VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Children of the land and children of the Saint: Heritage, religion, and territoriality in a Brazilian quilombo
Keywords: land rights
heritage
popular Catholicism
quilombos
Brazil

This dissertation is looking at quilombo grassroots land and identity politics as they transpire in a compound of Black rural communities in the north of the state of Maranhão, Brazil.
One of the main questions this thesis asks is: How do communities mobilise resources in defence of their territories when formal means of establishing land claims have been exhausted? Based on ethnographic research conducted over fifteen months my analysis delves into strategies employed by peasant groups for the assertion of their collective land ownership. This assertion taps into specific ethno-racial legislation and it is especially directed towards Evangelical Christians, whom the majority of Catholic quilombola residents regard as their territorial and religious antagonists.
This thesis’s broadest argument is that this territorial defence mainly materialises through two streams of action: religious and cultural grassroots activism. It is argued that creative uses and articulations of cultural and religious practices, and the creation of a network of alliances, transpire as the most relevant means of 'informal' community politics.
More specifically, I argue that local ceramic production (intrinsically attached to notions of a 'quilombo heritage') and religious festivities in honour of the local patron saint contribute to the preservation of a specific quilombo territoriality. In the ethnographic context examined, this territoriality is inherently attached to popular Catholicism and notions of quilombola cultural identity. Employing approaches from agrarian, peasant politics, quilombo, and heritage studies, this dissertation seeks to illuminate the dynamic relation between local perceptions of land and territoriality in the 'lands of Santa Teresa'. Overall, this thesis aims at contributing to those studies that explore the diversity and creativity of politics 'from below'.
From Hispalis to Ishbiliyya: the ancient port of Seville, from the Roman Empire to the end of the Islamic period (45 BC - AD 1248)
Keywords: Port
Harbour
Late Antiquity
Islamic
Roman
Seville
Guadalquivir River
Al-Andalus

This Thesis focuses on the history and development of the topography, layout, and facilities of the ancient port of Seville, which is located in the lower Guadalquivir River Basin. From a maritime archaeology perspective, it combines terrestrial and maritime archaeological evidence, literary and epigraphic material, as well as palaeo-geomorphological and palaeo-environmental studies. This Thesis is a longue durée or diachronic study ranging between the 1st century BC and the 13th century AD. The Thesis is divided into three main historical periods, and in addition to the port itself, studies the palaeo-geomorphology and palaeo-hydrology of the Guadalquivir River, as well as of the palaeo-climatology of the region during each of these eras.
The first third of the Thesis examines the port of Hispalis during the Roman era. By considering the natural hydrography of the river and the meander of Hispalis, the Thesis proposes a model for the distribution of harbour facilities and their development through the Roman period. Building on this, it becomes possible to assess the extent and scale of these, as well as of the maritime commerce that the Roman port sustained.
The second third of the Thesis focuses on the Late Antique period. Despite the lack of direct archaeological evidence for the port in this era, the Thesis suggests that there was a decline but continuity in the commercial activities in direct connection with the Mediterranean maritime networks. This section also examines the historical events that occurred in Hispalis from the maritime archaeology perspective, arguing that the port was at the core of all these historical episodes because of its geopolitical and strategic importance.
The last third of the Thesis concentrates on the study of the port during the Islamic period. By understanding the extreme changes that occurred in the hydrography and geomorphology of the river in this epoch, the Thesis deciphers the process that led to the progressive siltation of the ancient channel of the river. The study of the archaeological material from the 1981 Plaza Nueva excavation, in combination with other proxies, allows a chronology to be proposed for the demise and subsequent disappearance of the ancient port. The transformation of the meander of the river resulted in the relocation and construction of a new port, which had a prominent role in the maritime history of the world during the centuries that followed.
Epidemiology of long-term health outcomes and the response of knee cartilage to bowling biomechanics in elite cricketers
Keywords: Epidemiology
MRI
Osteoarthritis
Biomechanics
Knee
Sport
Cricket

Background: Sport is an important form of physical activity and has been shown to have many health benefits. Cricket is a popular sport in the UK and internationally, but little is known about the short- and long-term health effects of a career in elite cricket. This thesis will describe the long-term physical and mental health of former elite cricketers compared to the general population, explore the association of cricket-related factors with their long-term musculoskeletal health, and evaluate the effect of elite fast bowling on the knee cartilage of current elite fast bowlers.
Methods: A sample of male former elite English cricketers was recruited for a cross-sectional retrospective questionnaire study of the long-term health of former cricketers. Chronic conditions in the former cricketers were compared to a general population sample and cricket-related factors including playing position and injury were tested for their association with musculoskeletal outcomes. A sample of male and female current elite fast bowlers was recruited for a biomechanics and cross-sectional MRI study of their knee cartilage. The knee cartilage was compared between the bowlers’ trailing leg versus the higher loaded leading leg, and was tested for associations with bowling kinematic and kinetic parameters.
Results: The former elite cricketers reported a higher prevalence of osteoarthritis, total hip replacement, total knee replacement, anxiety and depression than the general population sample and a lower prevalence of heart problems than the general population. Injury was the only cricket-related factor analysed to be associated with the musculoskeletal outcomes of joint pain, osteoarthritis, and joint replacement in the former cricketers. The current elite fast bowlers did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the compartmental knee cartilage volume in the trailing leg versus the higher loaded leading leg. A clinically significantly greater cartilage volume was found in the lateral tibia compartment of the leading leg than the trailing leg. The lateral tibia cartilage of the leading leg was also found to be significantly associated with the knee flexion/extension moment and abduction/adduction moment at leading leg strike of the bowling action.
Conclusions: This research identifies risks and benefits of a career in elite cricket, providing targets for prevention and resource provision for chronic conditions in current cricketers and cricketers transitioning out of elite cricket. These results also suggest that cartilage may be sensitive to bowling loads in current elite fast bowlers, providing evidence that increased physical activity and loading is associated with increased cartilage volume.
Engineering modular platforms for rapid vaccine development
Keywords: VLP
Plug-and-display
Virus-like particle
Cancer Immunotherapy
SpyCatcher
Vaccine
Isopeptide bond
TBV
Transmission-blocking vaccine
Particulate vaccine
SnoopCatcher
Malaria
VLPs
Dually-addressable nanoparticle

Vaccines have saved more lives than any other medical intervention. Recombinant vaccines provide unmatched safety profiles, but at the expense of reduced immunogenicity. Virus-like particles (VLPs) resemble viruses in size, shape and repetitive arrangement but are devoid of pathogenic genetic material and therefore safe. Poor immunogens can be rendered immunogenic by display on VLPs. Successfully decorating VLPs is still a major challenge. Genetic fusion or chemical modification is often time-consuming and can lead to misassembly or misfolding, which obstructs generation of the desired immune response. SpyCatcher is a genetically encodable protein, previously engineered to form a covalent isopeptide bond to its peptide-partner SpyTag. Presented in this thesis are SpyCatcher-VLPs, based on the fusion of SpyCatcher to the bacteriophage VLP AP205. SpyCatcher- VLPs can be conveniently conjugated with SpyTag fused antigens, simply by mixing. I demonstrate the modularity of this approach by covalently linking several complex, cysteine-rich malarial antigens to SpyCatcher-VLPs, such as the transmission-blocking antigen Pfs25 and the blood-stage antigen CIDR. A single administration of Pfs25-SpyTag conjugated to SpyCatcher-VLPs induced potent antibody generation against Pfs25, even in the absence of adjuvant. Anti-Pfs25 antibodies induced by this platform conveyed potent transmission-blocking activity in the mosquito vector. The thesis further demonstrates the feasibility of more complex Catcher-nanoparticle architectures. The previously engineered SnoopCatcher covalently reacts with SnoopTag peptide and is orthogonal to the SpyCatcher / SpyTag pair. IMX313 is an engineered chimera of the multimerization domain of chicken complement inhibitor C4-binding protein. This work describes fusion of SnoopCatcher and SpyCatcher to IMX313, which yields independently addressable Catcher-moieties on a single IMX313 nanoparticle. Display of two antigens on one particle may enable single-particle, multi-disease vaccines as well as multi-stage vaccines to tackle immune evasion of parasites. The platforms presented should accelerate and enhance vaccine development and may create opportunities for imaging and metabolic engineering.
Beastly spaces: geomorphism in the literary depiction of animals
Keywords: whales
geomorphic
zoos
theatre
riddles
medieval
Equus
Patience
hondwyrm

In 2010, Simon Estok observed that, "the most immediate question ecocriticism can ask is about how our assumptions about animals affect the natural environment". In this thesis, I respond to this challenge by generating a sustained conversation between the hitherto surprisingly distinct fields of animal studies and ecocriticism. I do this by formulating a new critical concept, that of the geomorphic animal, which I use to show how literary representations of animals often expose the many complex ways in which they constitute space rather than simply inhabiting it. This, in turn, should make them central to future ecocritical readings.
I focus on two periods, medieval and modern; the broad historical and generic scope of this thesis is intended to demonstrate the conceptual validity and robustness of geomorphic readings. Chapter One shows how concerns with death and symbiosis are expressed through the earth-bound activities of the geomorphic animals of the Exeter Book riddles. Chapter Two examines geomorphic whales in texts deriving from two related traditions: the Book of Jonah and the Physiologus. Chapters Three and Four focus on modern theatre, which affords distinctive ways of articulating the spatial implications of geomorphism. Chapter Three discusses the literary representation of museums and zoos in terms of the interpretative complexities generated by staging and spectacle. Chapter Four, focusing on mediation, discusses the interplay between animals, viewpoints and place in theatre, also taking into account particular issues arising from the adaptation of plays into films. This argument paves the way to addressing the geomorphic depiction of marginalised humans and human groups, suggesting the critical potential of geomorphism as a means of furthering feminist and post-colonialist aims.
Academia - industry collaboration in translational medicine
Keywords: translational medicine
drug development
collaboration
academia industry collaboration
gene therapy

Collaboration between academia and industry has been the focus of numerous government reports and initiatives over the past 15 years, and is increasingly recognized as an effective way to capitalize on the UK's world-class research base. However, there is a need to further understand the role of such collaborations in the field of translational medicine, where the path to market is particularly lengthy, expensive, and risky, due to complexities associated with the clinical trial process.
This research uses a mixed methods approach to investigate collaboration in translational medicine at the University of Oxford. The project comprises three principal stages. First, a broad understanding of the current landscape of academia-industry collaboration in translational medicine was obtained by administering a questionnaire to academics who had received industry funding. Next, a deeper understanding of the barriers to collaboration was sought through semi-structured interviews with 27 academics. Finally, potential strategies to reduce practical barriers to the collaboration process were investigated through interviews with members of three groups within the university who interact directly with industry: Research Services, Oxford University Innovation, and Business Development.
This research constitutes the first empirical study on university-industry collaboration in translational research in the United Kingdom. It contributes to existing theory through the development of a new theoretical framework for the evaluation of barriers in terms of a) the practicalities of the collaboration process, b) the institutional environment and c) presiding cultures. Through these analyses, differences in experiences of barriers to collaboration emerged for clinical and non-clinical researchers. Furthermore, industry was seen as playing a crucial role in the translation of new therapeutics, especially in the funding of research that was perceived as being ‘too risky’ for Research Councils. Thus, reducing barriers to university-industry collaboration was seen as important to the realisation of public benefit from university research. Barriers were seen as being overcome, or avoided, via the formation of relationships between academics and companies at several different levels; while systems exist within the university to facilitate this, awareness and uptake of these systems was poor amongst the study population. Finally, if universities are to deliver impact as a key metric of performance, incentives within the university need to reward academics for commercialisation activities, in addition to publication. Through the suggestion of long and short-term strategies and a detailed analysis of industrial collaboration in this setting, this research has implications for both university and government policy.
Young men at Oxford (1830-80) Routes into consumption and debt
Keywords: Masculinity
Consumption
Student
Business
Gender
Credit
Oxford
Trade

Young men's consumption, especially that of students at Oxford, has not received much attention from scholars although they participated fully in the economic life of the University town by becoming customers, indeed often compulsive shoppers, as numerous Chancellor’s Court and bankruptcy court cases suggest. My thesis provides a window onto male students’ consumer culture and indebtedness, especially their link to the ‘credit system’. 'Conspicuous consumption' and overspending was a marker of undergraduate culture which had two dialectical dynamics: students tried to position themselves in their community by displaying the signs and habits of the elite; and, simultaneously they went through a process of individualization, expressing particular tastes and their own extravagance. These processes reflect how students learnt their future roles as rulers by managing their private interests and public image, but also by developing a consumer experience, a majority of them becoming prudent economic agents. This dissertation explores consumption from both an individual and collective perspective. In particular it examines juvenile agency, going beyond the clichés of the 'great masculine renunciation' and the idea of prominent female shopping, reconstructing the different paths undertaken by young men, from their first steps into consumption, to consumption routine. It builds on diverse disciplines including social and economic history, retailing and advertising, education, law and gender studies to tackle a gap in the history of consumption, capitalism and trade in Oxford. Between 1830 and 1880, student consumerism was intertwined with the university reforms and the rise of competition between tradesmen. This study assesses education costs and budget constraints; commercial practices such as 'touting freshmen'; students’ social background and insolvency; the use of long-term credit as a tool to drive consumption; and the formation of male identities through the purchase and display of different goods.
The emission and transport of volcanic sulphur dioxide
Keywords: Remote sensing
Stratospheric
Dispersion model
IASI
Sulphur
Volcanic

Volcanic emissions make an important contribution to the atmospheric sulphur budget. The volcanic contribution of sulphur to the atmosphere is poorly defined due to uncertainties in the amount of sulphur ejected, its distribution by sulphur species and the height of injection. Also there is little or no ground-based monitoring of many volcanoes, and little knowledge of sulphur emitted by degassing and other non-explosive volcanic processes. The altitude of volcanic injections of SO2 is therefore poorly understood, but of great importance when considering the chemistry and movement of the SO2. SO2 reaction rates vary with height and atmospheric composition: SO2 injected into the troposphere will relatively quickly leave the atmosphere as acidification of rainfall; in the stratosphere, however, SO2 is oxidised to H2SO4, which in aerosol form can remain and affect climate processes for many years. Sulphate aerosols affect the Earth’s radiative balance through scattering of sunlight, and are therefore an important factor when considering climate change.
Atmospheric sulphur compounds derive from a variety of sources. The largest direct source of SO2 is from volcanic emission, though it also indirectly stems from conversion from carbonyl sulphide (OCS), the most abundant atmospheric sulphur species.
Satellite-based instrumentation is a vital tool for the analysis of volcanic eruptions. Here the IASI instruments, Fourier transform spectrometers on the MetOp platforms, are used to study medium to large eruptions between 2008-2012. The vertical distribution of SO2 is investigated with respect to the local height of the tropopause, which is then further used to estimate the total atmospheric mass of SO2 as a result of these eruptions. These eruptions are also plotted in terms of their latitude variation, and a large difference between the hemisphere loadings is shown.
The trajectory model HYSPLIT is used in conjunction with the IASI instru- ment to investigate both the injection height of SO2 plumes and their chemistry. A number of forward trajectories are generated for the duration of the eruption at a series of initial altitudes and the final positions a given time later are compared against the IASI retrieval. It is found that the injection height determined is on average lower than those presented in literature, but that the principle of the analysis is sound. The time frame of the investigation is found to be too short to draw any meaningful conclusions about the plume chemistry.
Nervous hands, stolen kisses, and the press of everyday life: touch in Britain, 1870-1960
Keywords: Subjectivity
Governmentality
Modernity
Selfhood
Touch

This thesis provides a history of the sense of touch in modern Britain. Seeking out fugitive intimacies and incidental brushes of lover and stranger alike, it argues that far from being a natural constant, what, how, and why people touched, and what they felt when they did, has a history. Through five case studies of different domains – the mind sciences, visual impairment, public transport, law, and commercialized leisure – it explores how these uses changed, and how they transformed Britons’ understandings and experiences of their bodies. Both as a practice and a metaphor, from making space on the bus to keeping ‘in touch’, touch established the distinctions that Britons made between their bodies and the world and themselves and others. In doing so, touch crucially shaped histories of law, labour relations, scientific experiment, education, and love in the early twentieth century. But it also reformulated the very distinctions of selfhood – distinctions of inner self and outer body, person and thing – on which our accounts of modernity are based.
By tracing a history of touch, then, this thesis turns touch into a means of critique. It challenges histories of modernity for which selfhood is a substance rather than produced only through particular social relationships. But it also proposes a new way of thinking about selfhood as an immanent relationship the self has with itself through use of the body. Through historically specific ways of touching, early twentieth-century Britons shaped not only their experience of themselves as bodies, but also the boundaries defining them as selves. Their selfhood was, in short, what they did with the body through touch. By exploring the history of touch between 1870 and 1960, this thesis therefore offers an alternative account of British modernity and a way of re-examining histories of selfhood within and beyond modern Britain.
Robust model predictive control
Keywords: Polytope Operation
Parametric Convexity
Set-Valued Map

This thesis deals with the topic of min-max formulations of robust model predictive control problems. The sets involved in guaranteeing robust feasibility of the min-max program in the presence of state constraints are of particular interest, and expanding the applicability of well understood solvers of linearly constrained quadratic min-max programs is the main focus. To this end, a generalisation for the set of uncertainty is considered: instead of fixed bounds on the uncertainty, state- and input-dependent bounds are used. To deal with state- and input dependent constraint sets a framework for a particular class of set-valued maps is utilised, namely parametrically convex set-valued maps. Relevant properties and operations are developed to accommodate parametrically convex set-valued maps in the context of robust model predictive control. A quintessential part of this work is the study of fundamental properties of piecewise polyhedral set-valued maps which are parametrically convex, we show that one particular property is that their combinatorial structure is constant. The study of polytopic maps with a rigid combinatorial structure allows the use of an optimisation based approach of robustifying constrained control problems with probabilistic constraints. Auxiliary polytopic constraint sets, used to replace probabilistic constraints by deterministic ones, can be optimised to minimise the conservatism introduced while guaranteeing constraint satisfaction of the original probabilistic constraint. We furthermore study the behaviour of the maximal robust positive invariant set for the case of scaled uncertainty and show that this set is continuously polytopic up to a critical scaling factor, which we can approximate a-priori with an arbitrary degree of accuracy.
Relevant theoretical statements are developed, discussed and illustrated with examples.