VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Government is a legal fiction’: performing political power in Zimbabwe’s magistrates’ courts after 2000
Keywords: Politics
Zimbabwe
Courts
Performance
Law

This thesis examines the role of law in defining and debating state authority, citizenship, and politics within postcolonial regimes. Drawing on the case of Zimbabwe, I explore this topic by analysing how and why the courts remained productive sites for public contestation over the form and function of the state, and over claims to citizenship in relation to it, between 2000 and 2012. During this period of intense political contestation, the judiciary came under verbal and physical attack while its institutions were used to arrest, detain, and try members of the opposition to the ruling party, ZANU-PF. By focusing on such politically motivated trials, the study engages with scholarly debates on the potential of law to reproduce or transform social and political power relations. First, I examine negotiations over the place of law within Zimbabwe’s history and, more specifically, within judicial institutions after 2000. I argue that the legitimacy of law as it relates to state authority has a long, contested history, in which coercive uses of law sat alongside displays of ‘professional’ conduct aimed at safeguarding ‘substantial justice’ through ethical, rule-bound behaviour. I therefore propose that we examine the political contestations of law within postcolonial states not as expressions of the ‘fetishisation of law’, but rather as the product of competing mobilisations of state consciousness, a concept which combines articulations of legal consciousness with ideas of the state. Secondly, I assess how these debates within state institutions interacted with the ‘legal’ and ‘state’ consciousness citizens, political activists, and human rights lawyers articulated and performed. Contrary to studies which examine appeals to law as acts of resistance by marginalised orders for inclusion in dominant modes of rule, I argue that it was not recognition by but of this formal, rule-bound ordering, and the form of citizenship it stood for, that was at stake in legal engagements. Thirdly, to interrogate how the different uses of law informed debates on state authority and citizenship, I examine the interactions between performance, narrative and history within the courtroom, and beyond, to demonstrate the production of authority during processes of arrest and detention, as well as in the courts. I conclude that situating courtroom performances within their historical and political context is critical to our understanding of the place of law in the construction and contestation of the postcolonial state, and that it reveals a ‘fragmented hegemony’ of law that provides a telling window on struggles over citizenship.
Titanium layered double hydroxides for photocatalytic applications
Keywords: layered double hydroxides
organic molecule oxidation
catalysis
solid state chemistry
inorganic chemistry
photocatalysis
photo-oxidation

This thesis discusses the development of novel titanium-containing layered double hydroxides (Ti-LDHs) as semiconductor photocatalysts for the photo-oxidation of simple organic molecules. LDHs are introduced in Chapter 1 as compositionally flexible anionic clays, whose layered structure and tuneable properties make them highly interesting in a wide range of applications, including environmental purification, drug delivery and photocatalysis. In the latter case, LDHs have been used primarily in the photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants, photo-reduction of CO2 and photocatalytic water splitting. Only limited research has been done into the controlled organic molecule photo-oxidation, where the oxidation is stopped at an intermediate stage rather than proceeding all the way to degradation products.
Chapter 2 outlines the five different synthetic methods for Ti-LDH preparation and their viability in the synthesis of pure NiTi- and MgAlTi-LDHs with different Ni:Ti and Al:Ti ratios, respectively. The crystallinity, morphology, structure, composition and band gap energies of the Ti-LDHs were analysed, so as to determine the effect of the synthetic conditions and Ti content on their properties. Furthermore, the highly crystalline urea hydrothermal MgAlTi-LDH samples were characterised by high-angle annular dark-field imaging (HAADF) as well as by 1H, 27Al and 47/49Ti solid state NMR spectroscopy.
In Chapter 3, the activity of the Ti-LDHs in the photo-oxidation of diphenylmethanol is studied, and compared to that of anatase TiO2 as a benchmark photocatalyst. The importance of short-wavelength radiation is discussed, especially for control experiments in the absence of a catalyst. The effects of the synthetic method, Ti content, catalyst and reactant loading, and irradiation time were examined for selected Ti-LDHs.
Chapter 4 extends the study of the photocatalytic properties of Ti-LDHs beyond diphenylmethanol photo-oxidation to also include benzyl alcohol, cyclooctanol and benzylamine. This allows the determination of whether Ti-LDHs can be used to photo-oxidise a wider range of functional groups as part of either aromatic or aliphatic systems.
Lastly, Chapter 5 details the synthesis and characterisation of TiO2@Ti-LDH core-shell hybrid materials, and looks at their application in the photo-oxidation of diphenylmethanol. The conversion using the core-shell photocatalysts was compared to that obtained with a mechanical mixture of TiO2 and Ti-LDHs, in order to study any synergistic heterojunction effects.
Design and synthesis of fluorogenic oligonucleotide-based systems to target double-stranded DNA
Keywords: Nucleic Acid Chemistry
TOTFO
CRISPR-Cas9
Fluorogenic probes

Fluorogenic oligonucleotide-based systems are important tools for sequence-specific DNA targeting. Fluorescence systems use the emission of a photon from an excited molecule (fluorophore) to produce a detectable signal. It is a highly sensitive process and its versatility has expanded its use to DNA targeting probes. The aim of the work herein is to investigate the design and synthesis of fluorogenic oligonucleotide-based systems specifically for targeting double-stranded DNA.
Triplex-forming oligonucleotides can bind in the major groove of dsDNA through Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding to form triplexes (triple helixes). While other methods of dsDNA detection rely on denaturation of the double-stranded target, triplexes do not, and, hence, they provide a versatile approach to DNA recognition. However, the instability of triplexes, especially at neutral pH, limits their applications. The incorporation of a fluorogenic intercalator, thiazole orange, covalently attached to the TFO provides a triplex-stabilising moiety. The stabilising effect of thiazole orange is additive; multiple incorporations can produce triplexes with increased stability of +50 °C even at neutral pH. The extreme stability provided from the modified fluorogenic TFOs allows increased duplex binding affinity and can compensate for the limited target range of TFOs.
CRISPR-Cas is a programmable biological research tool that is invaluable in gene- editing and genomic imaging technologies. The introduction of fluorogenic moieties both on the dCas9 enzyme and in guide RNA is crucial for imaging but often leads to high background fluorescence in biological systems. By modifying the gRNA to contain an ‘on/off’ fluorogenic system, genomic imaging in live cells of repetitive elements is improved and is cross-validated by GFP-tagged dCas9.
The efficient synthesis of long, modified RNA is fundamental, particularly in CRISPR research. The introduction of an azide moiety into RNA to provide a means of ‘clicking’ modified RNA strands together is an important potential approach. However, it is limited by the protecting groups used for RNA and, in turn, this hinders the length of efficient RNA synthesis. The synthesis of a clickable moiety compatible with 2'-O-TC RNA chemistry is investigated as it could provide a simple and cost- effective route to modified guide RNA and could be instrumental in applications such as modified guide RNA library generation.
Overall, the aims of this study were to synthesise and develop fluorogenic oligonucleotide-based systems and investigate their potential applications.
Spatial compartmentalisation of regulatory T cells within intestinal lymphoid tissue
Keywords: antigen specificity
Microbiome
Tregs
Helicobacter Hepaticus
T cells

Gut tissue-associated lymphoid structures include a heterogenous spectrum of lymphoid clusters of varying size and maturity, however little is known about their functional relevance. We hypothesise that lymphoid structure may promote gut homeostasis through a number of potential local mechanisms that is currently unclear.
Firstly, signalling and subsequent repair of tissue injury is regulated by the alarmin IL-33, which has been shown to be expressed by non-immune cells within lymphoid structures. IL33 signals through its receptor ST2 which present on a subset of Tregs. Thus, IL-33 signalling to ST2+ Tregs within lymphoid structures may constitute one important pathway that promotes gut health. Secondly, lymphoid structures have been reported to act as regional hubs of immunity. Local priming of commensal-reactive T cells within lymphoid structures could promote the activation and function of T cells, inducing their tolerance towards intestinal microbiota.
Using a combination of multi-parameter flow cytometry and histo-cytometry, we firstly characterised lymphoid structures of the murine gut, and report distinct differences in their architecture and complexity at different anatomical sites. We confirmed the presence of both IL-33-producing cells and ST2+ Tregs at close proximity to each other within lymphoid structures. However, ST2+ Tregs were not found to be spatially closer to IL-33-producing cells compared to the ST2- Treg subset during health and disease, indicating a close interaction may not be strictly necessary for optimal IL-33 cytokine function.
Next, we employed a T cell receptor transgenic mouse model specific to the pathobiont Helicobacter hepaticus, and used advanced in vivo live imaging techniques to study the compartmentalised induction, phenotype and function of commensal-reactive T cells within lymphoid structures as compared to the surrounding lamina propria tissue. Our results show a spatial compartmentalisation of regulatory IL-10 production by Helicobacter hepaticus- specific Tregs in the lamina propria tissue, distinct from lymphoid structures. Unique transcriptional differences in dendritic cells at these distinct spatial sites may drive IL-10 production at some, but not other locations within the tissue microenvironments.
Altogether, we highlight the complex cellular interactions that occur within intestinal tissue-associated lymphoid structures that promote gut health. We use advanced imaging techniques to further our understanding of the behaviour of T cells in response to microbial antigen in vivo and our findings show tissue-associated lymphoid structures and the lamina propria tissue support Treg functions in distinct ways.
Video understanding using multimodal deep learning
Keywords: deep learning
multisensory
multimodal
neural networks
cross-modal

Our experience of the world is multimodal, however deep learning networks have been traditionally designed for and trained on unimodal inputs such as images, audio segments or text. In this thesis we develop strategies to exploit multimodal information (in the form of vision, text, speech and non-speech audio) for the automatic understanding of human-centric videos. The key ideas developed in this thesis are (i) Cross-modal Supervision, (ii) Self-supervised Representation Learning, and (iii) Modality Fusion.
In cross-modal supervision, data labels from a supervision-rich modality are used to learn representations in another, supervision-starved target modality, eschewing the need for costly manual annotation in the target modality domain. This effectively exploits the redundant, or overlapping information between modalities. We demonstrate the utility of this technique for three different tasks; First we use face recognition and visual active speaker detection to curate a large scale audio-visual dataset of human speech called VoxCeleb, training on which yields state of the art models for speaker recognition; Second we train a text-based model to predict action labels from transcribed speech alone, and transfer these labels to accompanying videos. Training with these labels allows us to outperform fully supervised action recognition models trained with costly manual supervision; Third, we distill the information from a face model trained for emotion recognition to the speech domain, where manual emotion annotation is expensive.
The second key idea explored in this thesis is the use of modality redundancy for self-supervised representation learning. Here we learn audio-visual representations without any manual supervision in either modality, specifically for human faces and voices. Unlike existing representations, our joint representations enable cross-modal retrieval from audio to vision and vice-versa. We then extend this work to explicitly remove learnt biases, enabling greater generalisation.
Finally, we effectively combine the complementary information in different modalities through the development of new modality fusion architectures. By distilling the information from multiple modalities in a video to a single, compact video representation, we achieve robustness to unimodal inputs which can be missing, corrupted, occluded, or have various levels of background noise. With these models we achieve state of the art results in both action recognition and video-text retrieval.
Boom and bust diplomacy: the financial crisis of 1873 and U.S. foreign relations
Keywords: bonds
capital movements
western expansion
continental empire
international investment
consular and diplomatic service
financial crises
transatlantic networks
railroads
national debt

This thesis explains the intertwined financial, diplomatic, and global economic roots of the longest depression in U.S. history. Contrary to existing scholarship that tells the story of the Panic of 1873 as a railroad mania, it shows that the crash resulted from the post-war construction, and eventual collapse, of a transatlantic bubble of imperial imagination. A forcefully crafted yet premature and fragile narrative of rapid national consolidation and commercial expansion guided the rise and fall of investor confidence. Ideas of a reunified country with control over vast amounts of land and resources—and a capacious continental marketplace with growing ties to global trade—offered seemingly unbounded opportunities for financial returns.
An instance of capitalist exceptionalism, this convenient projection justified how anticipated profits could defy previous capitalist norms. When investors bought railroad securities with questionable promises, they also bought into a corporatizing sales narrative of the future United States. Nursed by financial and diplomatic elites, this ‘nation brand’ imagined American empire in the vernacular of the market, emphasizing its civilisational worth and financial profitability. The brand manipulated investor confidence, altered risk perceptions, and fuelled the boom. Its collapse, amidst a series of embarrassments that undermined the performance of American creditworthiness and credibility, and attested to the challenges of nation-building, led directly to the bust.
The thesis ties the economic phenomenon of a bubble to the grand narratives and quotidian practice of transatlantic brand salesmanship (or ‘boom diplomacy’). In recasting an overly structural view of financial crises, Boom and Bust Diplomacy looks for the ways in which racialised and gendered narratives, elite sociability, and diplomatic credibility created financial knowledge and changed the credit cycle. The social, cultural, and political performance of creditworthiness in the post-Civil War era thus produced the conditions for the spectacular crash of 1873.
More broadly, the ongoing financialisation of manifest destiny—as a public-private process of market-making, nation-building, and empire creation—also forged lasting links between the worlds of international investment and U.S. foreign affairs. The ‘brokering’ of transatlantic relations by border-crossing financiers, merchants, consuls, and diplomats not only explains the transition from U.S. debtor to dollar diplomacy in the late-nineteenth century. It ultimately also suggests that between Civil War and World War, both the boom and bust cycle of the U.S. economy and American foreign relations were rooted in the same transnational and transimperial money networks.
Veterans of the Great War in interbellum Czechoslovakia
Keywords: history
veterans
interwar Czechoslovakia
Great War

In 1918, Czechoslovakia emerged in the final moments of the Great War as one of the successors to the Habsburgs. The conflict left the new republic with a complex legacy; its future citizens had fought during the war both on the side of the Central Powers and that of the Triple Entente. This thesis explores the interwar world of Czechoslovak veterans to understand how Czechoslovakia and its society dealt with the complicated memory and legacy of the Great War.
The thesis explores the tension between the official state narrative, which celebrated a relatively small number of soldiers who had fought in the Allied units and became known in the republic as the legionaries, and the Austro-Hungarian past of the vast majority of the Czechoslovak veterans. Through several different topics, it analyses how the ex-servicemen perceived and portrayed their wartime service, how the state approached and treated them, and how these men participated in Czechoslovak society. In particular, the thesis focuses on disabled veterans, who, unlike their able-bodied counterparts, left behind a relatively large number of historical sources.
The thesis shows the complicated and contested position of the Great War and its veterans in Czechoslovak society. After the end of the conflict, these men produced various narratives with which they explained their past military service. The Czechoslovak state and society did not treat all veterans equally; various factors influenced how they were perceived. During the interwar period, disabled ex-servicemen participated in numerous efforts and projects, both to support the Czechoslovak state and promote peace. Most of their organisations became politicised, but they largely avoided radicalisation. Amongst themselves, different groups of veterans gradually developed a degree of cooperation. Much of this quickly changed in 1938, however, as the new world war was about to begin.
On the non-compositionality of monads via distributive laws
Keywords: Boom hierarchy
Monad compositions
Monads
Algebraic theories
Distributive laws
Composite theories

Monads are a useful tool in both computer science and mathematics: they model computational behaviour, describe data structures, and give access to Kleisli and Eilenberg-Moore categories. To utilise multiple monads simultaneously, monads can sometimes be composed to form composite monads. Distributive laws ensure that such composite monads capture the full behaviour of both their components, creating a lifting of the component monads to the appropriate Kleisli or Eilenberg-Moore categories. However, for a given pair of monads there does not necessarily exist a distributive law to compose them.
This thesis presents a new method to prove so called no-go theorems: theorems that identify cases in which a distributive law cannot exist. The method, which uses an algebraic perspective on monads, has unique advantages over the more usual categorical approaches. The most important advantage is that it produces no-go theorems that identify large classes of monads that do not compose via distributive laws, where previously only a few specific counterexamples were known.
Among the many examples in this thesis, there are several that answer open questions from the literature, and some that identify previously unnoticed mistakes in the literature. Our no-go theorems will hopefully prevent these type of mistakes from happening in future.
Honest fitness advertisement in European badgers (Meles meles) 
Keywords: Scent secretion
Olfaction
Mustelids
Badger
Urine
Meles meles
Metabolic by-product
Scent marking
Olfactory communication

By using European badgers (Meles meles) as a model species, my thesis examines how wild mammalian populations utilise olfactory communication via specialised glandular secretions and metabolic by-products when advertising fitness-related information to conspecifics. This research utilised bomb calorimetry to quantify energetic content within subcaudal gland secretion (a uniquely evolved scent gland), enzyme immunoassays to measure sex-steroid levels within urine, and scent-provisioning experiments which assessed behavioural responses to particular scent marks.
Compared to other communication modalities, olfactory communication allows conspecifics to exchange individual- and group-related information without both parties (signaller and receiver) being present simultaneously. Section I addresses the factors that olfactory signals/cues must possess in order to be effective and common methodologies used within semiochemical research. Section II addresses olfactory advertisement with specialised glandular secretions with a focus on the specially evolved subcaudal gland and the secretion production costs incurred by individuals. By using bomb calorimetry and scent-provisioning experiments, I found that i) the energetic content of subcaudal secretion varies significantly based on individual fitness and season, and ii) conspecific responses vary their behavioural responses based on the perceived energetic costs along with donor-related traits (i.e., age and sex).
Metabolic by-products (e.g., urine) incur minimal production costs compared to specialised glandular secretions. Chemical profiles within urine vary depending on individual parameters, and Section III addresses if/how information encoded within urine influences conspecific responses. My findings indicated that, throughout the year, adult females responded more than adult males to urine marks while urine marks from non-resident badgers – particularly badgers from neighbouring setts – elicited more responses. Additionally, adults and cubs adjusted their behaviour accordingly when presented with urine from different species, suggesting that badgers utilise olfactory cues in risk determination.
Section IV concludes my thesis by comparing the utilisation of subcaudal gland secretions and urine within olfactory fitness advertisement. Overall, subcaudal gland secretions appear to function as a primary source for individual fitness information while urine serves a subsidiary role in fitness advertisement. Avenues for future research – particularly longitudinal studies involving the correlation of behavioural responses to reproductive output – are discussed.