VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Sea change: a sensemaking perspective on competing institutional logics

In recent years, institutional theorists have been increasingly interested in institutional change, seeking to understand the contextual factors and agents responsible for alterations to existing institutional arrangements. Institutional theory’s historical focus on isomorphism has made it challenging to account for actors’ motivations to pursue change projects. It is generally believed, though, that agents are mobilized through exposure to multiple institutional logics. Recently, scholars have begun to recognize that competition among multiple logics may not quickly produce a ‘winning logic’; rather, such logics may co-exist for prolonged periods in a context of ‘institutional complexity’. The turn toward institutional complexity reveals that preoccupation with the ‘paradox of embedded agency’ has left the development of change projects themselves under-theorized: What happens when organizational actors must interpret puzzling institutional contexts and generate alternatives?
In seeking to understand organizational actors’ efforts to cope with conflicting logics in a context of scientific uncertainty, this study aligns with this growing interest in institutional complexity. Drawing on concepts from sensemaking theory, this research illuminates how actors with divergent interests, enacting their organizational roles, cope with competing logics and interact around a change project that emerges as a result of their efforts at coping. It thus contributes to institutionalist understandings of institutional complexity and change and adds to an emerging body of research linking institutional theory and sensemaking.
The empirical setting for this single-case study is the ‘sustainable seafood’ discourse that began in the early 1990s when the cod collapsed off North America’s eastern seaboard. Prolonged scientific uncertainty regarding the collapse made generation of preferred alternatives problematic; this resulted in lengthy sensemaking efforts by multiple stakeholder groups, drawing on different institutional logics to produce divergent and competing interpretations and action scripts. Tracing the evolution of this discourse through documents, observations, and interviews empirically reveals processes of interrelated sensemaking, and further, exposes sensegivers as bricoleurs who use institutional elements creatively to affect the sensemaking of others.

Keywords: dialogical change
sensemaking
institutional theory
deinstitutionalization
institutional change
sensegiving
institutional logic
institutional complexity
Advisor: Morris, T
Maturation of projection neurons in the visual cortex of the rat

A variety of in vitro brain slice preparations were employed to study the development of electrophysiological and morphological characteristics of pyramidal neurons from layer 5 of the rat visual cortex.
By combining conventional intracellular recording techniques with intracellular dye injection into neurons which were back-labelled from their respective target, it was possible to demonstrate a correlation between the intrinsic electrophysiological properties and the morphology of projection neurons. Superior colliculus projecting neurons fired action potentials in a burst-firing pattern whereas interhemispheric projecting neurons fired action potentials in a regular spiking pattern. Both groups differed also in the morphology of their dendritic arborizations.
A developmental study of the physiological properties of morphologically identified layer 5 neurons demonstrated that subthreshold properties and characteristic action potential parameters of these neurons change progressively during the early postnatal period. Membrane time constants and input resistances changed to lower values and action potentials became higher, faster and thus briefer. No burst-firing patterns were found in early developmental stages.
Using intracellular injection of Lucifer Yellow in fixed slices, it was then shown that superior colliculus (SC) projecting neurons and interhemispheric (CLH) projecting neurons differ significantly in their morphology already early in development. SC-nneurons have more basal dendrites which give rise to more branches and total tips than neurons projecting to the CLH.

Advisor: Blakemore, C
Larkman, A
An algebraic theory of componentised interaction

This thesis provides a specification theory with strong algebraic and compositionality properties, allowing for the systematic construction of new components out of existing ones, while ensuring that given properties continue to hold at each stage of system development. The theory shares similarities with the interface automata of de Alfaro and Henzinger, but is linear-time in the style of Dill's trace theory, and is endowed with a richer collection of operators.
Components are assumed to communicate with one another by synchronisation of input and output actions, with the component specifying the allowed sequences of interactions between itself and the environment. When the environment produces an interaction that the component is unwilling to receive, a communication mismatch occurs, which can correspond to run-time error or underspecification. These are modelled uniformly as inconsistencies. A linear-time refinement preorder corresponding to substitutivity preserves the absence of inconsistency under all environments, allowing for the safe replacement of components at run-time.
To build complex systems, a range of compositional operators are introduced, including parallel composition, logical conjunction and disjunction, hiding, and quotient. These can be used to examine the structural behaviour of a system, combine independently developed requirements, abstract behaviour, and incrementally synthesise missing components, respectively. It is shown that parallel composition is monotonic under refinement, conjunction and disjunction correspond to the meet and join operations on the refinement preorder, and quotient is the adjoint of parallel composition. Full abstraction results are presented for the equivalence defined as mutual refinement, a consequence of the refinement being the weakest preorder capturing substitutivity.
Extensions of the specification theory with progress-sensitivity (ensuring that refinement cannot introduce quiescence) and real-time constraints on when interactions may and may not occur are also presented. These theories are further complemented by assume-guarantee frameworks for supporting component-based reasoning, where contracts (characterising sets of components) separate the assumptions placed on the environment from the guarantees provided by the components. By defining the compositional operators directly on contracts, sound and complete assume-guarantee rules are formulated that preserve both safety and progress. Examples drawn from distributed systems are used to demonstrate how these rules can be used for mechanically deriving component-based designs.

Keywords: component theory
assume-guarantee
interface theory
specification theory
compositional reasoning
concurrency theory
compositional specification
Advisor: Kwiatkowska, M
The barbarian Sophist: Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis and the Second Sophistic

Clement of Alexandria, active in the second half of the second century AD, is one of the first Christian authors to explain and defend the nascent religion in the terms of Greek philosophy and in relation to Greek paideia. His major work, the Stromateis, is a lengthy commentary on the true gnosis of the Christian faith, with no apparent overarching structure or organisational principle, replete with quotations from biblical, Jewish, Greek 'gnostic' and Christian works of all genres.
This thesis seeks to read this complex and erudite text in conversation with what has been termed the ‘Second Sophistic’, the efflorescence of elite Greek literature under the Roman empire. We will examine the the text as a performance of authorial persona, competing in the agonistic marketplace of Greek paideia. Clement presents himself as a philosophical teacher in a diadoche from the apostles, arrogating to himself a kind of apostolic authority which appeals to both philosophical notions of intellectual credibility and Christian notions of the authentic handing down of tradition. We will also examine how the work engages key thematic concerns of the period, particularly discourses of intellectual eclecticism and ethnicity, challenging both Greek and Roman forms of hegemony to create a space for Christian identity.
Lastly, this thesis will critically examine the Stromateis' intertextual relationship with the Homeric epics; the Iliad and the Odyssey are used as a testing ground for Christian self-positioning in relation to Greek culture as a whole. As we trace this variable relationship, we will also see the cross-fertilisation of reading strategies between Homer and the bible; these developing complex allegorical methods not only presage the rise of Neoplatonism, but also lay the foundations for changes in cultural authority which accompany the Christianisaton of the Roman empire in the centuries after Clement.

Keywords: Church history - primitive and early Church
Clement of Alexandria
Second Sophistic
the Alexandrian School
Advisor: Whitmarsh, T
Edwards, M
Terahertz spectroscopy of graphene and other two-dimensional materials

In this thesis, two-dimensional materials such as graphene are tested for their suitability for opto-electronic applications using terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS). This ultrafast all-optical technique can probe the response of novel materials to photoexcitation, and yield information about the dynamics of the material systems.
Graphene grown by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is studied using optical-pump THz-probe time domain spectroscopy in a variety of gaseous environments in Chapter 4. The photoconductivity response of graphene grown by CVD is found to vary dramatically depending on which atmospheric gases are present. Adsorption of these gases can open a local bandgap in the material, allowing stimulated emission of THz radiation across the gap.
Semiconducting equivalents to graphene, molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) and tungsten diselenide (WSe2), grown by CVD, are investigated in Chapter 5. These members of the transition metal dichalcogenide family show sub-picosecond responses to photoexcitation, suggesting promise for use in high-speed THz devices.
In Chapter 6, an alternative production route to CVD is studied. Liquid-phase exfoliation offers fast, easy production of few-layer materials. THz spectroscopy reveals that the dynamics of these materials after photoexcitation are remarkably similar to those in CVD-grown materials, offering the potential of cheaper materials for future devices.
Finally in Chapter 7, it is shown that carbon nanotubes can be used to make ultrafast THz devices. Unaligned, semiconducting single walled carbon nanotubes can be photoexcited to produce an ultrafast, dynamic THz polariser.
The work in this thesis demonstrates the potential for these novel materials in future opto-electronic applications. THz spectroscopy is shown to be an important tool for the characterisation of new materials, providing information that can be used to understand the dynamics of materials, and improve production methods.

Keywords: Graphene
Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
Terahertz Spectroscopy
Advisor: Johnston, M
Interference and laser feedback optical microscopy

This thesis concerns the development of simple, compact scanning optical microscopes which can obtain confocal and interference images. The effects of feeding the reflected signal back into the laser cavity of a confocal microscope are investigated and exploited. Monomode optical fibres are used to perform the spatial filtering required for confocal microscopy and, later, as the source of reference beams for interferometry.
The theory describing the basic operation of the microscopes is developed. The optical systems are modelled using scalar diffraction theory and the effects of optical feedback into the laser cavity are described, with the practical implications emphasised.
A fully reciprocal arrangement of the microscope is developed, in which a single mode optical fibre both launches the signal towards the object and then collects the reflected signal. The fibre is shown to exhibit the spatial filtering properties required for the source and detector in a confocal microscope.
It is shown that a semiconductor laser can be used as a detector of the amplitude of the object signal. This is first demonstrated by directing the microscope signal back into the laser cavity and measuring the variation of the optical intensity in the cavity itself. Comparable results are obtained when the variation of the junction voltage across the cavity is measured. It is also shown that the optical fibre is redundant in this system, since the lasing mode of the cavity itself is sufficiently small to adequately spatially filter the reflected signal.
When a Helium-Neon laser is used as the source of illumination the effect of the feedback on the laser is seen to be very different, resulting in interferometry. It is shown that high frequency modulation techniques can be used to obtain both confocal images and surface profiles from the same system. This is first demonstrated using an optical feedback scheme in which the modulation of the optical path length of the object beam is controlled electrooptically. In an alternative scheme the images are obtained by calculation, rather than by using a control loop system. In this case the modulation is achieved mechanically.
The theoretical limits for the resolutions of the systems described are discussed. It is shown that the lateral resolution of the surface profile systems is inherently non-linear with feature height.
Finally, a semiconductor laser based microscope is developed which can obtain confocal images and surface profiles independently. The dependence of the wavelength on the injection current is exploited as a convenient means of introducing a phase shift into the feedback signal by which profilometry can be achieved.
All the systems are described theoretically and demonstrated experimentally

Advisor: Wilson, T
The evolution of literacy: a cross-cultural account of literacy’s emergence, spread, and relationship with human cooperation

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.

Keywords: cultural transmission
evolutionary anthropology
literacy
ritual
cooperation
cross cultural studies
cognitive anthropology
cultural evolution
Human Relations Area Files
Advisor: Whitehouse, H
'The Factory in a Garden': corporate recreational landscapes in England and the United States, 1880-1939

From the 1880s, a new type of designed green space appeared in the industrial landscape in England and the USA - the factory pleasure garden or park. At the same time, industrialists began to enhance their office and factory buildings with landscaping and planting, and some opened allotment gardens for the children of factory workers. The making of gardens and parks around or near office and factory buildings, designed by professionals, was driven by belief in the value of gardens and parks to recruitment and retention of staff, to industrial welfare, and to advertising, corporate identity and public relations.
The thesis will show how industrialists appropriated the historical, cultural and metaphorical meanings of gardens in a bid to redefine industry as progressive and responsible and to shift the image of factory labour from unhealthy and exploitative to healthy, caring, respectable and sociable. The thesis will argue that companies employed landscape professionals to contribute to a positive image of industry and industrial development in the suburban or rural landscape, and to harmonise industry and nature. It will show how the factory gardens and parks supported numerous and varied opportunities for outdoor recreation that in some districts would not have been so readily accessible to working people, particularly to women and young people. The thesis will show how companies exploited the social and cultural capital of gardens and recreation space through photography, illustration and film for promotional purposes. It will suggest that although the sporting and other outdoor recreational opportunities at factories were likely to be beneficial to many, the greater value to companies of factory pleasure gardens was in advertising and public relations. The thesis will build on existing research that highlights the valuable contribution of industry to sports and recreation provision in this period. It will also suggest that industry had more influence on gardens and gardening than is currently understood.

Keywords: sport
landscape
gardens
recreation
advertising
corporate identity
industrial welfare
industry
Advisor: Tyack, G
Ward, S
Medicine and morality in the ancient world

The great power of the medical profession over the lives of men entails a wealth of moral problems in medical practice and lends particular importance to questions of the responsibility of the physician. We investigate the solutions offered by Galen, the most prolific medical author of classical Antiquity, in his medical and philosophical writings. Issues of ethics and moral psychology are discussed in numerous passages of Galen's works, and he even devoted a number of treatises exclusively to ethics. The main results of our analysis of these treatises and passages can be summarized as follows. Starting with his interpretation of a prominent Hippocratic maxim, we discuss possible motivations for Galen's re-definition of the relationship between physician and patient. For Galen, it was the physician, not the patient, who led the fight against the disease. This prominent position of the Galenic physician entailed particular obligations and responsibilities. But Galen also took the view that certain responsibilities resided with the patient, particularly that of selecting the right physician and keeping the prescribed diets. Moreover Galen thought that everybody ought to pursue the systematic liberation of the soul from passions and errors, guided by his ethical methodology. Galen gave disciplined care for one's health and acquisition of medical knowledge the status of moral duties for every educated person. For physicians, he provided a wealth of additional principles and rules of conduct, covering areas as diverse as experimentation with drugs, surgical risks, promulgation of knowledge on poisons, remuneration and other social impacts of medicine, and medical education, all of them inspired by respect for the health of man, the animal who topped the teleological hierarchy of creation, and medicine, the art whose task it was to preserve and restore man's health. Galen held medicine in exceptionally high esteem, even by the standards of physicians. His view of medicine as the divine art kat 'exochen is considered in the context of his high valuation of human life and health. Health assumed a high rank in the hierarchy of goods, for it provided the basis for all the other goods and virtues. For Galen, preservation and restoration of health could be attained only on the basis of a sound scientific methodology. He was reluctant to apply criteria external to medicine proper to its practice, and mostly judged the morality of medical activities by the adherence to the principles of a well-founded therapy and avoidance of undue harm.
Industrial policy and productivity growth in Fascist Italy

The first chapter - Crisis? Which Crisis? - constructs a new series of industrial value added at constant (1938) prices for Italy, for the period between 1928 and 1938. The data employed are shown to be better indicators of the dynamic of the Great Depression than those used by Carreras and Felice (2010) and allow to substantially revise the profile of the Crisis. The contraction appears to be more pronounced and persistent, placing the Italian experience more in line with that of other industrialised countries.
The second chapter - The Italian Climacteric - presents new estimates of total factor productivity growth for Italy over the Fascist era and compares them with analogous ones for the pre-World War One period and for Germany and Britain. Because of the absence of a fully reliable GDP series, a dual growth accounting framework is employed. This approach permits the incorporation of new data on land rents and of new evidence on the returns to human capital. Results show that during the interwar era Italy experienced a “climacteric", defined as a cessation of TFP growth, which compares poorly with the coeval performance of Britain and Germany. This disappointing result contrasts vividly with what occurred in the late liberal Italy, when TFP grew less quickly than in Germany, but faster than in Britain.
The third chapter - A Tale of Two Fascisms - offers the first quantitative assessment of labour productivity dynamics within the Italian industrial sector and of their links with Fascist competition policy. We argue that the institutional context in which Italian firms operated and, in particular, changes in the level of product market competition had a significant effect in determining their productivity performance. By relying on a new dataset and on new labour productivity estimates, we show that the earlier more liberal period of the Fascist era was characterised by a true productivity boom, which ended following the switch to a more interventionist industrial policy. Panel data evidence shows that reductions in the level of competition in the industrial sector were associated with lower productivity growth, while changes in industrial structure were a less significant factor.

Advisor: A'Hearn, B