis maintains a tight focus on the psychological writings of four intellectuals - all of whom gave serious thought to the debate about the soul: Abdullah Cevdet, Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi, Baha Tevfik, and Mustafa Şekip Tunç. By shifting the centre of focus of the rhetoric about the ‘new man’ from national or religious identity formation to the pressing concerns about economic and technological progress, it shows an Ottoman entanglement with science and technology and a deeper Ottoman inquiry into the conceptual framework of the individual. Accordingly it argues that the psychological literature on the soul and emotions bears testimony to the acute concern for how to integrate individuals into the frenzy of progressive discourses in the late Ottoman Empire. This concern constituted common ground among intellectuals from different backgrounds. Yet they held different understandings of the notion of progress and often gave different answers to deeper philosophical questions pertaining to the new man’s soul, emotions, will, and relations with collective units. Such complexity demonstrates that multiple trajectories were possible before national identity formation took concrete forms in a much later context, and that transnational patterns of ‘constructing the subjects’ through psychological studies played an equally important role.
The role of cortical oscillations in the control and protection of visual working memory
Keywords: Electroencephalography
Selective Attention
Multivariate Pattern Analysis
Working Memory
Magnetoencephalography

Visual working memory (WM) is the ability to hold information in mind for a short time before acting on it. The capacity of WM is strikingly limited. To make the most of this precious resource, humans exhibit a high degree of cognitive flexibility: We can prioritize information that is relevant to behavior, and inhibit unnecessary distractions. This thesis examines some behavioral and neural correlates of flexibility in WM.
When information is of particular importance, anticipatory attention can be directed to where it will likely appear. Oscillations in visual cortex, in the 10-Hz range, play an important role in regulating excitability of such prioritized locations. Chapter 4 describes how even spontaneous fluctuations in 10-Hz synchronization (measured by electroencephalography, EEG) before encoding influence WM. Chapters 2 and 3 describe how attention can be directed retrospectively to items even if they are already stored in WM. Chapter 3 discusses how retrospective cues change neural synchronization similarly to anticipatory cues. Behavioral and neural measures additionally indicate that the boosting of an item through retrospective cues does not require prolonged deployment of attention: rather, it may be a transient process.
The second half of this thesis additionally examines how items are represented in visual WM. Chapter 5 summarizes a study using pattern analysis of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and EEG data to decode features of visual templates stored in WM. Decoding appears transiently around the time when potential target stimuli are expected, in line with a flexible reactivation mechanism. Chapter 6 further examines separate cortical networks involved in protecting vs. updating items in WM, and tests whether task relevance changes how well WM contents can be decoded. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the thesis and discusses how attentional flexibility can merge WM with a wider range of sources of behavioral control.
Additive higher representation theory
Keywords: Soergel Bimodule
Higher Representation Theory
Jordan-Hölder Theorem
Category Theory
Barr-Beck Theorem

This thesis is devoted to the study of higher representation theory as introduced in [Rou4]. As this theory is in its early days, it is essential to seek out modules that can rightfully be named building blocks and allow one to express as much of the structure of arbitrary modules as possible in their terms. We contribute towards this undertaking in the case of additive higher representation theory. Inspiration is drawn from Soergel bimodules which categorify the Hecke algebra.
We introduce functorially cyclic modules as well as (strongly) universal cell modules. Examples include the minimal categorifications of [Rou4]. Properties of such modules are discussed and universal properties in terms of representable 2-functors are established. This leads to constructions and classifications in terms of split Frobenius objects, using a new variant of the Barr-Beck theorem for additive categories. Furthermore, we encounter a new class of modules so called coinvariant modules which arise from automorphism group actions. We also construct canonical cofiltrations and demonstrate why the Jordan-Holder theory of [Rou4] does not readily generalise. Throughout, we comment on the succession [MaMi1]-[MaMi5] that tackles the same questions, however arrives at different conclusions.
As applications, we first show that the 2-category of singular Soergel bimodules of [Wi2] arises naturally within the additive higher representation theory of Soergel bimodules. Second, we establish (weak) equivalences between certain associated universal cell modules together with a categorification of cell module homomorphisms of the Hecke algebra. Third, we show that singular Soergel bimodules constructed with a faithful representation categorify the Schur algebroid, generalising the main result of [Li]. Fourth given a group and a subgroup, we recover the additive monoidal category of representations of the subgroup from the corresponding category for the group without invoking Tannakian formalism.
The political economy of economic diversification in Nigeria
Keywords: Economic Development
Extractive Industries
Institutions
Governance
Economic Reform
Natural Resources
Political Settlements

As Africa’s largest economy and its most populous country, over a decade of rapid economic growth in Nigeria contributed to the 'Africa Rising' narrative. However, like many African commodity exporters, this economic growth, billions of dollars in oil earnings and electoral democracy have not translated into a diversified and industrial economy. This study examines why the Nigerian economy remains so dependent on oil and is non-industrial, which I argue are economic and development outcomes of specific policy choices constrained by Nigeria’s institutional configuration or the political settlement. In this endeavour, my central preoccupation is with the political processes of decision making which at any point in time favour one policy choice over the other in resource-rich and plural societies such as Nigeria, and the economic and development outcomes of these policy choices. I employ the political settlements analytical framework to unveil these political processes and the conditions they create in which certain policies are preferred over others. This entails an examination of the causal relationship within the three variables of 'constraints', 'policies' and 'economic and development outcomes'. I argue that understanding Nigeria's challenges of economic diversification requires an examination of its political settlement to identify horizontal (elite competition), vertical (societal agitations for resource redistribution) and external (oil shocks) constraints on a ruling coalition, and the specific economic policy responses each constraint generates. Essentially, my research explains how policy makers are constrained to pursue certain courses of action over others, and the outcomes of these policies on economic growth and the structural transformation of production, exports and government revenue. In the Nigerian context, the study also examines how sub-national and regional differentiation in the distribution of growth in states like Lagos and Kano affect future political processes and their policy outcomes. The thesis draws from multiple data sources, including economic data, semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders, documentary sources, and participant and non-participant observation.