VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Music-making in the English parish church from the 1760s to 1860s, with particular reference to Hertfordshire
Keywords: charity schools
organ (musical instrument)
Hertfordshire
barrel organ

This dissertation focuses on a previously unexplored aspect of music-making in the English parish church during the 1760s to 1860s, namely its local development in response to inter-related episcopal, elite, clerical and economic influences.
The historiography suggests ineffectual episcopal leadership and little gentry engagement with parochial church music-making during this period. By contrast, this study presents evidence of their influence, particularly during the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Elite support for Sunday and charity schools was allied with a desire to improve congregational psalmody, and church organs and barrel-organs were given with this objective in mind. Gentry involvement with amateur military bands of music also influenced the instrumentation of choir-bands. These actions were mirrored by those further down the social scale, and formed part of a complex pattern of support for church music-making.
This dissertation argues that methods adopted to improve congregational singing in one generation were reviled in the next. The suggestion that teaching charity school children to sing would result in a congregation of singing adults became a recurring theme, yet time and again it met with little success. Nineteenth-century reform of church music-making has often been presented as a clear-cut progression, with the replacement of choir-bands by a barrel-organ or harmonium, but this dissertation argues that these phases were sometimes parallel rather than sequential, with no inevitable outcome. Furthermore, new evidence reveals that nineteenth-century church rate disputes had a profound effect on church music-making, an area of research neglected in modern literature.
Lack of available seating became a significant problem in parish churches owing to the often compulsory attendance of schoolchildren, which opens up another new area of research. This dissertation argues that attempts to reform music-making contributed to alterations in the church fabric long before ecclesiological reorderings, and had long-lasting repercussions.
Global fabric bazaar: an Indian trading economy in a Chinese county
Keywords: Social and cultural anthropology

This thesis is primarily based on ethnographic fieldwork that lasted fifteen months, between 2010 and 2012, in Keqiao, a municipal county in eastern Zhejiang Province, China. Despite its inferior administrative status and rather inland location, Keqiao is China’s trading frontier for fabrics, which are the semifinished textiles that are industrially weaved, knitted, dyed, and printed in bulk before being exported. Contributing to the turnover of more than one-third of all fabric produced in China, the county’s fabric wholesale market is not only the mainstay of Keqiao’s economy. It is also the world’s centre for fabric supplies, and where around 10,000 Indians have flocked to start their intermediary trading businesses.
The major aim of this thesis is to examine the everyday encounters between Indians and Chinese in the local fabric market. It begins by exploring how Keqiao emerged as the global distribution centre for a wide variety of cheap fabrics. It also shows how Keqiao becomes characterized by the growing importance of low-end fabric sales and the influx of Indian traders, who specialize in exporting these fabrics. The thesis then describes the encounters between Indians and local Chinese in the fabric market, addressing the challenges and difficulties that these Indians, especially the newcomers, confront when dealing with the Chinese suppliers. Focusing on novice traders, the thesis turns to investigate the internal dynamics of Indian trading companies. Remarkably, novice Indian traders successfully learn several strategies to counteract their precarious position in the workplace. These strategies leverage the accumulation of work experience and expanding social networks. These insights bring the thesis to chapters that highlight other strategies, particularly those created from encounters between Indian traders and Chinese clerks, as well as those between Indian traders and Chinese salespersons.
Taken together, this thesis illustrates how transnational and local actors team up to create their own, locally based, intermediary economy within a small Chinese county, and how such a collaborative economy, which I term a ‘global fabric bazaar,’ sustains these actors. Without this collaborative economy, these players would otherwise be vulnerable within the fabric wholesale industry because this supply chain is increasingly polarized and weakened by today’s global capitalism.
Social networks, collaborations and high-tech cluster formation in an emerging country: the case of biotechnology in Chile
Keywords: biotechnology
cluster emergence
social networks
emerging country
high-tech entrepreneurship

Geographic clusters of firms have been extensively studied in different bodies of literature, but little attention has been paid to the process of cluster formation and its determinants. While focusing on the effects of clusters on innovations and on the productivity of firms, the literature has neglected the agency of entrepreneurs in cluster emergence.
This thesis aims to contribute to the literature on clusters by studying the role of personal networks and firm networks in three aspects of the emergence of clusters: 1) the early stages of formation; 2) the creation of business relations between firms; and 3) the creation of knowledge among clustered firms.
The analysis was conducted using the biotechnology sector in four geographic regions of Chile as a case study. Data on firms was collected using in-depth interviews and a survey. The analysis of the data was carried out using content analysis, multilevel estimations and econometric analysis.
The results reveal three main findings. First, the personal and business relations of entrepreneurs can determine the location decisions of firms. Second, personal relations are positively associated with the emergence of formal business relations between firms. Third, the number of personal and business connections a firm has positively affects its production of knowledge, measured as patent applications and scientific journals.
These findings suggest that social networks within a cluster shape its emergence and development. The results also show that the different types of networks coexisting in a cluster – personal networks, business networks and research networks, among others – affect one another and determine the development of clusters.
The implications of this research may be helpful for policy-makers, professional associations and cluster managers. Activities to foster personal interaction between members of a cluster and other key actors – universities, incubators, venture capital firms, government agencies, etc. – may generate collaborations between firms that would not otherwise emerge.
An international history of unemployment through the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization, 1931-1937
Keywords: nutrition
1930s
housing
migration
economic policy

Late in 1931, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that worldwide unemployment had reached 20-25 million. The ILO was also mindful that the consequences of unemployment were borne by dependents and concluded that the number of people directly affected by unemployment was therefore probably in the region of 50-60 million. The thesis revisits this old theme of the ‘Hungry Thirties’ but considers it in a new and different way. Most histories of unemployment during the Great Depression have been presented in national terms but this study examines unemployment from an international perspective by utilizing the League of Nations and ILO as sites through which to explore how debates about unemployment and how to respond to it were being internationalized. Utilizing the vast archives of the League of Nations and ILO, the thesis focuses on a series of interconnected themes – public works and economic policy, migration, housing, and nutrition – themes that the League and ILO identified as being the ‘fallout’ from unemployment. It builds on recent research of the League and ILO that has revealed more complex histories of these two international organizations and that has recognized that the ‘technical’ agencies were core functions that consumed significant resources of personnel and money. Crucially, this work not only continued during the 1930s but thrived even as the political atmosphere darkened; it is, therefore, a history that offers another side to the autarky and nationalism of the 1930s. The thesis also connects the technical agencies of the League of Nations to the ILO and, in contrast to the customary treatment of the interaction of these two organizations that emphasizes inter-agency tension, it identifies how the collaboration was an important step in the rediscovery of the fundamental connection between economy and society by linking economic policy to social and physical welfare.
The judgment of love: an investigation of salvific judgment in Christian eschatology
Keywords: Christian
Universalism
Heaven
Salvation
Death
Hell
Purgatory
Judgment

My study offers a constructive exploration of divine judgment as salvific rather than destructive which I describe aphoristically as iudicandus est salvandus ('to be judged is to be saved'). My provocation to Christian eschatology is that human beings are not saved from judgment, but are saved within it.
In chapter 1, I introduce the context of the study and propose the concept of salvific judgment. In chapter 2, I engage in an exploration of the symbols and problems of judgment through a reappraisal of De novissimis ('concerning the last things'), the last section found in traditional works of dogmatics. This is followed, in chapter 3, by a critical engagement with the soteriological optimism posited by four twentieth- and twenty-first century theologians: Sergei Bulgakov, Hans Urs von Balthasar, J.A.T. Robinson, and Marilyn McCord Adams. In chapter 4, I explore four versions of the purpose of judgment: (1) as retributive with a dual outcome, engaging the work of Paul O'Callaghan; (2) as retributive and universalist, in conversation with Sergei Bulgakov; (3) as non-retributive, rectifying, and universalist, exploring the oeuvre of Jürgen Moltmann; and (4) as non-retributive, constitutive of personhood, and quasi-universalist, investigating the eschatological thought of Markus Mühling.
In chapter 5, I propose to approach divine judgment as the event of absolute recognition. I posit that it is within the eschatic recognition of God, the self, and the other that transformation and glorification occur in a way that avoids a dual outcome of salvation and damnation. I then explore the problems concerning eternal life ('heaven') in the received tradition and propose that life in the eschatic realm of God is not eternal stasis, but the semper novum. I also explore this understanding of eternal life as it relates to the communion of saints.
I conclude by arguing that we may approach divine judgment with faith, hope, and love – not only for ourselves, but for the human race as a whole.
"Narrative dandyism": the theology of creation in the French decadent-dandyist novel 1845-1907
Keywords: theology of creation
decadence
theology and literature

This thesis explores how selected "decadent-dandyist" writers of late 19th century France at once exemplify and subvert the self's act of shaping and imprinting its own selfhood upon the world: a model in which an autonomous, discrete artist-self freely creates, and in which both reader/audience and artistic "subjects" are treated as raw canvas and denied agency of their own. Storytellers like Barbey D'Aurevilly, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, J. K. Huysmans, and Remy de Gourmont create not only hyper-artificial, cloistered, "auto-telic" (to use Charles Taylor's term) textual worlds (e.g. Huysmans' theïbade raffinée) but also hyper-artificial selves: presenting themselves and their often autobiographical protagonists as dandy-artists for whom artistic creation is an extension of self-creation.
Central to this thesis is the 19th century figure of the dandy – he who, to quote D'Aurevilly, "[causes] surprise in others, and [has] the proud satisfaction of never showing any oneself." Appropriating the divine power of self-fashioning, the dandy transforms the chaos of existence into a clear narrative over which he alone exerts control, denying that he himself is subject to the control of the world.
In my thesis, I first explore the cultural and economic roots of this understanding of the autonomous dandyist-artist in the light of wider tensions in 19th century Paris. I then explore selected "decadent-dandyist" texts through close reading, focusing on the theological implications of our authors’ treatment of narrative, character, setting, and language: showing how our writers cast doubt on both the possibility and morality "autonomous" creation on theological grounds. Finally, I ask how constructive theologians might learn from our authors’ condemnation of "dandyist" storytelling to create a new Christian aesthetics for the novel: proposing elements of an alternate, "kenotic" novel, in which self-projection gives way to "self-giving", a model based not on power and ego but rather on love.
Between the courts of Lahore and Windsor: Anglo-Indian relations and the re-making of royalty in the nineteenth century
Keywords: Queen Victoria
empire
Duleep Singh
royal
Sikh
Britain
Jind Kaur
monarchy
Raj
Ranjit Singh
imperialism
court
dynasty
Punjab

This thesis examines the political and social worldview of British and Indian royalty during the nineteenth century. Rather than viewing them as mere 'ornamental' figureheads, it seeks to highlight and scrutinise the ideas held by monarchs (sovereign or deposed) about empire and the role of royalty, as well as considering how their attempts at implementing such ideas can complicate existing narratives about the relative influence and authority of this group.
Above all, this thesis breaks new ground by adopting a transnational approach in its study of such royal ideas and endeavours. Ruling dynasties, monarchs and courts have long been part of an interconnected, if rarefied, world encompassing Europe and Asia, though this is not adequately reflected in the historiography on the nineteenth century. This is despite the ironic fact that in that century, many royal houses were brought closer together than ever before, through the impact of growing global empires, and advancing communications and transportation networks. The first direct meetings between British and Indian royalty took place during this period, in the early 1850s, and are closely examined here.
Based on a core case-study of the longstanding relationship between the Punjabi and British dynasties of Maharajah Ranjit Singh and Queen Victoria, and using a wide variety of textual and material sources, this thesis captures royal perspectives of their status and role in an evolving world, alongside considering how British and Indian royalty directly or indirectly influenced one another. This study effectively de-centres the British imperial official as the primary agent in Anglo-Indian elite encounters, and goes further to demonstrate that whether in the case of the connections between royal personages, or in the ties between ‘monarchy, nation and empire’, the capability for royal agency to shape the nature of such relationships evolved over time and was a consistently contested matter.
The genomic epidemiology of Campylobacter from the Republic of South Africa
Keywords: Genomics
Campylobacter
South Africa
Molecular epidemiology

As the leading cause of bacterial gastroenteritis, Campylobacter represents a significant public health burden; however, our knowledge of its epidemiology in low- and middle-income countries remains limited. Recent studies have demonstrated the power of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) for public health microbiology. The primary aim of this thesis was to exploit WGS to improve our understanding of the epidemiology of Campylobacter from the Republic of South Africa, a middle-income country.
In the first half of this thesis, in silico approaches were developed to evaluate diagnostic assays and methods of species identification. Large-scale analyses of publicly available WGS data identified a robust real-time PCR assay for the detection of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli, the primary causes of human campylobacteriosis. Evaluation of in silico speciation methods demonstrated that the atpA gene and ribosomal multilocus sequence typing can be used to identify Campylobacter from WGS data.
The second half of this thesis extended concepts developed in the first half to investigate the epidemiology of Campylobacter from animals and humans from South Africa. Isolates from a study of Campylobacter from free-range broiler carcasses belonged to the agriculture-associated ST-828 lineage, but were atypically homogenous and differed at only 46/1,513 (3%) loci, providing novel insights into clonal infections in chickens. Analyses of human disease isolates collected in Cape Town in 1991, 2011, and 2012 confirmed that the local epidemiology of Campylobacter is distinct from that of high-income countries: in addition to major agriculture-associated C. jejuni and C. coli lineages, a putative novel C. jejuni subsp. jejuni/C. jejuni subsp. doylei hybrid clade and genetically diverse C. jejuni subsp. doylei and C. upsaliensis isolates were identified.
This work delivers further evidence of the utility of WGS for clinical microbiology, presents approaches that address general problems in Campylobacter diagnostics and public health microbiology, and provides insights into the epidemiology of this important group of pathogens in South Africa.
Design of an application process for research grants
Keywords: Microeconomics
Imperfect Information
Asymmetric Information
Mechanism Design

We use a version of a Bayesian Stackelberg game to model a one-stage application process for research grants. A research council wants to allocate research grants to researchers in an environment of imperfect information. The information asymmetry stems from the fact that selection should ideally be based on the quality of the researcher's project. However, neither the researcher nor the research council know the quality but each agent receives a separate signal that is informative about it. We show that the application process always yields a better expected quality of research projects and that, despite the costs it imposes on each agent, the equilibrium of the game can be a welfare improvement over a random allocation of the research grants.
Forest structure and biomass in a mixed forest-oil palm landscape in Borneo
Keywords: Borneo
plantation

The research focusses on differentiating between the AGB and forest stand parameters of riparian and non-riparian zones of a mixed land use type in Malaysian Borneo comprising of lowland forests, logged forests and oil palm plantations. Detailed field surveys were carried out to collect forest mensuration data.Field work was complemented by extensive remote sensing analysis. Fourier analysis and grey level co-occurrence based texture analysis techniques were applied on SPOT 5 data for both differentiating and predicting the AGB values for different forest types. It was found Fourier based methods could both differentiate and predict the biomass of different land use types without undergoing saturation. The research establishes thresholds for disturbances these forests zones can undergo before their AGB values decline. The research also determined that AGB value is much higher for riparian margins than for surrounding oil palm plantations. Hence the retention of riparian margins can yield significant carbon storage benefits.
Investigation of the cell biology of human regulatory T cells in the context of transplantation
Keywords: graft rejection
regulatory T cells
transplant
humanised mouse model
immunoregulation
transplantation
immune
human immunology
allograft
cell therapy
immunology
Tregs

Regulatory T cells (Tregs), lymphocytes that suppress immunological reactions, are of great interest for our comprehension of basic immunology and as a therapeutic agent to treat immune-mediated pathologies. Understanding the physiology of these cells will help to inform clinical strategies targeting Tregs.
In order to study the homing of human Tregs, we utilised genetic engineering to drive expression of fluorescent protein in human Tregs, permitting in vivo cell tracking. We optimised a protocol for lentivirus-mediated transduction of human Tregs during in vitro expansion, to generate high yields of stably-engineered cells. After infusing labelled cells into a humanised mouse model of skin allotransplantation, we detected human Tregs within a human skin graft by PCR and visualised Tregs moving in the graft, in a live mouse, by two-photon microscopy.
Through reverse genetic analyses, we explored molecular mechanisms that allow Tregs to respond adaptively to environmental cues. Neuropilin-1 (NRP1), a transmembrane co-receptor, has been implicated in the function of mouse Tregs. Tregs transduced with shRNA to knock down NRP1 were severely impaired in their capacity to suppress cell proliferation in vitro and to prolong allograft survival in a humanised mouse model. qRT-PCR analysis revealed that transcription the gene encoding the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10, and the autophagy-associated genes BECN1, COPS4 and MAP1LC3B, was significantly diminished in NRP1-deficient Tregs. We concluded that in human Tregs, NRP1 is necessary for suppressive function, most likely via regulation of NRP1-dependent regulation of cytokine production and metabolism.
Having identified a molecular target via which Treg function might be potentiated, we explored methods to target such molecules for cell therapy applications. Tregs engineered to over-express IL-10, but not NRP1, exerted significantly enhanced suppression of cell proliferation in vitro. Thus, relatively straightforward genetic engineering, compatible with generation of therapeutic cell yields, could be exploited to improve the efficacy of Treg cellular therapy.