VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A case study of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age cemeteries of Tell el-Far'ah (South)

The subject of this thesis is the study of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age tombs of the site of Tell el-Far'ah (South) in southern Palestine, excavated in 1928 and 1929 by W. M. F. Petrie. Because contextual information on the tombs is particularly scant, this work essentially concentrates on the analysis of the material furnishings which were found in association with the burials. It is primarily concerned with the pottery assemblages, but the rich variety of small finds discovered in the tombs is also discussed.
The prime interest of the tombs of Tell el-Far'ah, which cover the important transition period going from the 13th to the early 10th centuries B.C., does not only reside in the diversity of the nature of their furnishings, which, besides pottery also include beads, scarabs, amulets, metal and stone vessels, worked ivory, weapons and tools, but also in the variety of the foreign influences which they reflect. Although none of the tombs considered here does contain foreign imports in significant quantities (whether from the Aegean, Cyprus, Egypt or Syria), the majority of them, for example through the presence of local imitations of foreign pottery types, suggest that relationships between the various regions of the eastern Mediterranean were still alive during the period under consideration. Instead of ascribing the diverse innovations, changes and apparent disturbances of the Early Iron Age Levant to the activities of migrating populations from the Aegean (the “Sea Peoples”) this research proposes an alternative explanation to the question. It notably argues that the furnishings of the tombs of Tell el-Far'ah provide an important insight into the emergence of new patterns of trade and exchanges in the Mediterranean, accompanied by new forms of socio-economic organization.

Keywords: West Bank
Bronze Age
Tombs
Canaanites
Palestine
Advisor: Sherratt, S
Amongst the shadows of mineralized mountains: resource-making and social becoming in the Peruvian Andes

Since the 1990s, the adoption of the extractive imperative in Peru, while leading to unprecedented economic growth, has simultaneously entailed the proliferation of local contestation at the point source of mineral exploitation. To date, academic attention on ‘conflictos mineros’ (mining conflicts) has been dominated by interpretations of political economy which shroud local realities amongst the implicit assumptions of ‘isolation’ and ‘alterity’. Ethnographic interventions on contemporary mining in Peru have lagged behind the explanatory rush. This dissertation, based on 15 months of fieldwork in the communities which surround the Bambas copper mine, attempts to shift and destabilize scholastic presumption. Grounding its theoretical trajectory in progressive imaginaries of social mobility (the ‘search for a better life’), the thesis attempts to dissolve the dominant prisms of ‘peasant’ and ‘indigenous’ communities to elucidate the complex and, at times, contradictory outcomes of mining as practiced in southern Peru. Resource-making, it is argued, interjects upon fraught histories of marginalization, activating latent desires for social becoming. Over time, however, the maturation of mining, from exploration to eventual low-labor production, unfurls stark discordances between development’s image and reality. Communities and individuals are forced to navigate this shifting social terrain, interpreting millennial moral orders, developing alternative projects for the ‘better life’, and, ultimately, ‘waiting’ for imagined futures that are increasingly threatened by precarity. These crises in social becoming produce unintended outcomes, even amongst the ‘responsible’ precepts of ‘modern mining’. Accordingly, CSR works to govern expectation and corporate entanglements with shadowed communities. Environmental regulation creates complex and insecure relations between toxic legacies and endurance. While indigenous legal precepts transform through the friction of travel and contact to eventually assemble artisanal mining ventures. The overarching empirics move with and beyond conventional conceptions of Andean peoples and corporate interventions to demonstrate festering frustrations with development trajectories and continuous maneuvering within them.

Keywords: Anthropology of mining
Peru
Extraction
Advisor: Rival, L
Moduli spaces of complexes of coherent sheaves

In this thesis we consider problems related to Joyce’s vertex algebra construction and the topology of stabilized moduli spaces. We first compute the homology of the moduli stack of objects in the derived category of a smooth complex projective variety X in class D, showing that the rational cohomology ring is freely generated by tautological classes. This is used to identify Joyce’s construction with a generalized super-lattice vertex algebra on the rational K-theory of X^an. Then, we prove orientability of moduli spaces of (complexes of) coherent sheaves on projective Calabi–Yau 4-folds–this has applications to defining a C-linear enumerative invariant theory for Calabi–Yau 4-folds. This result is based on joint work with Yalong Cao and Dominic Joyce. Lastly, we consider a connective even complex-oriented homology theory E with associated formal group law F and show that, given a Künneth isomorphism, replacing ordinary homology with E in Joyce’s construction yields a vertex F -algebra–this result is based on joint work with Markus Upmeier.

Advisor: Joyce, D
‘Hospitality, chantries, and other works of piety’: a select study of the functions and longevity of hospitals in small towns and villages in medieval England, c. 1150-c. 1450

In the high to late Middle Ages, hospitals were ubiquitous. It has been estimated that by the fourteenth century more than 500 hospitals were scattered across the English landscape. Yet to date, hospitals located in small towns and villages in England have received little scholarly attention. This study seeks to contribute to the field by offering a wide-ranging assessment of 72 lesser-known hospitals. It considers whether these houses can be defined by the functions they performed as opposed to the guests they served. And it seeks to establish the extent to which they were reliant on patronal support throughout the core period of the study. The project combined the results generated from its bespoke database with an in-depth appraisal of the hospitals in Aynho and Brackley, Northamptonshire. In addition, it incorporated material concerning obscure hospitals into its analysis.
The results found that the hospitals can be defined by their core functions of hospitality, chantries, and other works of piety which were offered to a variety of guests. Such was the importance of the provision of hospitality, it was implicit within their most commonly-used name. A main finding was that hospitals were remarkably resilient: at least 50% were viable in the sixteenth century. The minimum average lifespan of these houses was 238 years, and the evidence revealed a degree of specialisation in their functions in the later Middle Ages. During this time, many successfully mitigated both internal and external threats through a wide-ranging network of support. This included monarchs and bishops in their role as temporary patrons and reformers. However, the study concludes that it was in the gift of the legal patron to ultimately seal their fate.

Keywords: charity
poor
hospitality
urban
hospital
patronage
medieval
chantry
Mortmain
parish
welfare
Advisor: Gemmill, E
All about politics: the American electoral cycle and decision-making in war

How does electoral politics affect presidential decision-making in war? As both Commanders-in-Chief and elected officeholders, American presidents must balance the national interest with their often competing interest in political survival when assessing alternative strategies in war. Yet despite the increasing attention paid to domestic political explanations of international relations, surprisingly little has been written on the electoral connection. It can still seem as if the politicians are left out of international politics. Grounded in the field of foreign policy analysis and drawing on the logic of democratic constraint, this thesis argues that electoral pressures in fact play a profound role in wartime decision-making, systematically pushing and pulling the president away from courses of action he perceives to be strategically optimal. Going beyond the existing literature’s focus on cases of conflict initiation, it outlines five mechanisms – delay, dampening, spur, hangover and spoiler – which capture the ways in which electoral considerations shape both decisions to escalate an ongoing conflict and efforts to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Rich historical case studies of the wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq illustrate how these pressures conform to a rhythm dictated by the electoral cycle. Using a qualitative methodological approach, employing material from extensive archival research and a series of interviews with senior officials, this thesis offers an in-depth look at exactly how electoral constraints have materially affected past decisions. The findings of this thesis carry broader implications for the literature on democracy and war, enriching our understanding of electoral accountability, and provides a new conceptual lens through which scholars can analyse presidential decision-making.

Keywords: Elections
Decision-making
US foreign policy
War
Advisor: L'Estrange Fawcett, L
The politics of quotation: Charlotte Smith’s radical fictions and their allusions to the works of Milton, Rousseau, and Voltaire

Charlotte Smith is both a known radical sympathizer and an allusive writer. This thesis investigates the political meanings embedded through the selection and treatment of allusion in each of Charlotte Smith’s novels published between the outbreak of the French Revolution and the end of the Reign of Terror. Specifically, it investigates how Smith utilizes quotations from authors connected with political radicalism—John Milton, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—to work through the nuances of her own political thought. I argue that these specific authors feature significantly in her work because of their known republican sympathies. Yet, Smith frequently deploys these quotations in a context far from that which was originally intended by her source, capitalizing on their republican significations but making the actual polemical content all her own. Both the frequency and diversity of her allusive engagement increases during the period of the Revolution, which marks the Revolutionary period as one essential to the development of Smith as both a novelist and as a radical. Through tracking the presence of quotation in each novel, one published each year between 1791 and 1794, the thesis traces the evolution in Smith’s political thought and, specifically, her changing attitudes toward the French Revolution as it moves through its early utopian stages to the violence and excess of the Reign of Terror. Not only does this study contribute to recent scholarship on the use of quotation in eighteenth-century writing, but it also provides an in-depth study of Smith’s evolving radicalism. In this way, the project demands reassessment of critical studies of Smith’s work which have failed to recognize the extent of the polemical content within the first work in the sequence, Celestina, and the continuing commitment to republican sympathies despite burgeoning conservatism in the last, The Banished Man.

Keywords: radicalism
politics
quotation
Rousseau
Charlotte Smith
John Milton
eighteenth century
romantic literature
Voltaire
Advisor: Ballaster, R
A systematic review of research on listening strategies in second language lecture comprehension

This study adopted a systematic research methodology to synthesize previous literature on listening strategies in second language lecture comprehension. After identifying 21 eligible studies, the review mapped out the current state of empirical research related to the topic. It also synthesized and assessed the quality of evidence pertaining to the three in-depth review questions:
1. What evidence is available on the deployment of listening strategies in second language lecture comprehension?
2. What evidence is available on the effectiveness of listening strategies in second language lecture comprehension?
3. What evidence is available on the development of listening strategies in second language lecture comprehension?
The results of this review revealed several research gaps in terms of research focus (e.g., participants, contexts) and methodology (e.g., study design, data collection, data analysis) and were discussed in relation to the above questions to make suggestions for future research.

Keywords: a systematic review
second language
lecture comprehension
listening strategies
Advisor: Rose, H
Taking the measure: a demographic-based study of non-metropolitan Surrey c. 1550-1750

This thesis offers an exploration in a sub-regional context of early modern England’s interconnected demographic and economic systems, revealing some of the patchwork of local experiences which made up the national picture. The study’s findings contribute to a number of discussions. It challenges or develops aspects of some current narratives including on the changing balance between pastoral and arable agriculture, on the 1550s and 1590s mortality crises and on differing patterns of male and female mortality. It also re-emphasises geographical characteristics of migration, though expanding understanding of the origins of London apprentices.
Taking a parish-level framework of analysis, it considers non-metropolitan Surrey (the majority of the historical county of Surrey excluding only those parishes which were in practice subsumed within Surrey’s neighbour, London) between the mid-sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries. A mainly rural area with a varied terrain it contained several small or modestly-sized towns and a certain amount of industrial activity. Consideration is given to its population levels, its agriculture and other aspects of its economy, the mobility of its people and their patterns of mortality both in normal times and in periods of crisis. Finding both temporal and spatial similarities and differences between parishes and broader localities, significant influences identified include its towns, transport routes, proximity to London, soils and landscapes.
Methodologically, the study provides an innovative extension to previous studies. Taking a ‘big data’ approach, it uses large datasets of quantitative sources including parish registers, poor law records, apprenticeship records and probate documents supplemented by a variety of qualitative sources. It explores the direct evidence these sources contain and also the indirect, unwitting, evidence parish registers provide, showing how together such sources can be used to examine the demographic and economic lives of people across a wide area and over a considerable period of time, an approach with widespread applicability.

Keywords: mortality
migration
agriculture
big data
Surrey
parish registers
population
Advisor: Healey, J
Observing the dark universe with weak gravitational lensing

We are now entering into an era of huge cosmological data sets, with observations testing the current paradigm to high accuracy. By combining different probes of cosmology, we can access new information about our Universe and investigate the systematic effects that plague our ability to measure cosmology accurately. In this thesis we use weak gravitational lensing as a tool to measure the large scale structure in the Universe.
First, we present the theoretical framework in which this thesis is set. We then detail the methodology required to measure the cross-correlation between galaxy weak lensing and cosmic microwave background (CMB) weak lensing data sets. In particular we highlight the impact of the complicated nature of galaxy weak lensing data and investigate ways to improve the signal-to-noise of the cross-correlation measurement using simulations.
We measure the CMB lensing/galaxy weak lensing power spectrum using the latest CMB lensing data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and galaxy weak lensing data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS), making a detection at 5σ significance. We compare our measured cross-spectrum to the cosmological parameters inferred from the Planck and KiDS experiments. We then present fits for the mat- ter density and the amplitude of matter fluctuations, marginalising over the galaxy weak lensing systematic biases. We forecast the expected signal-to-noise using the next data release from ACT and use simulated fields to investigate the impact on estimating cosmological parameters with that data set.
Finally, we measure the masses of clusters selected from ACT CMB data via the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect using weak gravitational lensing data from KiDS, making a 20σ detection of the lensing signal. We present an estimate of the mass bias for a set of stacked clusters as well as the highest signal-to-noise individual clusters. We also describe tests of systematic effects and analysis choices.

Keywords: observational cosmology
Advisor: Dunkley, J
Millar, L
Intracellular trafficking of the invasion-promoting cell surface proteinase MT1-MMP 

Membrane type-1 matrix metalloproteinase (MT1-MMP) is a type I transmembrane proteinase that has been shown to promote the progression of different diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and cancer, by enhancing cellular invasion. MT1-MMP promotes cellular invasion by degrading pericellular extracellular matrix (ECM) at the leading edge of migrating cells. MT1-MMP has been shown to localise to various motility-associated structures, including lamellipodia, filopodia, invadopodia, and podosomes. However, the molecular mechanisms of MT1-MMP localisation to these structures are not well- understood. Dr. Itoh’s research group and others have found that MT1-MMP cell surface exposure is achieved by intracellular trafficking of MT1-MMP-containing vesicles along microtubules and that kinesin superfamily motor proteins (KIFs) play a role. We have employed a siRNA library to screen for the responsible KIFs and found that the knockdown (KD) of four KIFs (KIF13A, KIF3A, KIF9, KIF1C) notably affected MT1-MMP-mediated cellular functions at the cell-matrix interface of human fibrosarcoma cells (HT1080). Interestingly, the KD of these KIFs did not affect the overall level of MT1-MMP at the cell surface, but it significantly influenced MT1-MMP localisation at the substrate-attached side of the plasma membrane. Live cell imaging experiments confirmed that KIF13A, KIF3A and KIF9 associate with MT1-MMP-positive vesicles. These experiments also showed that when cells are cultured atop a substratum, KIF13A and KIF3A collaborate to transport MT1-MMP within the central cytoplasmic areas. However, only KIF13A seemed to reach the cell periphery to deliver the proteinase to the tips of motility-associated structures. Bioinformatic analysis revealed that the expression profile of KIF13A and KIF9 is altered in several cancer types and that these two motor proteins might have cancer-specific roles, partially related to their involvement in MT1-MMP intracellular trafficking. Taken together these findings shed light on KIF-dependent MT1-MMP cell surface exposure and suggest KIF-driven MT1-MMP intracellular trafficking mechanisms as potential targets to control the un-wanted cell invasion that sustains the progression of diseases like RA and cancer.

Keywords: invasion
intracellular trafficking
MT1-MMP
KIFs
cancer progression
rheumatoid arthritis
Advisor: Dustin, M
Itoh, Y
MITF-dependent phenotypic plasticity regulates proton-coupled transport and controls lineage resistance to acidotic stress

The lineage addiction oncogene, Microphthalmia-Associated Transcription Factor (MITF), mediates melanoma phenotypic plasticity – a pathophysiological process that underlies intratumoural heterogeneity, where melanoma cells interchangeably alter their phenotypes and transcriptomic gene signatures depending on the expression levels of MITF. This thesis characterised the presence and nature of MITF-dependent phenotypic plasticity in relation to melanoma resistance to acidotic stress. We show that the acid-resistant phenotypes in MITF-High and MITF-Low cells consisted of distinctly different mechanisms. Analysis of the melanoma proton transporter transcriptome, with experimental verification, showed that while MITF-High melanomas asymmetrically expressed ATP hydrolysis-coupled proton pumps, MITF-Low melanomas favoured the expression of solute carrier proton transporters. This molecular dichotomy was epitomised by the increased expression of Monocarboxylate Transporter 1 (MCT1) in cells following experimental MITF knockdown, which was associated with increased proton-coupled transport activities for monocarboxylic pyruvate, L-lactate, and β-hydroxybutyrate. Interestingly, acidotic resistance following stable MITF-knockdown could be selectively abrogated by reducing ambient pyruvate concentration, or by treatment with the small molecule MCT1 inhibitor, AR-C155858, leading to apoptosis in the acidotic cells with MITF-knockdown. Furthermore, combining AR-C155858 treatment with the BRAFV600E inhibitor, vemurafenib, showed additive effects on the induction of apoptosis in acidotic MITF-knockdown cells. This study thus identified a novel approach to achieve cytotoxicity in the subset of MITF-Low melanoma cells by exploiting their dependency on monocarboxylate transport for acidotic survival.

Keywords: Melanoma
MITF
Acidosis
Phenotypic Plasticity
Proton Transporters
Advisor: Gilbert, R
Loh, SH