VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Climate change, human rights, and adaptive mobility

This thesis explores the way that international law and its rules, rights, and obligations can address the impacts of climate change and respond to the risks they create for those most vulnerable. More specifically, it focuses on obligations related to adaptation within the climate change regime and argues that human mobility is part of the process of adaptation that States are obliged to enable in certain circumstances. In doing so, the thesis offers an addition to the legal protection provided by other areas of international law, which is often limited to movement that is forced and tends to provide legal status only after people have moved or crossed State borders. Furthermore, unlike legal scholarship that considers the problems posed by climate-related displacement, this thesis begins from the premise that mobility can be a beneficial adaptation strategy—particularly if undertaken in an anticipatory, proactive, and precautionary manner.
To reach this conclusion, the thesis applies the tools of treaty interpretation to argue that international human rights law should be integrated into the interpretation and application of adaptation obligations in the climate change regime. The analysis focuses on the rights to life and to an adequate standard of living. It highlights the need to integrate the positive duties accompanying these rights, particularly those related to survival and subsistence, which are central to the ability and decision to move. The process of interpretation also includes the operative principles of the regime, with precaution, equity, and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities being the most pertinent. Combined with the integration of international human rights law, these principles provide the basis for the key arguments of this thesis: that States must act to address foreseeable risks to human rights; in doing so, they must prioritize those most vulnerable; in some contexts, this requires that States plan for and implement measures to facilitate adaptive mobility, whether within or across borders; and that developed countries are obliged to support vulnerable developing countries in undertaking such measures.

Keywords: human mobility
international human rights law
international climate change law
international law
migration
treaty interpretation
climate change
climate change adaptation
Advisor: Redgwell, C
Costello, C
Knowledge of the natural law in the theology of John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas

This dissertation seeks to answer, by close reading of primary texts, the question of whether John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas share a common theory of natural law.
Calvin and Aquinas both use a common vocabulary of natural law inherited from antiquity. They both speak of a morally normative natural order, and appeal to nature as a morally evaluative standard when discussing practical questions. While they share a common vocabulary of natural law, however, it is not clear whether this is undergirded by a common set of theological assumptions, or whether Calvin and Aquinas have different visions of natural law, reflecting major theological differences between Reformed and Roman Catholic Christianity. Existing literature raises, but does not adequately explore, questions concerning the compatibility of Calvin’s thought on natural law with that of Aquinas.
There currently exists no book-length study of Calvin’s thought on natural law, but by comparing Calvin with Aquinas, rather than studying him alone, I hope the features of his approach can be more easily identified. The contention of this thesis is that Calvin and Aquinas do share a common vision of natural law. To establish this conclusion, I examine areas of apparent disagreement between Aquinas and Calvin that I have identified by reviewing existing comparative literature. These disagreements concern the role that natural law plays in systematic theology, the relationship between natural law and conscience, the relationship between natural law and the Decalogue, the noetic effects of sin, and the moral status of natural inclinations. In each case, I argue, apparent differences mask a deeper agreement between Aquinas and Calvin that becomes clearer when a broader range of primary texts are subjected to closer scrutiny than has hitherto been the case.

Keywords: Jacques Maritain
Stephen Brock
Catholic-Reformed Dialogue
Divine Providence
Moral Epistemology
Natural Inclination
Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas
Thomism
Calvinism
Culpability
John Calvin
Conscience
Ten Commandments
Advisor: Biggar, N
Structural cell biology of mammalian sperm

Reflecting the sheer diversity of reproductive modes and fertilization arenas, sperm are among the most structurally specialized and structurally diverse eukaryotic cell types. In this thesis, I apply recent developments in cellular cryo-electron tomography and image processing to explore the molecular landscape of mammalian sperm in a near-native state, free of artefacts from chemical fixation and heavy metal staining. I show that the major organelle-cytoskeleton interfaces in sperm, the head-tail junction and the mitochondrial sheath, are characterized by ordered supramolecular assemblies that are conserved across species. I also detail the structural elaborations that enable mammalian sperm flagella to swim through viscous fluids, from protofilament-bracing structures that reinforce microtubules at the nano-scale to large accessory structures that impose micron-scale asymmetries and anisotropies on the entire assembly. I report the native subcellular organization of the flagellar base, which is crucial for generating and shaping the flagellar beat, revealing that the connecting piece is an elastic scaffold that is remodelled during the beat cycle. I then trace membrane remodelling events during capacitation and the acrosome reaction, which are functional maturation events necessary for sperm to become fertilization-competent. I find that the unique geometry of the sperm head supports an atypical membrane fission-fusion process that maintains cell integrity while facilitating massive membrane protein relocalization, thus transforming the molecular landscape of the sperm surface and creating a platform for interaction and fusion with the egg. This thesis unveils new aspects of sperm biology at unprecedented levels of detail, thus providing vital foundations for linking molecular structure to sperm motility and energetics, sperm-egg fusion, and gamete evolution.

Keywords: mitochondria
cryo-electron tomography
cilia
cytoskeleton
sperm
centrioles
membrane fusion
Advisor: Zeev-Ben-Mordehai, T
Jones, EY
Attitudes to writing and writing performance among bilingual and monolingual children

Primary schools in UK continue to grow in linguistic diversity, yet we have limited knowledge about how the unique language experiences and contexts bilingual pupils bring to the classroom, can potentially impact the development of their writing skills. There is also an awareness of the importance that positive attitudes towards writing can possibly have on children’s subsequent outcomes. However, research seeking pupils’ attitudes on writing within a UK context, is scarce.
The present study aims to begin addressing these gaps, by investigating the role language background can play in bilingual children’s writing performance, in addition to understanding both bilingual and monolingual pupils’ attitudes towards writing.
A secondary analysis of data from Murphy et al. (2015) was undertaken. Quantitative data were analysed in investigating the relationships between 45 bilingual pupils’ language backgrounds and writing performance in the narrative and expository genres. Qualitative data consisted of interviews with 11 monolingual and bilingual pupils, that were analysed to ascertain pupils’ attitudes towards writing.
This study revealed that of the different domains of language background examined, bilingual pupils’ computer use in English was found to be positively related to their writing performance in the narrative genre, and less consistently so with the expository genre. Regarding attitudes towards writing, the study identified specific elements pupils enjoyed, disliked and found difficult about writing, but also highlighted the uncertainty some pupils expressed in their attitudes towards writing.
These findings have implications for teachers, researchers and parents in not only recognising the impact language background can have on pupils’ writing progress, but that writing tasks used to measure performance are subject to pupils’ attitudes, which may affect their engagement. We propose further research into measuring the nuances of language background, assessing the effectiveness of computer-based interventions in developing bilingual pupils’ writing, and quantifying attitudes to explore the possible relationships between pupils’ writing attitudes and their subsequent performance.

Keywords: Pupils' performance
Writing
Multilingual
Education
Bilingual
English as an Additional Language
EAL
Pupils' attitudes
Advisor: Booton, S
Children: an inheritance from the Lord. Infanticide and the value of life

Arguing from preference utilitarianism, contemporary moral philosopher Peter Singer considers infanticide permissible because infants lack the cognitive capacity to prefer life over death. Christian theologians object that Singer’s general theory offers too thin a conception of ‘the good’, fails to recognise the dependence of value on purpose and abstracts moral value from common humanity. Few confront him directly on infanticide.
Singer’s empirical claims are unconvincing, but scientific evidence alone cannot refute his judgement that the properties which normatively distinguish infants from adults (‘childness’) offer no inherent value. I argue that a Christian moral anthropology, too, privileges adultness over childness if it holds imagehood to represent properties such as rationality that adults have in common with God, but not with infants.
I set out an alternative anthropology that draws on scripture, Christian eudaimonism, neuropsychological research, and the theology and philosophy of childhood. I suggest the value of present moral action in respect of any human is the extent to which it facilitates her vocation. I describe modes in which childness enables humans to flourish at any age, thus extending the range of cognitive properties that can confer personal value on the eudaimonist account beyond rationality to include many that infants possess.
I conclude that, even while infants, humans have a vocation and are equipped both to flourish and contribute to the flourishing of others. Killing humans during infancy imperils human flourishing as decisively as during adulthood and is usually wrong, irrespective of individual capacity to prefer to live.

Keywords: Moral anthropology
Value of life
Theological anthropology
infanticide
Paediatrics
Children
Advisor: Biggar, N
The critical mean-field random cluster model

In this thesis we study the mean-field random cluster model, a random graph model in which, relative to the Erdős–Rényi model, graphs are biased to have a greater or lesser number of components, such that, in essence, large-deviations behaviour of the Erdős–Rényi model is seen. This model was independently proven to have an Erdős–Rényi-like phase transition by Stepanov [58, 59] and Bollobás, Grimmett and Janson [16], and was proven to have a critical window by Luczak and Łuczak [43]. We make progress towards demonstrating that the mean-field random cluster model also possesses a metric space scaling limit in its critical window, of the kind shown to exist for the Erdős–Rényi random graph by Addario-Berry, Broutin and Goldschmidt [3, 2].
We begin by reviewing results from the literature on scaling limits, and on limits of sequences of component sizes, for the Erdős–Rényi model; we also review existing results for the mean-field random cluster model. We go on to offer several results that form partial proofs of the existence of a scaling limit for the latter model, for differing values of the clustering parameter q, as well as some results which, while not proofs, are suggestive that the missing pieces can be filled. Along the way, we prove a number of results of independent interest about both models, including that the fixed-edge-count (as opposed to independent-edge) version of the Erdős–Rényi model has a scaling limit. We conclude by reviewing what would be necessary to complete the partial proofs, and make additional suggestions for future research.

Keywords: Scaling limit
Mean-field random cluster model
Random cluster model
Metric space scaling limit
Advisor: Goldschmidt, C
Automated non-invasive brain stimulation parameter selection using bayesian optimisation

An increasingly utilised tool in cognitive neuroscience, which is capable of drawing causal relationships between brain function and behaviour, is transcranial electrical stimulation (tES). However, this non-invasive brain stimulation technique is commonly shown to have high levels of variability when used to modulate cognitive abilities. A potential cause of this variability is the requirement for researchers to select a number of stimulation parameters such as current intensity and frequency prior to delivering stimulation to an individual. As there is a very large number of possible parameter combinations, the selection of an optimal combination with which to modulate the behaviour of interest is highly challenging. In this thesis I employ a machine learning technique called Bayesian Optimisation (BO) to automatically search through the large stimulation parameter space to identify the optimal parameters for improving cognitive performance in complex behavioural tasks. Initially, I utilise a 'standard' BO algorithm to identify optimal parameters for improving performance in a behavioural task investigating rapid instructed task learning (Chapter 3). In a subsequent chapter I validate the results of this BO algorithm in a separate study (Chapter 4). I then attempt to extend the BO algorithm to enable it to suggest personalised stimulation parameters based on an individual's personal variables. I first apply this to a sustained attention task whilst utilising a personalised variable of individual theta:beta ratio (Chapter 5). Subsequently, I apply the personalised BO (pBO) to an arithmetic task whilst considering an individual's baseline ability as the personalised variable (Chapter 6). Finally, I validate the results of the pBO algorithm in a separate study (Chapter 7). Overall, this thesis explores the use of BO algorithms to suggest parameters for neurointerventions in complex cognitive behaviours, both at a 'one-size-fits-all' and a personalised level. Whilst results from initial optimisation studies are promising, conflicting results in validation studies highlight the difficulties of applying BO to complex human behaviour and the need for validation in further work.

Keywords: tRNS
non-invasive brain stimulation
tACS
Bayesian Optimisation
tES
Advisor: Cohen Kadosh, R
Woolrich, M
Heaven on Earth: Explaining religious party formation and strength

Why do some countries have religious political parties while others do not? And why are religious parties electorally successful in some places but flop at the ballot box in others? This dissertation provides a holistic, integrated explanation of religious party development. Religious parties are formed defensively, in reaction to anticlerical campaigns by state-builders to wrest control of public services like education, poor relief, and healthcare, from religious providers. Once they are formed, the strength of religious parties is determined by the infrastructural power of the state. Weak states that fail to provide adequate public services open up space for religious communities to build a dense civil society network of private schools, hospitals, and charities. Recipients of religious largesse then support confessional parties at the ballot box. By contrast, strong states that provide efficient public services squeeze out private providers of welfare, undermining the electoral strength of religious political parties. I find strong empirical support for this argument in a statistical analysis of religious party formation and strength, using a new dataset on all religious parties that participated in national parliamentary elections between 1800 and 2015. Comparative historical analyses of Québec, Spain, Italy, France, Albania, and Turkey, also back my theoretical arguments. My findings have important implications for the literature on party formation, voting, state-building, and private welfare provision.

Keywords: Political parties
Party formation
Religion and politics
Voting
Religious parties
Advisor: Bermeo, N
Hong Kong-Malay film connections (1960s-1980s)

This dissertation maps the Hong Kong-Malay film connections forged during the immediate post-studio era of the late 1960s to the 1980s. Hoping to allay the problem of a “Chinese preoccupation” in Hong Kong and Asian film network studies, as well as the prevalent tendency in Malay film studies to territorialize Malay film history narratives, this dissertation investigates how, and why, these transborder connections were being made during this time, extending inquiry into three key sets of films: the made-in-Hong Kong Malay James Bond films (1967-1968), Merdeka Film Productions’ “new-style” Malay films (1975-1980) and Hong Kong-produced Nanyang gong tau horror films (1975-1980s). Through examining the different kinds of border-crossings that underpin these films, the dissertation illustrates how sociopolitical and industrial changes in Hong Kong and the Malay Peninsula during this highly fluctuating times provided the essential impetuses for these crossovers, and contends that the cultural and political distances therein were crucially bridged, though certainly not without conflict and contestation, through a reworking of the Malay body, an act of passing and the suturing together of the tourist and cinematic gaze. Putting shape to this particular dynamic of Asian cinema network history, this dissertation ultimately demonstrates that even beyond the relatively well-studied studio era, the histories of Hong Kong and Malay cinemas in fact remained entwined with one another, to some degree implicating each other’s processes of localization/nationalization and restructuration in the late twentieth century.

Advisor: Hillenbrand, M
EFL teachers’ cognition of English as a global language: ideologies, identities, and practices

The global presence of English as a lingua franca has raised substantial concerns regarding an urgent need for a shift in English language pedagogy. Teachers working within the immense English Language Teaching (ELT) enterprise are now expected to participate in an unprecedented endeavour to better equip learners with both the necessary language skills and the awareness of the ubiquity of English varieties currently used among speakers, native or non-native alike. In light of this changing sociolinguistic scenario, the emerging field of Global Englishes proposes a framework for action, calling for a re-appraisal of the beliefs about English that permeate all aspects of pedagogical practices (Galloway & Rose, 2015; Rose & Galloway, 2019). Such need for a paradigm shift has continued to be voiced in research, but rarely are the very voices of the teachers heard. Little has been discussed about their sense-making of the pedagogical implications of the ideological rhetoric underlying English teaching at the operational level.
Following the educational and professional journeys of seven in-service lecturers of the English language in two universities in Thailand, the study aims to understand how the global spread of English has impacted the teachers’ conceptualisations of English and how such perceptions surface in their local classrooms. Specifically, it seeks to answer three questions: (1) What are the teachers’ ideological views of English and its changing usage?; (2) In what way is the teachers’ cognition of English related to their sense of professional identities as an L2 English teacher?; and (3) How do the teachers interpret globally-oriented initiatives in light of their teaching contexts?
It explores these questions through an in-depth examination of on-the-ground ethnographically-informed multiple case studies data obtained over the course of fieldwork from multiple sources: semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, classroom and site observations, and document analysis.
Findings reveal that while the teachers display awareness of English as a global language, their views of the English language remain firmly rooted in standard language ideology, demonstrating clear propensities for the native speaker standards, especially British and American English. These perceptions are filtered through layers of ideological contradictions, which result in the teachers' varying sense of professional legitimacy and the approaches with which they use to prepare the students for real-life language use. Learning contexts factor into teachers’ pedagogical decisions, where students’ learning is given priority. The thesis raises questions about the potential of globally-informed English language teacher education curricula as a shared agenda and the roles teachers play in it.

Keywords: Thailand
Higher education
English language teaching
Language teacher identity
Language teacher cognition
Global Englishes
Advisor: Briggs Baffoe-Djan, J
Rose, H