VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The journey of young souls in early medieval England (c. 850 - c. 1050)

This thesis explores the complex theological beliefs about young souls expressed during the late Anglo-Saxon period. Scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the theology of the soul between the ninth and eleventh centuries except in relation to its fate after death. Yet, the living soul appears prominently in Latin and Old English prose and verse demonstrating the extent to which beliefs about the whole of the soul’s life journey were still evolving. So great an interest did contemporary writers show in questions relating to the origins of the soul and its early experiences that it proved impossible to address the whole life journey of the soul from creation to judgment within the space of a single doctoral thesis. This thesis therefore focuses on the life journey of the young soul up to the cusp of adulthood, following pivotal moments from the birth of the soul to its adolescence.
The first substantive chapter analyses the transfer of beliefs about the soul’s origin across this period from a Neoplatonic stance arguing for the soul’s pre-existence to a Creationist outlook. The second chapter questions the point at which the soul was first believed to enter the body and addresses the inconsistencies surrounding ensoulment during the period. The next chapter addresses ideas about the state of a child’s soul at the start of corporeal existence and the degree to which we can tell that the Anglo-Saxons believed in an inherited condition of original sin. The fourth chapter asks how long the soul received immediate entrance into heaven after baptism and where Anglo-Saxon writers drew the spiritual boundary between childhood and adulthood.
A conclusion addresses the necessity of looking further into Anglo-Saxon beliefs about the life journey of the soul. The following epilogue studies souls outside living bodies to demonstrate the diverse and dynamic beliefs which continually appear in later Anglo-Saxon sources.

Keywords: original sin
origin of the soul
souls outside living bodies
ensoulment
Old English
medieval childhood
Anglo-Latin
Anglo-Saxon
souls
life journey of the soul
Advisor: Foot, S
Search for new physics through Higgs-boson-pair production at the LHC and beyond

This thesis presents a search for resonant production of highly energetic Higgs boson pairs, with each Higgs boson decaying to a b-quark pair, with the ATLAS detector. This analysis uses the complete ATLAS run 2 dataset of 139.0 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 13 TeV. The expanded dataset, new flavour-tagging techniques, and novel subjet reconstruction algorithms provide better sensitivity than previous studies of the process. Two beyond-the-Standard-Model resonances are chosen as benchmarks for the result: a two-Higgs-doublet model scalar S and Kaluza-Klein (KK) gravitons G_kk predicted in the bulk Randall-Sundrum (RS) model. No significant deviations from Standard Model predictions are found, and upper limits are set on the production cross section of these resonances. A phenomenology study on the analysis strategy of this search in conditions of the future High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider is presented as well. This study shows proof-of-concept improvements in sensitivity by using a deep- learning approach to separate the hh → 4b signal, and discusses the optimization of the search to constrain the Higgs boson self-coupling parameter λ_hhh .

Keywords: LHC
graviton
di-higgs
b quark
higgs pair
higgs boson
large hadron collider
heavy higgs
particle physics
Advisor: Issever, C
Huffman, T
Weidberg, T
Essays in development economics, human capital and external validity

This thesis comprises three papers under the overarching theme of external validity – a question of how the effectiveness of interventions or policies translate across contexts. I focus on interventions that aim to improve human capital, specifically health and education, in developing countries. To address the topic of external validity, we need comparable interventions and outcomes as well as identification of causal mechanisms that drive intervention effectiveness across contexts. My three papers contribute to each aspect. Two of my papers focus on constructing and comparing outcomes to measure education and human capital globally. In a third paper, I conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial of a sex education intervention in Botswana in a third of the country. This trial builds on a prior trial showing a similar intervention reduced teenage pregnancy by 28% in Kenya ten years prior. The study in Botswana provides replicable evidence across contexts, showing reductions in pregnancy of up to 40%. The trial also deepens understanding of the underlying mechanism driving behavior by testing novel dimensions, such as the degree to which the messenger delivering the sex education message matters. I find the messenger makes-or-breaks the intervention: while near-peer educators reduce pregnancy, government teachers have a null effect and appear to induce a teenage rebellion response. This contrast is striking, suggesting that an underexplored dimension on which external validity turns – the messenger – might matter more than dimensions which traditionally get more attention, such as time and geography.

Advisor: Dercon, S
Collier, P
The development and applications of STEM ptychography using direct electron detectors

Since the introduction of direct electron detectors to scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), electron ptychography - a technique which utilises the interference in diffraction patterns to reconstruct the sample-induced phase changes of a transmitted electron wave - has significantly extended the capabilities of electron microscopy. However, a number of limitations to electron ptychography exist, namely the poor contrast transfer for low and high spatial frequencies to the phase reconstruction, and the relatively slow detector speeds used to acquire the ptychographic data (~ 1,000 fps). In this thesis, a number of strategies are introduced to further improve the robustness and dose-efficiency of focused-probe electron ptychography (FPP), after which several applications of FPP techniques are demonstrated.
Firstly, the contrast transfer properties of single side-band (SSB) ptychography are experimentally measured from an amorphous carbon sample in order to determine the optimal experimental parameters for ptychography. It is demonstrated that the probe convergence semi-angle can be used to tune the phase-contrast transfer function (PCTF) for each experiment, such that the relevant sample information is transferred with high contrast. Furthermore, careful consideration of the noise in the ptychographic data can provide an enhanced PCTF which broadens the transfer window in the image plane. These strategies are combined with a 1-bit fast (12,500 fps) acquisition scheme to enable the atomic-resolution phase reconstruction of a beam-sensitive zeolite sample using a low electron dose of 1.0 x 10^(5) e nm^(-2). By implementing these experimental and analytical strategies, the efficiency of FPP techniques can be signifificantly improved.
At the end of this thesis, several experimental challenges common to STEM are overcome using electron ptychography. Firstly, the precision of phase reconstructions are improved considerably by increasing the electron dose via multi-frame image acquisition, hence avoiding the slow-scan instabilities inherent to long STEM acquisition times. Furthermore, three-dimensional analysis of an unknown graphene defect is performed using a single ptychographic data set. Finally, electron ptychography is used to visualise oxygen vacancies in uranium dioxide for the first time.

Keywords: Electron Microscopy
Ptychography
Contrast transfer functions
STEM
Advisor: Nellist, P
Kirkland, A
How do Gata1 and cohesin gene mutations contribute to the development of myeloid leukaemia?

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is the most common aggressive human leukaemia. It is frequently characterised by the stepwise acquisition of multiple somatic mutations in stem and progenitor cells. The mechanisms by which these mutations interact to perturb normal cellular processes and drive transformation remains a key question in cancer biology.
This thesis explores the co-operation between two mutations which commonly co-occur in an acute megakaryoblastic leukaemia unique to children with Down Syndrome: Gata1s and haploinsufficiency of the core cohesin component Rad21.
Myeloid leukaemia of Down Syndrome (ML-DS) provides an excellent model in which to study multistep leukaemogenesis. It is biologically simpler than adult AML, comprising just three genetic events occurring in temporarily separable stages: (i) constitutive trisomy 21; (ii) an acquired truncating mutation in the transcription factor GATA1 (GATA1s) in fetal life, resulting in a preleukaemic condition, Transient Abnormal Myelopoiesis (TAM); (iii) additional somatic mutation(s) in the first 4 years of post natal life, transforming preleukaemic TAM clone(s) to ML-DS. Previous studies indicate that just one additional mutation in a cohesin complex gene may be sufficient for transformation, suggesting an important co-operative role.
To address this, I first confirmed the co-existence of Gata1s and cohesin gene mutations in a large cohort of patient samples and characterised the frequency and predicted functional effect of these variants. I then explored the impact of these mutations, both alone and in combination, using a transgenic mouse model system. Combined Gata1s/cohesin mutant mice displayed a novel haematopoietic phenotype, characterised by expansion of the bone marrow megakaryocyte progenitor (MkP) compartment and abnormal differentiation and proliferation of the cells within it. Integrated molecular analysis of the MkP revealed altered gene expression profiles and chromatin accessibility, with dysregulation of a number of relevant transcription factor pathways.
Significantly, both phenotypic and molecular analyses revealed a much greater effect of Gata1s plus cohesin haploinsufficiency than of either mutation alone, supporting a role for mutational co-operativity. The true nature of this interaction seems likely to be complex, potentially involving dysregulation of multiple targets and regulatory mechanisms within the cell.

Advisor: Vyas, P
Roberts, I
Discourses of same-sex sexuality in British monolingual English dictionaries, 1604–1933

This thesis is a diachronic analysis of the discourses through which monolingual English dictionaries compiled and published in Britain represented same-sex sexuality over the course of three centuries—from the 1604 appearance of Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, generally regarded to be the first monolingual English dictionary, to the publication of the first Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 1933. The thesis argues that dictionaries are a valuable site of data on historical articulations of same-sex acts, desires, and identities because they throw light not only on past linguistic ‘knowledges’ of sexuality, but on their complementary ‘ignorances’ (cf. Sedgwick 1990: 8). That is, dictionaries offer didactic models of what their users ought to know and not know about sex, which sexual practices are sanctioned or prohibited, and how users should act (or be acted upon) as proper sexual subjects (or objects). The backbone of the thesis is concerned with English lexicography aimed at non-specialist readers—namely, hard-word dictionaries in the seventeenth century and general dictionaries thereafter—but it also compares these genres to specialized dictionaries of law, classical myth, medicine, and criminal cant.
The thesis is equally situated in the research traditions of lexicography and queer linguistics. It elaborates a theoretical framework that draws on queer performativity theory to argue that dictionaries do not merely reflect ‘common’ or ‘correct’ linguistic usage, but construct permissible and impermissible forms of language in relation to sets of linguistic and cultural norms. The application of this framework to the data is bolstered by tools from critical discourse analysis. Finally, the thesis proposes that queer linguistics can and should extend its research agenda back before the coining of homosexuality in the late nineteenth century, to attend to the ways that sexual discourses in the present have been shaped by those in the past.

Keywords: lexicography
language and sexuality
dictionaries
history of sexuality
Advisor: Brewer, C
Royal administration in East Anglia, c. 917-1066

This thesis examines the administrative development of East Anglia between 917 and 1066, the period which saw the region integrated into a growing English kingdom. It explains how this process operated at a regional and local level by considering what claims underpinned it, how new administrative structures were introduced, and what gave royal officers power in the localities. In answering these questions for East Anglia, the thesis reinterprets the basis of English government in the tenth and eleventh centuries. What is conventionally viewed as an advanced ‘Anglo-Saxon state’ drew its strength not so much from military and bureaucratic organisation as from the widespread and direct relationship between the king and his subjects.

The first two chapters take the king’s perspective to deal with royal claims. Territorial expansion by successive members of the West Saxon dynasty rested on sworn submissions and the resulting personal loyalties, rather than profound tenurial or ideological change. The privilege known as soke is reinterpreted as a device for manipulating the relationship between king and freemen for the king’s fiscal and military convenience, with implications for both administration and land tenure. Two further chapters consider the origins of East Anglian hundreds and burhs. These institutions emerge as generally irregular adaptations of earlier structures, although they were forced into a uniform pattern. Both served as frames for organising freemen often subject to no one but the king. The fifth chapter shows that royal office-holders in East Anglia frequently owed their appointment to the private resources which they could mobilise in the king’s interests, as the offices themselves long remained institutionally unstable.

This study brings evidence from a neglected region to bear on developments which were common to the whole realm. If tenth- and eleventh-century England was not as uniform and ordered a kingdom as has been imagined, unsuspected features in its governance ultimately make it appear scarcely less precocious.

Keywords: administration
government
Anglo-Saxon England
Advisor: Foot, S
Justifying limitations on the freedom to manifest religion or belief and the freedom of expression under the ICCPR

The freedom to manifest religion or belief, and the freedom of expression (‘the Two Freedoms’) are of paramount importance to the inner realm of the human person; yet they may be limited on certain grounds. Articles 18(3) and 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) accordingly set out the legal basis on which states may limit the Two Freedoms. This thesis seeks to answer the following question: to what extent can a conceptually coherent, normatively compelling, and politically appealing justificatory burden be placed on states when they limit the Two Freedoms under the ICCPR? The thesis contains seven chapters. The first evaluates the common approaches to justifying limitations on the Two Freedoms – both of which are recognised as basic liberties and claim rights in the liberal tradition. The second chapter presents a conceptual, normative and political case for an alternative approach to justifying limitations on the Two Freedoms. This alternative approach requires the state to demonstrate that the competing interests at play are sufficient reason to impose on the individual concerned a duty of justice to refrain from engaging in the impugned conduct. Chapters three, four and five deal with the historical discourse surrounding the drafting of articles 18(3) and 19(3), the orthodox interpretation of these two limitation clauses, and the jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee respectively. These three chapters reveal that the two limitation clauses are particularly vulnerable to abuse. The final two chapters explain that a simple good faith approach to interpreting the ICCPR can offer a more conceptually coherent, normatively compelling, and politically appealing approach to justifying limitations on the Two Freedoms, i.e. a ‘duty-based’ approach. The thesis concludes that this approach can actually be accommodated within the object and purpose of the ICCPR, and can provide the Committee with a doctrinal framework to advance a justificatory approach based on duties of justice. Such an approach could add further impetus to our perennial struggle to defend two of our most cherished freedoms: the freedom to manifest religion or belief, and the freedom of expression.

Keywords: Limitations
Treaty interpretation
Freedom of religion or belief
ICCPR
Freedom of expression
Human rights
Duties of justice
Advisor: Ghanea, N
Shock and release of tantalum studied via molecular dynamics and femtosecond x-ray diffraction

The response of solid matter to shock compression is complexified considerably by its strength, or its ability to withstand shear stress. Strength is challenging to measure experimentally under shock conditions and even harder to model, due to its being an extremely complicated function of the loading conditions. Our understanding of material strength and the way it manifests under dynamic loading thus remains, to a great extent, incomplete. This work presents studies of two phenomena arising from strength under the conditions of shock compression and release by means of multimillion-atom molecular dynamics simulations and femtosecond x-ray diffraction. The role of shock-induced grain interactions is first explored via simulations of elementary polycrystals. Such interactions are found to control the plasticity mechanisms activated under shock compression and the limiting shear stress state to which the polycrystal settles in the wake of the shock. A combined experimental-computational study of plastic-work heating under the conditions of shock release is then presented. An algorithm for extracting the temperature of released samples from their diffraction image is derived and verified on synthetic data. When applied to experimental data, the algorithm shows that the temperatures of shock-released tantalum foils vastly exceed those expected from a conventional isentropic release. The underlying microphysical processes responsible for the heating are then interrogated via large-scale simulations of crystals under shock and release. A heat equation is used to identify plastic-work heating owed to the sample’s exceptional strength during its rapid release as the culprit, thus challenging the conventional assumption that shock release is a universally isentropic process.

Keywords: shock physics
molecular dynamics
x-ray diffraction
tantalum
plasticity
Advisor: Wark, J
Next generation dark-field microscopy: from high-speed single particle tracking to label-free imaging

This thesis details the improvement and implementation of a total internal reflection dark-field scattering microscope, in terms of pushing the boundaries of its sensitivity and spatiotemporal resolution, to study the bending flexibility of DNA on biologically important length scales. Furthermore, by observing the scattering intensity response to the reconfiguration of the electric double layer on a substrate, dark-field microscopy has been brought into the field of label-free imaging, establishing a novel contrast mechanism. Specifically, Chapter 2 describes the basics of light scattering and tethered particle motion and elaborates various designs to apply total internal reflection-based dark-field microscopy. After characterisation and quantitative comparison regarding their signal-to-noise ratio and background noise suppression performance, high- speed tracking of 20 nm diameter gold nanoparticles with few nanometre localisation precision and few microsecond exposure time is demonstrated with the optimised set-up. Chapter 3 combines this imaging capability with tethered particle motion to directly address the mechanical properties of double-stranded DNA shorter than 160 base pairs without significant volume exclusion effect. Chapter 4 takes the advantage of the short DNA tether functionalised with a charged gold nanoparticle which behaves like a nanospring in the presence of an alternating electric field, to measure the electrophoretic force and charge with femtonewton sensitivity. In the last chapter, total internal reflection-based dark-field microscopy is applied to optically image the electric double layer around nanostructures on an ITO substrate based on the potentiodynamic optical contrast mechanism and thus proves its potential, at least in principle, for label-free imaging at the single molecule level.

Keywords: label-free imaging
high-speed single particle tracking
dark-field microscopy
tethered particle motion
Advisor: Kukura, P
Between expectations of frictionless mobility and complex realities. Decisions and experiences of German professionals living and working in Britain.

The aim of the DPhil thesis is to explore the particular case of the migration decision-making and experiences of German professionals in Britain. Not only is the mobility of professionals an integral factor for the economies, but it is also promoted and facilitated on the national and EU levels. Mobile professionals may be regarded as the ideal type of mover: invisible, young, highly-talented, competent in the local language, well-integrated. Indeed, due to these characteristics, they are assumed to integrate easily and enjoy the mobile lifestyle. However, some empirical studies highlight the complexities of this mobility suggesting that even those highly-desired mobile professionals are not immune to challenges, which may lead to instability, insecurity, and stress, suggesting that such migration is not as frictionless and easy as may be suggested.
In this thesis, I aim to address these aspects. Based on the qualitative analysis of 64 interviews with professionals and some of their partners, I draw our attention to the complexities in the lives of these privileged mobile professionals. On the one hand, German professionals moving to Britain may exemplify the notion of frictionless mobility, as they enjoy the right to move freely, they are educated, young, competent in the English language, employed according to their qualifications, and well-integrated. On the other hand, their mobility is more constrained than it first appears and their migratory experiences are not immune to challenges or unanticipated obstacles, such as Brexit. Furthermore, having partners or children may present additional challenges for the households, and not only impact the relocation strategies of the household but also impact the migratory experience of each partner. Discussing these aspects contributes to our understating of the particularities of the experiences of mobile professionals relocating between affluent countries, as well as highlights the realities and complexities of mobility and the lives of these highly-desired professionals.

Keywords: Germany
family migration
migration
UK
mobility
professionals
highly-skilled
developed country
EU
Advisor: Ryan, L
Hertog, E
Billari, FC