VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Building the plane as you fly it: young diasporan engagement in Ethiopian development
Keywords: Social Practice
Migrant Descendants
Critical Development Studies
Diaspora Engagement

This thesis explores the relationship between identity, social interaction, and social practice, through a case study of young diasporans of Ethiopian origin (YDEOs) from North America and their engagements in Ethiopian development initiatives. Specifically, I examine the ways in which people of Ethiopian descent born and/or raised in Canada and the U.S. construct a diasporic identity and engage with Ethiopian development initiatives through a mutually constitutive process. My methods were qualitative and involved conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews with 55 YDEOs and attending 8 community events in Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa. All of the YDEOs I interviewed had actively engaged in initiatives (based in North America or Ethiopia) intended to contribute towards the social, political, and/or economic development of Ethiopia.
Their initiatives included fundraising events, establishing local NGOs, volunteer missions, and taking professional positions within the Ethiopian development sector, among others. Utilising an interactionist theoretical framework, I unpack YDEO motivations for engaging in Ethiopian development, the nature of the development activities themselves, and the ways in which these experiences have shaped YDEO relationships, identities, and trajectories in life so far.
Engaging in Ethiopian development was rarely expressed as an extension of a pre-existing sense of Ethiopian patriotism; rather, YDEOs used these practices to explore, test, or build a sense of connection to their country of origin. Further, the development framework made it possible for them to forge a relationship that also resonated with their other social identities, and could even be leveraged to further other personal and professional goals. YDEO engagements in Ethiopian development were not simply interventions; they were fundamentally social processes defined by social interactions. In the process of organising fundraising events, volunteering at orphanages, and working on project reports, YDEOs were also building personal connections, gaining social capital, and redefining attitudes towards their families, communities, development, and Ethiopia itself.
This thesis contributes an in-depth and critical analysis of the diaspora/development nexus – a nexus that emerges as a contested space, where people act and are acted upon, where identities are reified and transformed, and where institutions and social structures are both strengthened and challenged. The insights from migrant descendant experiences, such as YDEOs, highlights the ways in which diasporic identities take shape and are imbued with meaning through social practice, and how these practices are connected to broader human psychosocial needs, aspirations, and behaviours.
The judiciary and the political use and abuse of the law by the Caroline regime 1625-1640
Keywords: personal rule
judges
Charles I
political abuse of law
political management

In December 1640 the Long Parliament brought accusations against Lord Keeper Finch and six judges of the three main Westminster courts. These asserted the illegality of decisions and opinions given by these judges. This thesis examines those accusations and argues that the government of Charles I engaged in a defensible process of political management of the law and the judges to legitimate its policies particularly after the suspension of parliament in 1629. This policy emerged as a response to the government's difficulties in enforcing the payment of the Forced Loan caused by its dubious legality. The policy took advantage of important features of the contemporary relationship between the law and the government and it had five features. The most senior and able lawyers were recruited as government law officers and counsel. They amassed and used a substantial and well researched body of legal authority to support royal rights. The chief justices were appointed from amongst the government lawyers and were used as political managers of their courts. New incentives were offered as rewards for the most senior judges. Judicial views on aspects of government policy were sought in advance and the Privy Council was used to by-pass the judges if necessary. These features are examined in relation to government revenue policies including distraint of knighthood fines and the forest laws, and religious policies in relation to the application of the writ of prohibition to the economic condition of the Church and High Commission. The application of this analysis to the Ship Money Case is considered. It is concluded that the judges were manipulated rather than coerced and often successfully avoided the pressure by technical stratagems. Most importantly the government showed that it generally had the law on its side. That had serious political implications but went a long way towards exonerating the judges.
The associations of informal coercion with legal compulsion, clinical outcomes and the therapeutic relationship in community mental health care
Keywords: therapeutic relationship
community care
informal coercion
involuntary care
psychosis
mental health care

In addition to involuntary treatment, patients with severe mental illness are routinely subject to other pressures such as leverage to improve their adherence to treatment. Little clinical or research attention has been given to these pressures and their associations with both involuntary treatment and clinical outcomes are poorly understood. My thesis aims to test whether the imposing of compulsion affects patients' experience of leverage and whether leverage affects treatment outcomes. It also examines whether patients' relationships with clinicians influence their perception of the coerciveness of involuntary treatment.
The thesis begins with a scoping review of current knowledge about non-legislated pressures and identifies their widespread use and limited associations with patient characteristics and outcomes. My empirical studies find that involuntary and voluntary patients do not report different rates of leverage, that leverage is not related to better outcomes, and that the therapeutic relationship does not moderate perceived coercion.
My studies suggest that involuntary treatment does not liberate patients from other pressures, but there is also no evidence that clinicians were more controlling with involuntary patients. Unlike legal compulsion, the use of leverage may be a more integral part of clinical practice rather than a considered strategy. Such pressures restrict patient autonomy but their use is neither monitored nor regulated. I found no justification for them in benefits to patients. In contrast to the positive effects of 'procedural justice' I found no evidence that the therapeutic relationship independently alters perceived coercion. Policies and formal training should increase clinicians’ awareness of non-statutory pressures to improve their skills and reduce coercion.
Pope's poetic legacy, 1744-1830
Keywords: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
JOHN KEATS
ALEXANDER POPE
JOSEPH WARTON
PRE-ROMANTICISM
WILLIAM COWPER
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
ROMANTICISM

Jerome McGann observes that 'DECEPTIVE apparitions haunt romantic writing'. This thesis investigates one such haunting apparition; it analyses the ways in which selected eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century poets engage with the poetry of Alexander Pope. The received view of "Romantic" anti-Popeanism is expressed in comments such as that of William Hazlitt's—'I do not think there is any point of sympathy between Pope and the Lake School: on the contrary, I know there is an antipathy between them'. There is plenty of evidence to suggest some Romantic writers had an aversion to the previous literary age. In a letter to his brother and sister-in-law in March 1819, for example, Keats reviews a play by mocking that it ‘was bad even in comparison with...the Augustan age’. Pope had been the pre-eminent figure of Augustan poetry. Hence, the argument runs, Pope was rejected wholesale by Romantic poets.
Such an understanding of literary history is, however, too dogmatic. Rather than accepting the view that the progression from Pope's era to the Romantic period involved a sudden pivot in taste, I explore how Popean poetic principles filtered into the development of his successors' literary aesthetics and ideas about poetry. The central questions I ask are how, and in what ways, Pope's successors used Pope’s poetry to formulate their own poetic visions. I address these questions in four main chapters. In the first, I analyse Joseph Warton's An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope. I show that Warton's Essay on Pope should not be taken as a denigration of Pope's poetic achievement, and suggest ways in which Pope's work permeates his, and his brother Thomas', poetry. In the second, I examine the response to Pope's Iliad, a text which prompted conflicting reactions among his successors. In particular, I appraise William Cowper’s response to Pope's translation, not only as contained in his prose discussion of it, but also as revealed by his own translation. My third chapter considers ways in which Wordsworth plays with Pope’s poetic legacy, and acknowledges Pope’s contribution to the formulation of his own ideas of what constitutes good poetry. In the final chapter, I illustrate that even in the poetry of Keats—who, at times, vociferously rejects Pope as a mere handicraftsman—there is a sympathy in song between brother-poets.
Literary criticism has often stressed the prominence of authors such as Lord Byron, Erasmus Darwin and George Crabbe in Pope's poetic reception and legacy. Yet Pope haunts other writers in subtler, but no less compelling, ways. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge observes, in Biographia Literaria, 'many...formed...their notions of poetry, from the writings of Mr. Pope'. What I try to give colour to here are some of the ways in which subsequent 'notions of poetry' were 'formed' from ‘the writings of Mr. Pope’.
Mistake as an unjust factor: autonomy and unjust enrichment
Keywords: restitution
misprediction
ignorance
unjust enrichment
mistake

This thesis is about the law of mistake in the law of unjust enrichment. It argues that a particular, autonomy-based normative account explains and justifies the current substantive law of mistake, and goes on to suggest consequential resolutions for some of the remaining controversial areas of the law. The normative account is that the justification for recognising mistake as a reason for restitution – what makes the mistaken enrichment 'unjust' – is the value given to the personal autonomy of individuals in determining the terms on which their resources are disposed. That account explains why the law of unjust enrichment has an initial but not exclusive focus on the claimant's intention, including that it must be present, properly formed and properly effected; and for the law of mistake specifically, the account provides a coherent explanation for why the established or 'core' areas of the law appear the way they do. In relation to the still controversial areas of mistake, the same account suggests that: (i) a reasonable degree of uncertainty or doubt should deny an unjust enrichment action based on mistake; (ii) causative ignorance is neither a mistake nor should it be recognised as an unjust factor; (iii) voluntary dispositions should be considered unjust once causative mistake is established; and (iv) while the line between mistakes and mispredictions is blurred in certain circumstances, clear and sound resolutions can be structured on the basis of the autonomy-centred normative account.
Newman's idea of beauty: the nature, importance and role of beauty in John Henry Newman's life and work
Keywords: music
architecture
beauty
John Henry Newman
theology
aesthetics
liturgy
art

Newman’s 'idea' of beauty subsists in the power of sensible and intellectual harmony and order which we perceive in the world, to draw us towards its perfect fullness in God. Seeing natural beauty in this world as the 'shadows and images' of a greater, spiritual reality in heaven, beyond the concealing veil of matter, he also identified in 'unearthly' personal holiness a participation in God's perfection. Both holiness and the beauty of nature evoke memories of Eden, lost by sin. His understanding of the 'mysterious' connection between this world and heaven was deepened when he adopted the sacramental idea, in which the material world becomes a vehicle for the revelation of the spiritual, and earthly worship an image of the eternal worship of heaven.
In music he identified the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound, recognized from its emotive power as coming to us as echoes from our true home. His use and understanding of art and architecture in the service of religion demonstrate his love of 'frugality' expressed nonetheless through rich effects to create a foretaste of beauty in heaven.
He recognized the need for a hermeneutic to distinguish false and misleading forms of beauty from that which is 'true', i.e. of God. Hence he identified a teleological purpose in beauty, which, interpreted in the light of revelation, draws humanity towards its destiny of the beatific vision of God's infinite perfections and an eternal share in God's glory. His priestly apostolate consisted in guiding souls to heavenly truth, fulfilment of all that is communicated in the liturgy and sacraments.
Evolution on the microbial battlefield
Keywords: Ecoevolutionary Simulations
Sociobiology
Ecoevolutionary Modelling
Horizontal Gene Transfer
Mathematical Modelling
Bacterial Interactions

Microbes live in dense communities where strains and species compete for space and nutrients. Cells within these communities produce a large array of secretions, such as toxins or scavenging molecules, that kill and inhibit other strains. While competition is common and important for microbes, its impacts on their communities remains poorly understood. In this thesis, I study the impacts of competition on (1) the evolution of secretions and (2) horizontal gene transfer. Using a wide range of approaches, including game theory, population genetics, differential equations and individual-based models, I investigate the evolution and ecology of diverse microbial communities. First, I study the production of iron- scavenging siderophores–a trait often assumed to be cooperative–and show how they can function as a competitive trait that harms other strains by starving them of iron. My competitive model predicts that siderophores should be upregulated in response to competitors and I show this fits with both published and new experimental data (Chapter 2). I next study the logic of bacterial warfare proper: the evolution of strategies to produce antibiotics and bacteriocins to kill other strains. I show that the most robust strategy for using antibiotics is to attack only when detecting the attack of others, a negative form of tit-for-tat (Chapter 3). The second half of my thesis studies how competition influences another major bacterial trait, horizontal gene transfer. Firstly, I show how competition and migration combine to enable single genes to sweep horizontally through microbial communities, thus providing an explanation for a large body of data that shows that these sweeps are both common and important (Chapter 4). Finally, I ask how genetic transfer can evolve in microbial communities, despite the potential for high individual costs from taking up foreign DNA. As for the evolution of sex in eukaryotes, I show that epistasis for fitness can promote horizontal transfer under certain conditions. However, by studying regulated gene transfer, I argue that key to horizontal transfer evolution in bacteria is their ability to actively upregulate transfer in response to stress (Chapter 5). My thesis helps to map out the rules of interaction in microbial communities, and how these rules affect major phenotypes, including siderophores, antibiotics and horizontal genetic transfer. To close, I discuss how the effects of clinical antibiotics mirrors many of the effects of natural competition between microbial strains. I argue that only by understanding natural competition can we understand how the use, and overuse, of clinical antibiotics affects microbes.
Radiality and spokes: a structural theory of convergence
Keywords: Convergence
Fréchet-Urysohn
Radial
Spoke

This thesis is a wide-ranging investigation of convergence properties in topological spaces, primarily Fréchet-Urysohn and radial spaces. The former are spaces such that every point in a closure of a subset is the limit of a sequence from within that set. The latter is a generalisation, defined by replacing 'sequence' with 'transfinite sequence'. Although not all spaces have these properties, they form a large enough class to encompass many important examples of spaces.
These convergence properties can and should be studied locally and structurally. The first is achieved by removing the quantification over points in the definitions. For the second, we introduce the notion of spokes for points in topological spaces, which are sub-spaces for which the point has a descending neighbourhood base.
In Chapter I, we introduce several convergence properties, and recall how they are connected and characterised by particular quotient maps. We also introduce p-character and quasi-isolation, to give our results full generality by not assuming the T1-axiom.
Our main focus is the development of the theory of spokes in Chapter II. Here, we study how spokes can be used to approximate the neighbourhood base of a radial point and how (transfinite) sequences converge. We prove several characterisation theorems for radial and Fréchet-Urysohn points and their relationship with independently-based points, which are described through nests. We also use spokes in productivity problems and variants of the Fréchet-Urysohn property.
In the final chapter, we demonstrate how properties of spokes manifest in different settings. For example, in compactifications of locally-compact spaces, spoke structures at the point-at-infinity reflect into the compact structure of the original space. Other examples are obtained by dualities, characterising radiality in ring spectra or Stone spaces algebraically. Such results justify using internal structures to investigate convergence properties and the author wishes to continue this line of investigation for the foreseeable future.
Structural chemistry of transition metal dicyanometallates
Keywords: Cyanide
Dicyanometallate
Metal–Organic Frameworks
Coordination polymer

Transition metal dicyanometallates are a family of coordination polymers characterised by their structural diversity and nanoscale separation between transition metal centres. This thesis addresses the relationships between molecular extra-framework cations and their host dicyanometallate frameworks as determinants of structure type and phase transitions. It also addresses the new tilt degrees of freedom accessible to perovskite-structured dicyanometallates and molecular perovskites more generally. A number of new dicyanometallate frameworks are reported which contain the extra-framework cations tetraethylammonium, [NEt4]+, tetra-n-butylammonium, [NBu4]+, and bis(triphenylphosphine)iminium, [PPN]+ = {[(C6H5)3P]2N}+. These new compounds are placed within the context of all known dicyanometallate frameworks of general formula AmB(L)Xn·G where A is an extra- framework cation; B is a metal cation; X is [Au(CN)2]−, [Ag(CN)2]−, or [Cu(CN)2]−; L is a neutral ligand bound to the node metal centre (i.e., not to the linker metal); and G is a non-coordinating guest molecule. They are organised according to their stoichiometry, AmBXn, showing the dual importance of size/shape of extra- framework cations and the coordinational preferences of the framework cation. The interdependence of degrees of freedom associated with extra-framework cations and with their host frameworks are explored in a diamondoid system and in a number of perovskite-like systems. In the diamondoid system [NEt4]Ag[Ag(CN)2]2, coupling between [NEt4]+ conformation and lattice modes results in a second-order phase transition to an incommensurately modulated phase at low temperatures. There are few reports of incommensurability in coordination polymers; coupling of ‘molecular’ degrees of freedom with phonons is of fundamental interest and has been implicated in the performance of lead halide perovskites in solar cells. Dicyanometallates with perovskite(-related) structures are here shown to undergo a variety of displacive and reconstructive phase transitions as a function of temperature. In each case, the extra-framework species play a key role in determining the nature of the transitions. In molecular perovskite analogues, tilt degrees of freedom can couple at arbitrary periodicities not accessible to oxides/halides. The ‘tilt tensor’ is developed here as a tool for describing these tilts. This understanding of unconventional tilts is finally applied to the Prussian Blue analogue (NH4)2SrFe(CN)6 in which such tilts can be switched on and off depending on hydration state.
Rethinking 'rubber stamps': Legislative subservience, executive factionalism, and policy-making in the Russian State Duma
Keywords: Policy-making
Legislature
Russian State Duma
Authoritarian
Executive

Conventional wisdom views authoritarian legislatures as 'rubber stamps'. According to this model, non-democratic parliaments are entirely subservient to dominant executives, having no influence on the development of policy; as a result, all bills introduced into the legislature become laws without amendment. Although these bodies might perform other functions, they serve – according to this account – a purely ceremonial function in the policy-making process.
There is evidence, however, inconsistent with this portrayal from a range of non-democracies, including evidence of executive bill failure and bill amendment. Existing attempts to explain these apparently deviant observations refer to some degree of legislative autonomy – bills fail and change as a result of legislator influence. According to these accounts, authoritarian elites use legislatures to co-opt members of the opposition and to gather information about citizen grievances.
This dissertation, in contrast, argues that legislative activity in non-democracies can be driven by executive concerns. Whereas the 'rubber stamp' model infers from executive dominance an absence of legislative activity, the approach proposed by this dissertation suggests there are a variety of reasons why executive actors might want to amend or kill off their own bills in the legislature. In particular, these legislative policy developments can result from clashes between executive factions, which use legislative institutions to monitor, challenge, and amend each others' proposals. This dissertation proposes and assesses this new approach using fine-grained data on legislative processes and outputs from the contemporary Russian State Duma. The analysis draws on a variety of data sources, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings suggest that legislative institutions can still 'matter' in non-democracies, even with an entirely subservient body of legislators.