VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Intervention by invitation and the alleged prohibition of military assistance to governments in civil wars

The use of military force by one state on another’s territory with the consent of its government has been a frequent occurrence in international relations since 1945. Government consent as a legal justification for force has only increased in prominence in recent years. Yet the existing academic commentary reveals significant disagreement as to how consent as a legal basis for force is to be reconciled with important structural elements of international law.
One such tension is with the widely-accepted view that the prohibition on the use of force is jus cogens, and hence non-derogable. This seemingly conflicts with the asserted ability of consent to legalize what would otherwise be a contravention of the prohibition. Chapter 1 of this thesis examines the scope of the peremptory prohibition on the use of force and establishes that consensual force does not breach the prohibition. It then shows that this does not leave the peremptory status of the prohibition devoid of effect, thus also contributing to a deeper understanding of jus cogens and its role in international law.
Another point of tension arises where foreign military assistance helps maintain in power a government which is being challenged by opposition groups. Accepting the legality of intervention in this situation appears in conflict with the idea that the identification of governments in international law is based on effective control of the State’s territory, and with fundamental principles such as non-intervention and self determination. Reflecting such concerns, there is a long-standing debate in the scholarship about whether there is a general prohibition on military intervention in favour of governments faced with civil wars or internal conflicts, although one subject to a range of limitations and exceptions.
The remainder of the thesis focuses on whether such a prohibition exists. It demonstrates that the disagreement in part reflects different methodological approaches to how international law is established, thus providing a broader insight into international legal argumentation. The thesis suggests grounds for scepticism as to the existence of a general legal prohibition of the type proposed. Although there are obvious risks of abuse of pro-government intervention, States see it as capable of furthering valuable aims. Rather than establishing a general legal prohibition of such interventions, the international community assesses the legitimacy of such actions on the basis of a complex set of ethical and political factors, against the background of their general legality (subject to compliance with obligations imposed by international humanitarian law and human rights law, which cannot be displaced by consent).

Advisor: Akande, D
Faustian bargaining in a regime complex: IMF-RFA cooperation in Europe (2008-2012)

What explains IMF behavior in Europe between 2008 and 2012? Harshly criticized in Greece, yet tentatively praised in Hungary, the institution found itself playing different roles as it responded to a string of financial crises. Its programs varied substantially in terms of conditionality, financing, and private sector involvement. This thesis explores why, highlighting the changing global financial safety net, which is both expanding and becoming more decentralized due to the spectacular rise of regional financing arrangements (RFAs).
Existing theories of IMF behavior assume the Fund to be a stand-alone institution and analyse financial assistance as the outcome from the interplay between creditors, borrowers, and staff. By focusing on dynamics within the IMF, however, they miss how developments outside the institution are increasingly shaping its behavior.
This thesis brings in the role of changes in the institutional environment by drawing on the literature on regime complexity. The proliferation of RFAs alters the outside options of all actors, which affects their bargaining power. This opens the way for new strategies, through which creditors can entangle institutions by creating overlaps, borrowers can engage in confrontation between alternative financing institutions, and the IMF can find means to co-work with RFAs. These in turn affect whose preferences shape program design.
This argument is tested empirically through process-tracing and comparing three cases of IMF-RFA cooperation in Europe. In Hungary, the IMF led the way in shaping a surprisingly 'generous' program with little constraint from the EU. However, in Latvia, the Fund found itself a 'junior partner' in a program driven by local authorities with the support of an European RFA. In Greece, the interests of creditors were paramount, securing IMF acquiescence through the threat of exclusion.
These findings point to significant challenges for the Fund going forward. As RFAs continue to proliferate around the world, the IMF needs to avoid the temptation of striking even more Faustian bargains that keep it at the table of financial assistance at the cost of becoming a junior partner.

Keywords: International Monetary Fund
Regime complexes
European Monetary Union
Euro area crisis
Advisor: Woods, N
Culpepper, P
Differential macrophage polarization promotes entheseal bone formation in AS

Systemic and focal bone loss is a common feature of many forms of arthritis. However, inappropriate new bone formation also occurs in inflammatory arthritis, including ankylosing spondylitis (AS), osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. These features are important signs of systemic inflammation in AS.
In general, inflammation is thought to inhibit bone-forming osteoblasts whilst promoting the formation and activation of osteoclasts. More recently, macrophages have been recognized as another component of the bone formation unit. Macrophages (Mφs) are actively involved in tissue remodelling and repair but also in tissue damage and fibrosis. Our research group demonstrated that the interaction between mesenchymal stem cells and monocyte/macrophages leads to an activation of STAT3 that drives osteoblast differentiation.
This project objective is to better explain the contribution of monocyte/macrophages to bone formation in a murine model of AS; the 1, 3 beta-glucan (curdlan) challenged SKG mice which develop many features of AS including psoriasis, ileitis, enthesitis and arthritis. In vitro, the role of macrophages as regulators of osteogenic differentiation via direct cell contact with mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) was investigated. OB differentiation was shown to depend upon contact with pro-inflammatory Mφs rather than anti-inflammatory macrophages.
In conclusion, in the in vitro part, we evaluated the capability of GM-CSF Mφs (pro inflammatory) to increase MSCs - OB differentiation using two different genetic strains of mice: SKG and IRF 5 (WT and KO). We assessed that both SKG - GM-CSF Mφs and IRF 5 WT- GM-CSF Mφs could synergize with, but not replace, osteogenic signals in the medium and enhancing MSCs capability towards OB differentiation. However, IRF KO - GM-CSF Mφs showed no effect on MSCs.
Moreover, In the in vivo study, we evaluated the occurrence of enthesitis and the role of Mφs in a murine model of AS (SKG). We assessed Mφs activity at the entheseal site by depleting them using clodronate liposomes, which ameliorated the bone phenotype but not the clinical score (all the mice developed severe AS). Previous work in the laboratory showed that Mφs promoted MSC osteogenic differentiation via oncostatin M (OSM). Therefore, OSM was blocked in SKG mice by injecting OSMR–Fc directly into the entheseal site. This led to the amelioration of ileitis however there was a dramatic exacerbation of inflammation and bone disease in the paws of the mice indicating that OSM is not a direct mediator of Mφ-induced bone formation at the enthesis in vivo.

Keywords: osteoblasts
macrophages
bone
osteoclasts
enthesis
Advisor: Horwood, N
Udalova, I
Inscribing the pyramid of king Qakare Ibi: scribal practice and mortuary literature in late Old Kingdom Egypt

This thesis investigates how the burial chamber of the 8th Dynasty pyramid of king Qakare Ibi at Saqqara in Egypt (c. 2109–2107 B.C.) was inscribed. It uses a holistic approach to focus on the textual programme and its unusual aspects in comparison to older pyramids. In doing so, it addresses issues of textual transmission and of scribal practice in the process of inscribing the walls of subterranean chambers in pyramids. The aim is to contextualise the texts of Ibi within the Memphite tradition of Pyamid Texts and the development of mortuary literature on different media from the late third millennium BCE Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom in the early second millennium BCE.
The first chapter presents the background to this research and information on king Ibi and his pyramid. The second chapter treats research on the arrangement of the texts on the walls of subterranean chambers of royal pyramids of kings and queens and compares the layout of the texts in the pyramid of Ibi with older pyramids. It then discusses in detail one section on the east wall of Ibi, where the order of spells diverges from other transmitted sequences. The unusual combination of spells and the practice of shortening spells is investigated further in the third chapter, where two sections of texts on the south wall are analysed. The fourth chapter explores garbled texts and discusses processes of copying and inscribing the texts onto the walls of pyramids. The fifth chapter analyses the modifications of the writing system in pyramids, especially the mutilation of hieroglyphs, and how this practice relates to the tradition of altering signs in pyramids. Finally, the sixth chapter synthesises the results of the preceding chapters in two sections. The first section summarises the process of inscribing pyramids and contextualises aspects of scribal practices within it. The second section concludes the thesis with a discussion of the features of the textual programme of Ibi and of how it relates to the broader transmission of mortuary literature.

Keywords: Pyramid Texts
mortuary literature
materiality
mutilation of hieroglyphs
textual transmission
Old Kingdom
Coffin Texts
Middle Kingdom
scribal practice
monumentalisation
performances
First Intermediate Period
Advisor: Baines, J
Parkinson, RB
Campaigning in the age of digital media: Exploring the influences of digital affordances on campaigning in environmental non-governmental organisations

This thesis is a qualitative exploration into the affordances of digital media and environmental campaigning through the lens of media and communication geography. It is guided by the following question:
How do digital media affordances influence the conduct of campaigning in environmental non-governmental organisations?
To address this question, this thesis follows the ‘four paper route’. Specifically, this research relies on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, content analysis, and virtual ethnography to investigate core topics related to digitally-mediated campaigning: engagement, strategy, membership, and online communities.
To begin, the first paper examines how environmental campaigners frame engagement, and the extent to which these frames are coproduced with their adoption of digital media. The second paper explores how digital media affordances influence the ways in which ENGOs approach audiences, tactics, and organising structures when building campaign strategy. Expanding on findings from the second paper, the third paper investigates how digital media affordances are changing organisational perceptions of membership in the everyday vocabularies of ENGOs. Last the fourth paper adopts a virtual ethnographic approach to better understand how supporters take part in online communities (OCs), and the relationship of OCs to online and offline participation.
This thesis is timely and significant for several reasons. First, environmental politics have emerged as a major issue area within the international arena. The majority of these politics are influenced by mass media. Thus, this research offers insight into how organisations harness and leverage digital media affordances for environmental activism and advocacy. Second, much of the scholarship exploring digital affordances and contemporary activism situates itself within social movements. Instead, by focusing on campaigns, this research provides an alternative unit of analysis below that of social movements yet above the level of individuals. Last non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have, and continue to, use campaigns to connect citizens and politics. Thus, understanding how digital media affordances are influencing campaigning is critical to realising the beliefs, aspirations, and needs of different groups within society.

Advisor: Jepson, P
Postimperial Englishness in the contemporary white canon

Building upon ‘contrapuntal’ readings of canonical fiction by white English writers, this thesis conducts a postcolonial analysis of major contemporary English novelists who are not commonly associated with issues of race, empire, and decolonisation. The three main case studies are Alan Hollinghurst, Graham Swift, and Julian Barnes, but I also discuss a range of other prominent novelists including Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, and J.G. Ballard. Each chapter begins by challenging the dominant interpretative frameworks – Hollinghurst, sexuality; Swift, WWII; Barnes, postmodernism – within which each author is typically situated. The extended postcolonial readings that follow disrupt the critical separation of ‘postcolonial’ from ‘English’ contemporary fiction. These categories have led to ‘a consensual and still prevalent “parochiality” in terms of reading habits’, which I interpret as the refusal or inability to read for race, empire, and decolonisation where they are not expected – that is, in a Hollinghurst rather than a Rushdie – a division that seems to be conducted on biographical if not also racial criteria.
The overall argument of this thesis is that the contemporary canon of white English novelists – often separated or shielded from postcolonial scrutiny – can be redefined as postimperial. By this I mean that they are engaged in the critical examination of England and Englishness after empire, with a particular emphasis upon issues of sexuality, militarism, and masculinity. Alan Hollinghurst, Graham Swift, and Julian Barnes are much more historically, geographically, and politically aware and engaged as writers than we have tended to imagine them as being. They write in response to the conditions of post-war and postimperial Britain, as well as in dialogue with both imperial writing and postcolonial writing. In doing so, and whilst addressing a range of other concerns and harnessing a number of different approaches, their fiction makes an important contribution to the registering and remaking of postimperial Englishness.

Advisor: Boehmer, E
Functional genomics of the sepsis response

Sepsis is defined as a dysregulated immune response to infection causing organ dysfunction, and is a major area of unmet clinical need. Although conventionally considered a unified disease with a common pathway to organ failure and death, substantial clinical and molecular heterogeneity is seen, which has limited efforts to understand pathophysiology and improve therapeutic strategies. Sepsis is associated with global changes in gene expression, and genetic variants are known to affect the response to infection. This thesis therefore uses an integrated functional genomics approach to investigate disease mechanisms and variation in the sepsis response.
Data are presented for 551 patients admitted to intensive care with sepsis due to community acquired pneumonia (CAP) or faecal peritonitis (FP). The sepsis response is explored using genome-wide gene expression and proteomics data, and molecular quantitative trait loci (QTL) are mapped in the context of disease. Comparisons with cardiac surgery patients are performed to identify shared and specific aspects of the host response.
The host transcriptomic response was largely shared across sources of sepsis, although some specificity relating to viral infection and interferon signalling was observed and validated in prospectively recruited patients. Expression-based sepsis response signature (SRS) subgroups previously described in CAP were validated, and were additionally observed in FP. SRS1 is associated with higher early mortality, and shows enrichment of pathways relating to T cell exhaustion, cell death, and endotoxin tolerance. Differences between SRS groups were also observed in the FP plasma proteome. Serial sampling enabled the investigation of temporal changes in gene expression and protein abundance within patients. Lastly, disease-relevant expression QTL were identified, and interactions with source of sepsis and SRS determined, highlighting the potential impact of regulatory variation on the sepsis response.
This thesis demonstrates the benefit of an integrative functional genomics approach to explore heterogeneity in sepsis, and highlights opportunities for patient stratification and personalised medicine.

Keywords: transcriptomics
sepsis
eQTL
Advisor: Knight, J
Davenport, E
Novel viral vector vaccines for tropical infections

Plasmodium falciparum (P.falciparum) malaria accounts for over 200 million cases annually and over 400 000 deaths. In 2014 Ebolavirus disease (EVD) caused a devastating outbreak in West Africa, resulting in over 28 000 cases and 11 000 deaths. At present, no licensed vaccine exists for either tropical infection. Viral vectors are showing great promise as a novel vaccine platform technology, having been shown to induce both cellular and humoral immune responses. Malaria vaccine efficacy can be assessed using controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) studies, in which healthy volunteers are infected with P. falciparum and then followed up for development of clinical disease. No such human challenge model exists for EVD.
This thesis describes 3 clinical trials. Two studies evaluate the safety, efficacy and immunogenicity of a combination vaccination regimen containing the leading pre- erythrocytic P. falciparum malaria vaccine RTS,S/AS01B and the liver stage, viral vector heterologous prime-boost regimen of ChAd63 ME-TRAP and MVA ME-TRAP. Vaccine efficacy is evaluated using the CHMI model. One trial evaluates a regimen in which immunisation with RTS,S/AS01B and ChAd63/MVA ME-TRAP is chronologically staggered. The other evaluates concomitant administration of the vaccines, and is also the first study to evaluate the effect of a reduced third dose of RTS,S/AS01B when given on a 0, 1, 2-month schedule. The third study presented here is a first in man study describing the safety and immunogenicity of the viral vector Ebolavirus vaccine, ChAd3-EBO Z either given alone or in a heterologous prime-boost sequence with MVA-BN® Filo, for which this study is also a first in man evaluation.

Advisor: Hill, A
Ewer, K
Measuring pain in the newborn infant

Hospitalised infants require multiple painful procedures a day as part of their essential medical care. However, identifying and managing pain in non-verbal populations is challenging – the gold standard in adults is self-report of pain, but in infants we must rely on surrogate measures. In this thesis, electroencephalography (EEG), behavioural measures and physiological changes are used to investigate infant pain responses, exploring how responses to noxious stimulation are modulated by analgesics, age and pathology.
It is essential to validate measures of pain in infants. As pain is both an emotional and sensory experience, noxious-evoked brain activity likely provides an important surrogate pain measure. An EEG template of noxious-evoked brain activity was validated for use in an independent group of infants: the noxiousevoked brain activity was only elicited in response to noxious stimulation and not in response to stimulation of other sensory modalities; was correlated with pain-related behaviour; and was sensitive to analgesic modulation by the use of topical local anaesthetic. This provides a novel approach, which can be used to test analgesic efficacy in infants.
Behavioural responses form the cornerstone of clinical infant pain assessment. However, it is not clear whether the youngest, most premature infants are able to mount behavioural responses that can discriminate between noxious and innocuous stimulation. In this thesis, I have investigated the behavioural response to noxious and tactile stimulation in infants from 28-41 weeks corrected gestational age (CGA). The youngest infants demonstrated a lack of behavioural discrimination, being equally likely to mount a behavioural response to a tactile or a noxious stimulus. Responses diverged with increasing age, such that from approximately 32 weeks’ gestation, infants were significantly more likely to display facial grimacing to noxious stimulation.
Finally, the impact of pathology on pain experience has not been well studied. I have investigated how early life infection impacts pain-related responses and demonstrate, using a multidimensional approach, that infants with infection display significantly greater noxious-evoked brain activity and are more likely to mount a behavioural response compared with non-infected infants.
In summary, this thesis demonstrates that responses to pain are altered by age and pathology, and provides a novel brain-derived approach to testing the efficacy of analgesic interventions in infants.

Advisor: Slater, R
Hartley, C
The state as a moral person and the problem of transgenerational binding

Modern states are committed to the implicit assumption that one generation has the normative power to bind later generations through laws and contracts. My dissertation explores this assumption through two case studies: constitutions and sovereign debt contracts. I show that in both cases the assumption of transgenerational binding shapes the legal practices and doctrines of modern states. It informs, for instance, the ratification of eternity clauses, the interpretation of constitutions, and the doctrines of sovereign immunity and odious debt.
But although these practices of transgenerational binding are prevalent in modern states, they stand in tension, I argue, with the liberal moral commitments of these states. Liberals are committed to moral individualism, according to which only individual human beings (and some nonhuman animals) are moral persons. Moral individualism, I show, is incompatible with the assumption of transgenerational binding and its accompanying practices and doctrines. By contrast, moral statism, according to which states themselves are moral persons, can easily justify those transgenerational practice. But moral statist justifications are illiberal because they assign states intrinsic moral status above and beyond individual human beings.
I argue that liberals must engage in revisionism whichever theory of political obligation they pick — whether it is a theory of agreement, restitution, justice, reciprocity, or instrumentalism. If liberals assume moral individualism and combine it with any of these theories, they will be forced either to declare some transgenerational practices and doctrines illegitimate or to revise the justification and scope of transgenerational binding in light of instrumentalism. If liberals choose moral statism, they will be able to justify the transgenerational doctrines and practices of constitutions and sovereign debt contracts –– but only at the cost of illiberalism. The dissertation's analysis thus shows that liberals face a trilemma between illegitimacy, instrumentalism, and illiberalism.

Keywords: intergenerational obligations
sovereignty
constitutions
future generations
moral individualism,
sovereign debt contracts
state personality
moral statism
Advisor: Bader, R
Caney, S