VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The early struggle of black internationalism: intellectual interchanges among American and French black writers during the interwar period
Keywords: René Maran

The thesis focuses on the interchanges which took place during the interwar period between the American and the French black communities. It explores the role of national and transnational frames of reference in the definition of the New Negro movement during the 1920s as well as in its reception by French black intellectuals during the 1930s. Black internationalism during the interwar period can be seen as a circuit of interconnections which resulted in multifaceted and shifting identifications encompassing national and transnational affiliations as well as, sometimes, a cosmopolitan sense of belonging. My work explores the difficulties and successes that the writers under consideration encountered at the time in their attempts to communicate with fellow black people across socio-cultural boundaries.
Although, during the interwar period, the perspective shifted from a preeminence of local paradigms to an emphasis on diasporic views of the black race, the national and the transnational, understood as sites of social positioning, cultural self-definition, and political agency, remained inextricably intermingled. All the examples presented in the thesis show that literature, often understood as a national category, does not exist in a vacuum. It is constantly formed and informed through transnational exchanges. The American Harlem Renaissance depended on external sources of inspiration to come to existence. Not restricted to the United States, it then spread across territorialized borders and, in turn, affected the French black community, becoming a major influence in the emergence of Négritude. The thesis successively explores five defining instances of black internationalism: René Maran's Batouala (1921), Alain Locke's The New Negro (1925), black Parisian newspapers from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, Claude McKay's Banjo (1928), and the early theorization of Négritude. Through the use of Glissant's notion of detour, theorized in Le Discours antillais (1981), this thesis frames 'black internationalism' as a shifting web of negotiations expanding between national and transnational spaces.
Corporate governance and political economy in South Korea: family ownership, control of business groups, and state-led capitalism
Keywords: Holding Company Act
Family Capitalism
Contact Capabilities Hypothesis
Event Study Analysis
Activist Investor
Abnormal Equity Returns
Family Business Groups
Shareholder Activism
State-led Industrialisation

The evolving nature of the Korean chaebol – both a business group and the founding family who control the corporation – continues to intrigue scholars of corporate governance (Khanna and Yafeh, JEL 2007). In my thesis, I investigate these multi-generational controlling families to explain the chaebol's significance in the historical evolution of South Korea’s political economy during the 20th century.

My research first describes the origins of chaebol entrepreneurs and details their role in the growth of light industry before the the rise of state-led industrialisation during the social revolution of the 1960s in South Korea. I then consider the specific institutional features which appear to work against family control, even though they would ultimately support its proliferation: 1) progressive politics; 2) inheritance tax; and 3) ownership dispersion. Notably, my analysis of these distinctive institutions provides a clearer understanding of the contemporary behavior of the chaebols and their ability to maintain family control over many decades of growth.

In order to better understand the role of controlling families, during the state-led industrialisation period (1961-1988), I analyse their corporate networks and their ability to wield political power. To do so, I employ an unconventional source of evidence: a database of marriages among chaebol families. This research is theoretically grounded in the contact capabilities hypothesis advanced by Amsden (1989) and Guillén (2001a, 2001b with Kock). My scholarly approach complements parallel research on human networks within the state. My findings have implications for: 1) the epochal nature of chaebol-political networks; and 2) the market reaction to such network events, thus demonstrating the economic significance of these informal networks.

In my last chapter on the post-1998 era of financial liberalisation, I explore the evolution of the ownership structure within the business group as it relates to policy history. I do this through an analysis of The Holding Company Act of 1999, and show how the controlling families in South Korea found novel ways to use the Act to support their family ownership and corporate control in spite of the original intentions of the regulators. As I show, share buyback programmes, first popularized in Anglo-American financial markets, were crucial to the maintenance of chaebol. As it turns out, liberal policies, imported from the West, proved no more able to limit family capitalism in South Korea than domestic policy had been during the preceding state-led industrialisation era. Nonetheless, activist investor has a special role to play.
Synthesis of eleutherobin-like potential microtubule stabilising agents
Keywords: Diels-Alder reactions
biocatalysis
cytochrome P450
natural products
eleutherobin

This thesis describes synthetic studies towards the tricyclic terpene framework of the cytotoxic natural product eleutherobin, and the investigation of biocatalytic methodology towards late stage functionalisation of the structure.
Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the biomedical significance of the natural product and to the various synthetic studies reported to date.
Chapter 2 explores intramolecular Diels–Alder approaches to the construction of the nine- and six- membered rings present in the natural product.
Chapter 3 describes alternative approaches to the eleutherobin core structure, leading to a formal synthesis of the natural product. The synthetic sequence developed is applied to the preparation of a small library of furanoid analogues of eleutherobin.
Chapter 4 details the development of methodology for the one-pot preparation of (E)-4-methylhexa-3,5-dien-1-ol, and its use in an intermolecular Diels–Alder / lactonisation sequence to achieve enantioselective preparation of an important lactone building block.
Chapter 5 describes studies on the mP450-mediated oxidation of various eleuthoside structures obtained.
Finally, Chapter 6 details the construction of an electrochemical flow cell, and its use for the anodic oxidation of furfuryl alcohol derivatives.
Assessing the influence of anthropogenic disturbance on sympatric felids on Borneo with special reference to the Sunda clouded leopard
Keywords: Borneo
population density
niche separation
Sunda clouded leopard
population conectivity

For decades, Borneo's once extensive and pristine forests have been increasingly exposed to a suite of anthropogenic disturbance and deforestation processes as a result of selective and illegal logging, hunting, droughts, fires and the conversion to plantations, chiefly oil palm. Such disturbance is likely impacting the Sunda clouded leopard, Neofelis diardi, and other threatened, sympatric Bornean felids, yet few studies have attempted to address these issues. In this thesis, I used data from intensive camera trap surveys throughout Sabah, Malaysian Borneo and high-resolution GPS data from tagged Sunda clouded leopards to examine the influence of forest disturbance on the abundance, distribution, movements and population connectivity of Sunda clouded leopards and other sympatric felids on Borneo, and to provide some of the first data regarding the ecological interactions and patterns of coexistence among this felid assemblage. I showed that Sunda clouded leopard movement was facilitated by forest cover with high canopy closure, and highly resisted by oil palm plantations with low canopy closure. Models of population connectivity across Sabah identified a number of isolated populations of these felids, which may be particularly threatened with extinction. Analysis of camera trap detection data revealed that the Bornean felids exhibit evidence of resource segregation along the temporal, spatial and prey niche axes, and showed that Sunda clouded leopards, bay cats, Catopuma badia, and marbled cats, Pardofelis marmorata exhibited broad scale avoidance of disturbed habitats but varied in their selection of optimal foraging habitat at fine scales. Conversely, leopard cats, Prionailurus bengalensis, were associated with forest disturbance and likely benefit from such changes. I developed some of the first estimates of population density for Sunda clouded leopards and the first such data for marbled cats. The results are discussed in the context of the conservation of these felids on Borneo.
‘[I am] unable to refuse the call of these pages to be scribbled in’:  The Function of First World War Life-Writing
Keywords: First World War
Diary
British Literature
Cognitive psychology
Identity
Trauma
Medical Humanities
Letter

Drawing on a diverse collection of both published and unpublished First World War diaries and letters, this thesis investigates the role of composition in war, examining the ways in which the act of writing itself—imposing narrative order on chaotic experience—functions in creating, securing, and repairing one's multiple identities in war. Indeed, through narration, the individual can connect to, challenge, or reconfigure, the war's prescribed social scripts—of soldier, nurse, spouse, parent, and/or patriotic citizen. This process or writing, and thereby re-asserting, one's identity was a fundamental component of men and women’s emotional survival. In the midst of the First World War's chaos, life-writing held heightened significance on both home and battlefront. The diary and letter were appropriate generic vehicles through which men and women could express and negotiate the new facets and fragments of self; they were also sites where different social scripts could be tried and rehearsed, and venues for the navigation of war's trauma, suffering, and grief. Through the act of writing, the individual imposes some level of control over this otherwise chaotic experience. The 'I' on the page—whatever the length or descriptive quality of the words that surround it—is an assertion of the individual in a culture of sweeping propagandist claims, mass movement, and mass death. By putting pen to paper, the newly enlisted man could attempt to navigate the seemingly rapid transition from ordinary civilian to heroic soldier; the home front mother could confess fears and frustrations on the diary page, in turn mitigating grief and navigating the sense of self—as mother, as wife, as patriotic citizen—in the face of loss; from his trench, the frontline combatant could find distraction and escape through writing a letter home. The civilian man, in turn, could seek refuge in the diary’s pages—his search to secure and validate alternate forms of ‘manliness’ often being particularly fraught.
International courts and legal innovation: the politics and practices of interpretation in international criminal law
Keywords: International Criminal Court
international law
international criminal law
legal interpretation

In international criminal law (ICL), legal meaning has been developed substantially through the judgments of international courts. Compared to some of their prosecutorial decisions, however, the way in which international judges have interpreted legal provisions has remained relatively uncontested. This study uses practice theory as a particularly fruitful lens through which to study the politics of legal interpretation. It analyses the conditions under which the creation of a comparatively uncontested judicial space became possible as an interplay between political commitments and the professional assumptions of ICL experts. The study argues that international criminal courts – unlike hybrid courts – have been accorded a particularly high degree of interpretive authority through what will be called the ‘practice of privileged precedent.’ It traces how this interpretive practice has been shared across institutional settings within a broader interpretive community, including by government officials and civil society representatives. Through this research, this thesis emphasises the relevance of legal interpretation for IR’s understanding of international law and international courts. Drawing on legal theory, it also addresses one of the key challenges of IR’s practice turn: its capacity to account for the creative potential of international practices.
Methodologically, the thesis combines qualitative and quantitative forms of content analysis, elite interviews, and legal interpretive methods. It is based on an examination of over 100 judgments of international and hybrid criminal courts interpreting the crime of genocide and the law of war crimes, including judicial decisions delivered by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). This analysis is supplemented by 28 elite interviews with judges and legal experts at international criminal courts, staff at civil society organisations, and government officials working for the British and German foreign offices.
A rate-pressure-dependent thermodynamically-consistent phase field model for the description of failure patterns in dynamic brittle fracture
Keywords: High inertia fracture
Dynamic Fracture
Brittle fracture
Strain-softnening
Explicit finite element
Pressure-dependent fracture
Phase field models
Semi-brittle materials
Finite element
Failure mode transition
Damage mechanics
Rate-dependent fracture
Micro-inertia
Impact

The investigation of failure in brittle materials, subjected to dynamic transient loading conditions, represents one of the ongoing challenges in the mechanics community. Progresses on this front are required to support the design of engineering components which are employed in applications involving extreme operational regimes. To this purpose, this thesis is devoted to the development of a framework which provides the capabilities to model how crack patterns form and evolve in brittle materials and how they affect the quantitative description of failure.
The proposed model is developed within the context of diffusive interfaces which are at the basis of a new class of theories named phase field models. In this work, a set of additional features is proposed to expand their domain of applicability to the modelling of (i) rate and (ii) pressure dependent effects. The path towards the achievement of the first goal has been traced on the desire to account for micro-inertia effects associated with high rates of loading. Pressure dependency has been addressed by postulating a mode-of-failure transition law whose scaling depends upon the local material triaxiality. The governing equations have been derived within a thermodynamically-consistent framework supplemented by the employment of a micro-forces balance approach. The numerical implementation has been carried out within an updated lagrangian finite element scheme with explicit time integration. A series of benchmarks will be provided to appraise the model capabilities in predicting rate-pressure-dependent crack initiation and propagation. Results will be compared against experimental evidences which closely resemble the boundary value problems examined in this work. Concurrently, the design and optimization of a complimentary, improved, experimental characterization platform, based on the split Hopkinson pressure bar, will be presented as a mean for further validation and calibration.
Pre-clinical and clinical evaluation of the malaria vaccines RH5-VLP and PfSPZ vaccine
Keywords: Plasmodium
vaccine
clinical trial
T cell
malaria

Despite progress through expanded use of bed nets and anti-malarial drugs, Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) malaria caused about 200 million cases and 500,000 deaths in 2015. An ideal vaccine would reduce the burden of disease and interrupt transmission. Despite decades of effort, there is no vaccine that can adequately address the global burden of malaria.
This thesis focuses on two potential weaknesses in the parasite life-cycle. First, I investigate two vaccination strategies aimed at improving the antibody response to RH5, an essential and conserved protein for erythrocyte invasion. Due to instability of the resultant recombinant vaccine constructs, these efforts have required re-engineering of the vaccine platform, which remains an ongoing effort.
Second, the immunogenicity and mechanism of protection of a live-attenuated whole sporozoite vaccine, PfSPZ Vaccine, was assessed. In a study that examined PfSPZ Vaccine at intravenous (IV) doses between 1.35 &tiles; 105 to 4.5 &tiles; 105 PfSPZ, I demonstrate that PfSPZ antibody responses correlated with durable sterile protection against controlled human malaria infection (CHMI). Surprisingly, the pre-vaccine frequency of Vγ9+Vδ2+ T cells, an innate T cell that recognizes conserved Plasmodium phosphoantigens, also correlated with durable sterile protection. Regarding the mechanism of protection, PfSPZ-specific antibodies as well as CD8 and CD4 T cells in the blood decreased substantially over time, yet sterile protection was maintained. In non-human primates, the CD8 T cell response in the liver at a memory time point was measured to be about 100-fold higher than found in the blood. Collectively, these data suggest that PfSPZ Vaccine confers durable protection in humans by long-lived, tissue-resident CD8 T cells.
These findings were extended with a study using 9.0 x 105 PfSPZ, wherein I demonstrate that T cell responses peaked immediately after the first vaccination with minimal T cell activation despite additional immunizations. This suggests that anti-PfSPZ immunity may be limiting the effectiveness of subsequent immunizations.
Finally, I examined the T cell response to PfSPZ attenuated by chloroquine (termed PfSPZ-CVac). T cell responses were substantially higher than achieved with comparable PfSPZ Vaccine doses. Additionally, a significantly higher proportion of PfSPZ-specific CD4 T cells were polyfunctional, simultaneously expressing IFN-γ, IL-2, and TNF-α, in subjects that were protected from CHMI.
In sum, these studies provide insight into the immunobiology of a protective immune response that may guide future malaria vaccine development efforts.
Articulating the role of models in science education: Exploring the use of models in effective science pedagogies
Keywords: MLT
Science
MLT2017

The aim of the study is to articulate the role of models in Science education. Models have been used to represent phenomena in the natural world, to facilitate the understanding of abstract scientific concepts. How models make sense of the observed diversity of natural phenomena has been acknowledged in many science curricula and syllabi (OCR, 2016; NGSS, 2013). Visualizing models is important, as well as “understanding the natures of analogy and of metaphor, processes which are central to models and modelling” (Gilbert, 2004, p. 115).
Can exposure to self-regulatory strategies help boys to improve attainment in Dual Award Science at GCSE level?
Keywords: MLT
MLT2017
Science

Self-regulation is one of the key attributes linked with the successful learner. Positive outcomes in every stage of schooling have been linked to attributes associated with self-regulated learning, however, promoting the skills, attributes or strategies required for accomplishing a student’s learning goals, or their desired outcomes, is much harder than simply relating these personal qualities with success.
Over the course of this research project I have attempted to summarise the key literature to establish the most important strands that are associated with the self-regulated learner. I then devised a yearlong intervention based upon this research for year 11 Science students approaching IGCSE examinations. The success of this was measured in two ways: results were compared with the previous cohort, who, through baseline data can be regarded comparable and broadly equivalent. The other measure utilised was the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, which was distributed at the beginning and end of the intervention.
Through conducting this intervention exposing students to theory and practical ideas, their self-regulatory attributes improved slightly, I found a relationship between the achievement of top grades in Science with self-regulatory behaviours and attitudes. The high grades achieved meant a slight improvement on the IGCSE outcomes expected which, though not statistically significant, encourages me in implementing similar interventions on a broader scale in the future.
Carmen heroum: Greek epic in Roman friezes
Keywords: Roman
Fresco
Iliad
Odyssey
Gladiators
Epic
Wallpainting

Roman wallpainting has been the subject of innumerable studies from the eighteenth century to the present day, but the epic-themed friezes of Late Republican and Early Imperial Italy have been comparatively neglected throughout this history of scholarship. This thesis therefore seeks to examine the three painted and stucco Iliad friezes from Pompeii, all found on the Via dell'Abbondanza, and the Odyssey frescoes from a house on the Esquiline in Rome, as four examples of a type which had a long history in the Graeco-Roman world, even if their survival in the archaeological record is scant.
The primary aim of the study is to understand each frieze in the knowledge of how they might have been regarded in antiquity, as elucidated in Pausanias' commentaries on Polygnotus' Iliupersis and Nekyia frescoes in Delphi, and to understand their extra-textual insertions and spelling discrepancies not as artistic errors but as reflections of the geographical and chronological contexts in which the friezes were displayed. Through detailed study of their iconography and epigraphy, alongside contemporary writers' discussion of the epic genre and its specific concerns for a Roman audience, this study aims to show that the most fruitful course of enquiry pertaining to the friezes lies not in an argument about whether they are entirely faithful to the Homeric epics or depart from them in puzzling ways, but in the observation that reliance on the text and free play on it go hand in hand as part of the epic reception-culture within which these paintings belong.
An investigation into the impact of flipped learning homework tasks on pupil motivation in science education
Keywords: MLT2017
Science
MLT

Homework is almost universally set and yet for some pupils it can be demotivating. In this study I aim to see whether the use of flipped learning (Bergman & Sams, 2012) homework tasks can serve to increase motivation. Over the course of a term, in two sets of year 12 biology, Kahn Academy videos were used to deliver 2 cycles of action research. Pupils were asked to watch videos and simultaneously make notes; in the following lesson they completed tasks to help consolidate their learning. Motivation was measured using the Science Motivation Questionnaire II (Glynn et al., 2011) and focus group interviews. The SMQII is designed to measure 5 aspects of motivation: intrinsic motivation; self-efficacy; self determination; grade motivation and career motivation.
The results of the study were notably different for the two sets. The SMQII results showed that flipped learning increased the motivation levels of the higher attaining set and decreased motivation in the other, lower ability, class. Interview data demonstrates the value of flipped learning in increasing self-efficacy and self-regulation in some pupils, but it is challenging and demotivating to others. It is evident from this study that for flipped learning to be effective, it is crucial that pupils are supported with appropriate resources. This evidence has helped to inform a review of homework in my secondary school and flipped learning will be employed in the biology department next year.