VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The potentiality of ‘nought:’ Julian of Norwich’s understanding of the deity and the self through the apophatic matrices of love and dread

This thesis explores Julian of Norwich’s poetics of understanding, situated on the continuum from cataphatic representation to apophatic symbolism, through a focus on her modi amandi et timendi. This methodological dualism bridges the chasm in current scholarship between her theologia negativa, affectivity, and contemplative insight.
I argue that Julian’s correlational modalities of love and dread foster an intuited participatory sapience based on the unmediated joy of apprehending the transcendent and immanent mysterium. Until now, the significance of the apophatic concept of “nought” in her theology has not been generally acknowledged. In contrast, I contend that the reciprocal love knot with the divinity and both parties’ kenotic surrender culminate in several varieties of “nought.” These include the impossibility of attaining certain knowledge about the godhead or the self, the fundamental difference and enclosing of created and uncreated “nought,” and the hermeneutics of fragmentation and abundance that these aporias foster.
Expanding on these coincidences of opposites, the introduction and the first chapter explore the dynamics of the divine absence/presence dyad, proving that Julian’s partaking in the deity’s creative impulses initially fosters a literal and linear engagement with him but peters out into a receptive stillness that silences the discursive mind. Her theology of becoming invariably uses her human means to gesture to the beyond, and it is predicated on a profound sense of wonder, as well as on its analogue, humility.
The second chapter focuses on the anchoress’s conceptualisations of dread and their organic relationship to grace and spiritual security. Starting with an analysis of the paradox of reverent dread as an expression of love, I demonstrate that the Parable of the Lord and the Servant functions as an interpretive prism that tactically misleads any propensities towards narrative totality, instead privileging the sensus mysticus. Intricate processes of “noughting” also dominate Julian’s encounters with the devil and her treatment of sin. She balances both on the cusp of existent absence, and thus dissolves all forms of non-theocentric dread.

Keywords: love
apophatic
Middle English Literature
contemplation
Julian of Norwich
apophasis
nothingness
devil
poetics
dread
Theology and Philosophy
Advisor: Gillespie, V
Justifying public justice

Criminal law contains a set of powers and permissions that enable it to fulfil its functions. A central feature of contemporary criminal law is that these powers and permissions are predominantly allocated to public officials acting in their capacity as such. Many of these normative incidents are entirely withheld from private persons, while some—like those involved in an arrest—are granted to private persons on a much more limited basis than they are to public officials. Call this feature the standard allocation of criminal law’s powers and permissions.
Most agree that the standard allocation is justified. However, the question of what this justification is has been relatively neglected. The purpose of the thesis is to address this question, which I label the allocative question.
Statists claim that the standard allocation is justified because achieving some value—which is personal to public officials—is necessary to justify allocating criminal law’s powers and permissions to an agent. A value is personal to public officials if it is such that only public officials are, even in principle, capable of realising it.
The thesis refutes Statism by challenging two arguments advanced in its defence: one, based on criminal law’s functions, the other, on the role of lawmakers—who are the public officials charged with allocating criminal law’s powers and permissions.
It then develops an Instrumentalist answer to the allocative question. According to Instrumentalism, criminal law is a way to achieve values that anyone, at least in principle, could realise. The standard allocation is justified insofar this arrangement helps criminal law to best deliver these impersonal values at a lesser cost in other values. The thesis also defends Instrumentalism from two main objections, namely, that Instrumentalism (i) fits poorly with criminal law doctrine and (ii) is in tension with the Wrongfulness Constraint on criminalisation.

Keywords: morality
public officials
reasons
permissions
instrumentalism
powers
criminal law
Advisor: Edwards, J
We can only change ourselves: psychology and mental health in China


This thesis is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted 2018/19 with psychological counsellors, their clients, psychology hobbyists 心理爱好者 and their wider social milieu, in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. These people are participants in the “psy-boom”– –the dramatic rise of interest in psychology and adoption of psychological services––that has been a significant social development in the late reform period. First, this thesis shows that the psy- boom is taking place in multiple kinds of venues throughout society, for instance, in workshops, reading groups, workplaces, families and online. The second contribution is to show the diversity of ideas within the psy-boom as it existed in Chengdu at the time of the ethnography, and how it intersected with other social phenomena. These include gender, class, economic precarity, and the rise of digital technologies. The third contribution is to explore the affective dimension and subjective shifts that constitute the psy-boom and how these inform people’s perception of agency. Building on the observation of how the psy-boom intersects with other phenomenon, the thesis shows how people interpret the structural and social causes of personal trauma and how they shape their responses to these. The psy-boom helps people cultivate a particular understanding of agency, that is found in the way they apply psychological tools to better understand themselves, to feel validated in their distress, and to rearticulate themselves in their social worlds. For Ms. Liu, a key figure in this ethnography, to say, “we can’t change others, we can only change ourselves,” represents an understanding of healing that is not passive. However, this notion of there being something that can be done, must come from somewhere. The psy-boom is a social phenomenon constituted by and constitutive of the society in which it has developed.

Keywords: psychology
psychological counselling
mental health
ethnography
anthropology
chengdu
China
Advisor: Murphy, R
Lora-Wainwright, A
The Arabic dialect of the Rwala tribe, based on the ethnographic records of Alois Musil

This thesis presents a linguistic description of the dialect of the Rwala tribe of northern Arabia as presented in Alois Musil’s (1928) ethnographical work 'The manners and customs of the Rwala bedouins'. A systematic presentation of the phonology and morphology is given, which compares the grammar of the language as Musil recorded it with other sources of the Rwala dialect, and with sources of north-Arabian dialects more broadly, in order to assess the fidelity of Musil’s transcriptions. A complete glossary of Musil’s work has been compiled according to the grammar as set out in the rest of the thesis.
Chapter 1 places the Rwala dialect in its north-Arabian context and considers the other sources useful for comparative work and the relevant isoglosses and classificatory characteristics of bedouin, north-Arabian, and Najdi dialects. In chapter 2 the phonology is presented, where it is discussed that Musil’s system of transcription is unlikely to convey the true nature of the sound system of the dialect, and that several important phonological processes recorded for dialects of the type to which Rwala belongs are attested significantly less in Musil than in other accounts. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the morphology of nominal and verbal forms, where idiosyncrasies in Musil are highlighted, although it is shown that in general his record of the language is in line with what would be expected. Chapter 5 deals with function words with similar conclusions to chapters 3 and 4, and in chapter 6 a preliminary lexical study is carried out which demonstrates the similarity of the dialect as presented by Musil to other Najdi dialects.

Keywords: Nabaṭī poetry
Rwala
Phonology
Alois Musil
Bedouin dialects
Najdi dialects
Morphology
Advisor: Macdonald, M
Johns, J
Jamil, N
Spatially resolved proteomics of a human brain tumour

Biological tissues contain diverse cell subpopulations crucial to their function, and proteins are the macromolecules that carry out many of these functions. Robust mass spectrometry-based methods that can accurately identify and quantify thousands of proteins within a sample have transformed the investigation of protein abundance and function within tissues and cells. However, mass spectrometry-based proteomics of tissue is traditionally performed on bulk samples. Therefore, information on the spatial composition and protein abundance patterns of those tissues is lost. Currently, the spatial context of proteins within a tissue is investigated using antibody-based high-resolution techniques with little multiplexing capacity.
There is a clear need for techniques that generate unbiased, quantitative, spatial expression profiles of many hundreds to thousands of proteins within a tissue. Presented within this thesis is the development of sample preparation, acquisition, and analysis workflows for spatially resolved proteomics using bottom-up mass spectrometry. This method was used to analyse an atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumour (ATRT), a rare paediatric brain tumour.
Firstly, an optimised workflow was developed and used to characterise the proteomes of two neurons: Betz and Purkinje cells. Both cell types show highly specific proteomes. Purkinje cells show an increased abundance of several known Purkinje cell marker proteins. In addition, several novel candidate marker proteins for Betz cells were identified.
Secondly, the method was extended to allow for unbiased sampling of tissue in a spatially resolved manner. The method shows clear signals from a starting material of approximately 50 cells isolated from ATRT tissue. Analysis of the data within the tissue’s spatial context highlights proteins and pathways showing spatially variable abundance within the tumour and adjacent normal tissue. This is performed without prior knowledge of the tissue composition by using spatially aware statistical methods.
Finally, orthogonal validation was performed using immunohistochemistry and mass spectrometry imaging which recapitulates the spatial variability observed in the bottom-up mass spectrometry approach.
Overall, the work presented here informs on methods for spatially resolved proteomics of tissue, laying the groundwork for further spatially resolved tissue proteomics and highlighting the utility of such approaches to understanding tissue biology.

Keywords: Spatial proteomics
Tissue proteomics
Mass spectrometry
Proteomics
Advisor: Fischer, R
Ansorge, O
Kessler, B
The search for supersymmetry in complex hadronic states using the ATLAS detector

The standard model of particle physics is incomplete. A well motivated solution to several of its issues, including the absence of dark matter, is a theoretical extension called supersymmetry. Supersymmetric particles may be produced in the 13 TeV collisions recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The presence of a dark matter candidate particle would be signified by the presence of missing transverse momentum, MET, in an event. A quantity designed to find very weakly interacting particles escaping the detector. This thesis first analyses the performance of MET and its significance with the complete ATLAS p-p Run 2 dataset with a centre of mass energy of 13 TeV.
A direct search for SUSY particles is then presented. This search is aiming to find new physics in events with large jet multiplicities, no leptons and a moderate amount of MET. The dominant background in this analysis comes from QCD multi-jet events that have very little real MET. Instead, the MET will be from mismeasurement and resolution effects. The MET significance is used to suppress contributions from these events in the signal regions. In addition a new jet definition is employed to improve the reconstruction of jets used in the analysis. No deviation from the standard model is observed. The results are used to calculate exclusion limits in terms of simplified models, the largest excluded mass for the gluino is 2 TeV assuming a massless lightest neutralino. This limit was found using a two step cascade decay of the gluino to SM particles and the lightest neutralino. The final section of the thesis is concerned with finding a method to discriminate between quark and gluon initiated jets in ATLAS. Many new physics searches seek signatures with only quarks in the final state and so gluons can be considered a background. The ability to discriminate between the two types of jets greatly improves the discovery power of these analyses.

Keywords: experimental particle physics
supersymmetry
quark gluon tagging
missing transverse momentum
LHC
MET
particle physics
ATLAS
Advisor: Barr, A
'Grace no longer grace': Participant relationality in early imperial discussions of χάρις and its implications for Pauline theology

Recent scholarship on Pauline χάρις has been dominated by the assumption that Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish authors of the early principate treat the concept of χάρις as a do ut des transaction—a foil against which Paul’s discussions of divine χάρις are sharply contrasted. This thesis calls this dichotomy into question by tracing the distinction between ‘instrumental’ and ‘participant’ χάρις through the writings of both Paul and his Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish contemporaries.
Chapter 1 analyses the early imperial images of χάρις as a ballgame and a divine dance, arguing that their use as didactic devices by Seneca, Plutarch, and others encourages a participant approach to χάρις—one which locates the good of the χάρις interaction in the relationship it creates or fosters—as opposed to an instrumental perspective, which locates the good in some end external to the relationship. Chapter 2 traces the reception and development of this idea in descriptions by Philo and Josephus of various exemplary and impious human responses to the χάρις of God.
Chapters 3 and 4 investigate five clusters of participant χάρις language across the Pauline corpus. Chapter 3 underlines the significance of Paul’s characteristic greeting formula, analyses the triangulation of χάρις in his prayers of thanksgiving for addressees, and explicates his exhortations to community-building generosity as a participant response to God’s abundant provision of χαρίσματα. Chapter 4 highlights the many roles of Christ in Paul’s vision of the ongoing divine-human χάρις relationship. Focussing in particular on his letter to the Romans and his closing χάρις benedictions, this chapter draws out the implications of Christ’s incarnational role as divine gift to humanity, his exemplary role as recipient of God’s participant χάρις, and his ongoing mediatory role as the risen and exalted Lord.

Keywords: relationality
Philo
Pauline letters
Seneca
gift
grace
χάρις
thanksgiving
Paul
do ut des
popular philosophy
Jesus Christ
reciprocity
early imperial
gratitude
Advisor: Morgan, T
Confession in the Greco-Roman world: a social and cultural history

This thesis presents a history of confession in the Greco-Roman world, focusing on literary, papyrological and epigraphic evidence from beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition. It provides a typology of confession of wrongdoing, identifying two originally distinct practices – divine-justice confession and autoscopic confession – in operation in the period from Aristotle to Augustine. It also offers an account of development over time, arguing that confession's history is best explained not by a model of cultural transfer from East to West, as previous scholars have seen it, but by socio-political changes in the wider structure of Greco-Roman society which encouraged practices of confession. This thesis therefore challenges the work of previous commentators, from Foucault to those who have understood confession as 'un-Greco-Roman' and the product of 'oriental' religious influence. For autoscopic confession, the key turning point was the development of philosophical schools in the Hellenistic age and the Epicurean invention of ethical injunction. Its practice was exhorted, routine and governed by a discourse of self-improvement. For the 'divine-justice’ form, a number of factors fostered its practice which were contingent upon how divine interests and expectations were conceived, and which might be explained over time by four main trends: a shift from silence to speech in what was expected of the accused; the introduction of new paradigms of terrestrial justice and legal realities under the Principate; a competitive religious marketplace where theodical anxiety encouraged vocality; and transformation in concepts of wrongdoing, culpability and regimes of divine justice. These findings change the way we ought to understand early Christian confession, from the autoscopic practices of monasticism to the divine-justice confessions of the Shepherd of Hermas, to even the work of Augustine himself. Ultimately, it was the political transformation from Republic to Empire which provided the climate in which Foucault’s ‘confessing animal’ could thrive.

Keywords: Roman history
Ancient South Arabia
wrongdoing
cognitive history
belief
confession
guilt
Roman religion
sin
epigraphy
expiation
monasticism
Greek religion
early Christianity
Roman law
The significance of doorway positions in English medieval parochial churches and chapels

This thesis analyses the positions of church doorways of English medieval parochial churches and chapels in an attempt to show the significance that positioning had for the function and design of these buildings.
The thesis shows that in the seventh to tenth centuries, churches tended to have a single nave doorway at the west end of the building. A larger group of English churches built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries shows that the design changed in the eleventh century new buildings tended to have two nave doorways, on the north and south sides of the nave in a laterally opposite position. A final group of churches that were built from the thirteenth century to the end of the Middle Ages indicates that new churches continued the two-doorway trend of the eleventh and twelfth centuries but often had western towers and doorways as well. A final architectural chapter examines chapels, which were different from churches as they had different function and status. The evidence here shows that non-parochial chapels tended to have a single southern doorway while parochial chapels were often built with two nave doorways.
The study next examines the reasons for the changes in the doorway positions. It argues that there are liturgical reasons for the changes both at the turn of the eleventh century and again in the later thirteenth. Gender and clerical segregation are considered in relation to the provision of a second nave doorway in churches and parochial chapels. It is also shown that the widespread idea of the ‘Devil’s Door’ was only developed in the nineteenth century though it had roots in late medieval liturgy.
The study concludes that there is a link between the design and function of parochial churches and chapels with the number and attributes of their doorways.

Keywords: devil's-door
function
medieval doorways
chapel
Parish church
English
gender
status
liturgy
Advisor: Gittos, H
Barnwell, P
Exploring the effects of light and sleep deprivation on the chromatin structure and transcriptional landscape of specific brain regions

Disruption to normal circadian rhythms and frequent periods of sleep deprivation (SD), are endemic in today’s 24 hour society; therefore understanding the fundamental biology underlying what happens in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) during entrainment, and other specific brain regions following SD has never been more important. Current understanding of entrainment and SD within the SCN at the molecular level is still very limited, despite SD already having been shown to have a profound effect on brain function.
The published Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin sequencing (ATAC-seq) protocol was successfully modified to allow the technique to be effective with small amounts of tissue collected from murine SCN tissue. ATAC-seq was effectively used to investigate chromatin accessibility within cells of the SCN following light pulsing at different times of the day, and following SD in the SCN, dentate gyrus, and cortex. Data from ATAC-seq light pulse experiments was compared to published gene expression data following light pulsing and determined changes in chromatin accessibility also affect the transcriptome. RNA-seq was used to investigate gene expression following SD, and gain insights into how chromatin affects the transcriptome following SD.
Results obtained indicate, chromatin accessibility is highly dynamic within all brain regions investigated. ATAC-seq revealed chromatin accessibility changes in the SCN following light pulsing, but only at certain times of the day, and discovered chromatin modification across all brain regions following SD. Several genes identified close to differential chromatin are already known to play an important role within the molecular clock, and are recognized to be important for entrainment and SD. In addition several novel genes with differential chromatin nearby have been identified that also likely have an important role during entrainment and following SD.
Several areas of differential chromatin were investigated using a luciferase reporter assay, and results obtained indicate the areas of chromatin are able to strongly drive gene expression, and respond to treatment using forskolin and horse serum, both known to have an effect on the molecular clock.

Keywords: light-pulse
sleep-deprivation
entrainment
body-clock
molecular-clock
circadian rhythms
Sleep
Advisor: George, C