VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A history of Pakints': indigenous politics in Shuar mining encounters

This thesis is an ethnographic study on the prevalence and consequence of indigenous historical knowledge in lowland South America. The account I provide here details the political history of an indigenous reserve in an often-overlooked swath of Shuar lands in Southeast Ecuador (referred to as ‘the South’ in this ethnography), and analyses what Shuar people in the region call ‘Shuar history’. Shuar use this term to underscore their agency and political autonomy and to make sense of the ambiguities and uncertainties recently brought by large-scale industrial mining to their lands. In so doing they provide a historical account of ‘real history’, that not only intends to oppose and counteract colonial accounts and descriptions of the region but currently serves to redefine industrial mining politics under indigenous terms. Shuar history thus plays an essential role in Shuar understandings of resource extraction in the region and helps shape indigenous outlooks over a contested and conflictive future.
Shuar history, as I show in this thesis, offers an indigenous interpretation of change and continuity, and an indigenous background for historicity through its own account of Shuar colonial encounters and entanglements. I aim to explain how Shuar people engage in political action drawing upon their knowledge of the past and how Shuar history affects ongoing social, political, and economic changes brought about in the context of resource extraction. This study is therefore an ethnographic enquiry into Shuar notions of the past as it is an analysis of indigenous politics in an extractive context. It should be read as a demonstration that studies on resource extraction on indigenous lands in lowland South America stand to gain considerable depth by paying closer attention to indigenous cosmologies.

Keywords: indigenous history
Western Amazonia
resource extraction
Amazonian anthropology
Shuar
Advisor: Ewart, E
Coming to terms with forced migration: an intergenerational study of Asia Minor refugee memory in Greece

This thesis is a comparative – intergenerational and interregional – history of Asia Minor memories and identities of forced displacement that examines the multilayered relationship between contemporary attitudes and refugee past. In light of the centenary of the Asia Minor population transfer and the current migration and refugee crises, this study explores refugee memories and identities of expulsion, their intergenerational transmission, and the way people with these memories think about subsequent migrations. While focusing on the case of Greece, the research questions that this thesis addresses are: How have memories of the 1922-24 forced displacement changed over time from one generation to the next? How do people with these memories and identities think about subsequent migration? Following a regional history approach and an oral history approach, this study draws upon literature from several disciplines and rests upon oral testimony. Specifically, it employs a methodology of collecting primary sources using oral testimonies (262 life history interviews) and archival evidence (5000 oral testimonies) based on three regional case studies, namely the borderland island of Lesvos, Central Macedonia in northern Greece, and Attica. Refugee identity is a capacious and dynamic platform of ongoing understanding as well as a limited space of domination and competition. Elucidating the attitudes of refugee descendants and unfolding key patterns about the complex role of refugee memory and identity, this thesis brings together the intersection of three interlocking elements, time (refugee generations), place (refugee locations), and subsequent migration (waves of other migrations). In short, Coming to Terms with Forced Migration sheds light on the convoluted relationship between contemporary attitudes and refugee past, providing a nuanced history of the 1922-24 memories and identities of forced displacement.

Keywords: oral history
identity
memory
forced displacement
migration
Advisor: Gildea, R
Anastasakis, O
The hospitals of London: administration, refoundation, and benefaction, c.1500-1572

This thesis studies the organisation and government of the hospitals of London in the first three quarters of the sixteenth century. Particular emphasis is laid on the changes in the network of church-affiliated hospitals during the period of the Dissolu- tion of the Monasteries, and the subsequent reorganisation of several of these institu- tions in the reign of Edward VI. Mainly through the use of the contemporary records of the hospitals and the City, the different but complementary functions of St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, and Christ's Hospitals are analysed over the span of the first twenty-five years after their reorganisation. The implementation of the Elizabethan Poor Laws in 1572 is adopted as the terminus point for this study.
In 1547, the Crown ceded to the City control over St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Bethlem Hospital. In 1552, the City also successfully negotiated with the royal government for possession of St. Thomas's Hospital, Christ's Hospital, and Bridewell. All of these institutions were administered by the City, and each had distinctive tasks, which included the general tending of the sick (St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's), treatment of the mentally disturbed (Bethlem), the care and education of the children of the poor of London (Christ's), and the incarceration and rehabilitation of the idle poor (Bridewell). St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, and Christ's are studied in depth. This thesis attempts to demonstrate the way in which these hospitals fit into the larger efforts of the government of the City to combat poverty, stem the flow of the poor into London, provide wide access to institutional care, and reduce the risks of crime, social friction, and the spread of communicable diseases. The problems of funding these institutions were severe and persistent for much of the sixteenth century; demand for a place within one of the hospitals frequently exceeded capacity. However, the promises the hospitals of London made of helping the poor in ways both pragmatic and com- passionate ensured that they remained institutions of intense interest and growing civic pride to all ranks of residents within the metropolis.

Keywords: benefaction
England
16th century
hospitals
London
refoundation
administration
sixteenth century
Advisor: Heal, F
Ocean eddy-mean flow interactions over topography

Climate modelling fails to accurately represent the global oceans in a number of ways. One area where models are consistently flawed is in the Atlantic Water Layer of the Arctic Ocean, by failing to predict the predominantly cyclonic circulation observed. In this thesis we discuss the most likely explanation for this failing, namely that most, if not all, climate models fail to have a physically consistent representation of mesoscale eddies, whether resolved or parameterised.
We will explore recent developments in eddy-mean interaction theory, and use it to investigate eddy-mean interactions over topography. To do this we will use an idealised stacked shallow water model in which large topographic slopes and realistic mesoscale eddy fields can be well represented. The effect of these eddy fields on the larger scale is diagnosed using the theory to determine how the eddy-mean interaction is characterised by both the topography and the properties of the eddy field.
It is shown that the eddy energy and eddy enstrophy provide useful bounds. In the specific configurations explored in this thesis, the eddy energy is shown to be a highly constraining bound and hence an important factor for the structure of the eddy stresses. Also, despite the two definitions of mean potential vorticity allowed by eddy-mean interaction theory, we show that these definitions are effectively identical in our configurations, and hence that the eddy enstrophy bound is applicable to both definitions. These results will hopefully contribute to developing a dynamically-consistent parameterisation of eddies over variable topography. And hence, help to improve the ability of ocean models to reproduce circulation patterns observed in the Atlantic Water Layer of the Arctic.

Keywords: Arctic Ocean
energy enstrophy topography
modelling eddy parameterization
Carica papaya L. incorporated nanofibrous scaffold as a potential wound dressing

Chronic wound care remains an issue of paramount clinical importance, and an area for entrepreneurial development. The fruit and leaves of the Carica papaya Linn tree possess proteolytic enzymes (papain and chymopapain), various phytochemicals including flavonoids, and Vitamin C that confer proteolytic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial properties, in addition to promoting collagen synthesis. Micro/nano-fibrous dressings mimic the extracellular matrix and promote cellular integration, thus encouraging wound healing and re-epithelialization. Electrospinning is a versatile technique to produce these scaffolds, in which natural and bio-derived synthetic polymers can be utilised. In this experiment, emulsion electrospinning of neat water-in-oil emulsions of sodium alginate (SA) solution and polylactic acid (PLA) in chloroform, using Span60 surfactant, was undertaken. The obtained scaffolds were immersed in CaCl2 solution to convert soluble SA to insoluble calcium alginate (CA). Uniform smooth micro-fibrous scaffolds (diameters ≤ 0.5 µm) were observed on optical microscopy. Attempts to produce bead-on-string fibres through replacement of Na+ with Ca2+ in alginate prior to electrospinning were inconclusive. An aqueous extract of papaya leaves, seeds, and epicarp was obtained; and incorporated into the emulsions prior to electrospinning. It was discovered that our papaya extract contained Ca2+ (measured at 1.16 mmol.L-1) and produced insoluble CA when combined with the alginate solution prior to emulsification. This prevented creation of a homogeneous emulsion with ≤ 1.0 mm firm papaya-incorporated CA globules clogging the needle during electrospinning. Thus, papaya extract was added to the SA-PLA emulsion just prior to electrospinning producing a more uniform emulsion which electrospun without clogging. This papaya-functionalised CA-PLA electrospun scaffold had fibres with diameters of 0.5‒2 µm, however its gross structure as a membrane was fragile and tore easily (in comparison to neat CA-PLA scaffolds). This is promising evidence that papaya-functionalised CA-PLA electrospun scaffolds can be generated, but optimisation of the technique is still needed.

Keywords: Trinidad
polylactic acid
papaya
Caribbean
sodium alginate
biodegradable wound dressings
emulsion electrospinning
nanofibers
Advisor: Dye, J
Taylor, R
Pandey, S
Carlisle, R
Neural mechanisms of phantom limb pain

After limb amputation, the majority of amputees report the presence of phantom limb pain (PLP), whereby chronic painful sensations are localised in the missing limb. In this thesis I assessed the potential neural mechanisms underlying PLP, with a set of experiments which evaluated a popular theory of PLP – the maladaptive plasticity model, and then explored alternative hypotheses of PLP.
First, I assessed one of the long-held, implicit assumptions of the maladaptive plasticity model – that the cortical neighbour to the hand in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is the lips/lower face. Controls participated in active somatotopic mapping of the upper and lower face using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Univariate and multivariate analyses indicated that the likely cortical neighbour to the hand was the upper, not lower, face. Subsequent recruitment of amputees and congenital one-handers (positive control group) found little evidence for somatotopic shifts of the upper and lower face towards the deprived hand region in amputees, with no significant associations to PLP. Conversely, congenital one-handers, who do not experience PLP, displayed gross somatotopic shifts of all facial parts tested.
Next, the role of associative learning mechanisms in PLP was explored. Specifically, a novel behavioural task was designed to assess how amputees learn about nociceptive information in relation to phantom movement. Controls indicated significant learning of probabilistic cues with movements, validating the use of the behavioural paradigm for future studies with amputees. Anecdotal results from computational modelling and quantification of expectation biases indicated idiosyncratic learning styles and preserved placebo responses in amputees. Finally, a well-replicated task used in computational psychiatry demonstrated that ‘jumping-to-conclusions’, where individuals require little sensory information before belief formation, was tentatively related to pain catastrophising.
Taken together, these results not only assessed one of the most common explanations of PLP, but also offered novel behavioural paradigms that encourage the exploration of PLP outside of S1, with the aim to improve future treatment.

Keywords: phantom limb pain
primary somatosensory cortex
chronic pain
maladaptive plasticity
Advisor: Tracey, I
Makin, T
Dislocation based modelling of fusion relevant materials

With increasing frequency, one finds people across vastly different fields who can understand each other via a common language. The language of scientific computing, where fields intertwine and produce new research methods; where techniques developed across disciplines are taken, improved and adapted to work on the individual researcher’s problem of interest.
This project applies such techniques to accelerate and improve the ease with which outstanding problems in materials science can be tackled; making use of more accurate models, hardware acceleration and the techniques of high performance computing to enable more accurate, larger, more complex simulations than before—striving for increasingly faithful and insightful recreations of reality with a user-friendly code on a desktop PC.

Keywords: dislocations in metals
scientific computing
high performance computing
graphics processing units
mathematical models
fusion
micromechanics
Advisor: Tarleton, E
Wilkinson, A
Cosmic and human cognition in Plato’s Timaeus


My thesis examines the issue of cognition in Plato’s Timaeus, and focusses on Timaeus’ discussion of two cases occupying opposite ends of a spectrum: the cognitive activity of an immortal rational soul in the best possible condition and that of an immortal rational soul in the worst possible condition. The first is the cognitive activity of the World Soul, described at Ti. 37a2-c5, which forms the basis of my first chapter. The second is the cognitive activity of a human rational soul that has just been embodied, described at Ti. 42e5-44c4, which I tackle in chapters 2 and 3. In chapter 2, I argue that the human type of immortal rational soul is first embodied in what is best understood as an embryo. In light of this hypothesis, I analyze, in chapter 3, the initial disruption of its cognition. I then draw a comparison between the kinds of cognition of the kosmos and that of an embryo. On the basis of this comparison, I discuss the first steps of the cognitive recovery that takes place when the embryo develops into a child. This discussion in turn paves the way for understanding the relationship between cosmic and adult human cognition, and in particular, how the former can be a model for the latter. I conclude with a few brief remarks about this last issue.

Keywords: tripartition
soul
cognition
World Soul
perception
embryology
Plato
sameness
Timeaus
difference
Forces of neural production: the infrastructural geography of artificial intelligence

It is commonly argued that only a handful of technology firms control the infrastructure that underpins contemporary forms of artificial intelligence (AI). However, little is known about how this concentration of computational resources manifests in new production geographies. This thesis asks: What forces enact, and are enacted by, AI's geographies of production? In answering this question, it develops the original framework of neural production networks: geographically dispersed but computationally enveloped production arrangements powered by artificial neural networks. Due to the impacts of AI on economic, political, and cultural interactions, neural production networks already infiltrate infrastructural life. Drawing on a paradigmatic case study design that is primarily informed by document analysis, the thesis applies this new framework to answer three research questions: First, how do technology giants act as lead firms within AI’s geographies of production? Second, how does state action shape, and is shaped by, AI’s geographies of production? Third, what do AI’s geographies of production imply for platformised cultural production? The thesis answers these questions by disassembling neural production networks into three of their mutually conditioning forces. The first force is envelopment: Acting as industry-dominating lead firms, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft decentralise the production of AI and centralise its provision, thereby enclosing users into their proprietary ecosystems. The second force is sovereignty: Although the EU’s Digital Single Market Strategy attempts to push back against an infrastructural dependency on the computational resources of American lead firms, its agency to reconfigure power relations in neural production networks remains limited. The third force is hyperproduction: Underlying the penetration of cultural life with AI-generated media, new revenue streams emerge that purport to destabilise the boundary between reality and simulation. By opening out a conceptual space that probes how those forces relate to each other, the thesis expounds a new understanding of production geographies. This conceptual space contributes to cross-disciplinary scholarship at the intersection of platform studies and economic geography. Additionally, the arguments and insights of this thesis are relevant to policymakers and regulators facing the task of governing the diffusion of neural production networks into ever-more societal spheres.

Keywords: artificial intelligence
neural production networks
global production networks
platform studies
economic geography
infrastructure studies
Advisor: Graham, M
Structural study of two-dimensional semiconductors using four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy

Graphene has shown superior mechanical properties, electronic and thermal conductivity, and room temperature quantum hall effect that enables its wide application in nanoelectronics. Due to its gapless feature, other two-dimensional (2D) materials like transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have drawn attention and have been extensively studied for their application in optoelectronics and photonics. However, the atomic defect structures brought in during synthesis will affect these properties and thus a thorough understanding is needed. 4D-STEM is a characterization method that captures the convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) pattern to allow post-acquisition reconstruction including orientation and strain mapping, position averaged CBED, and ptychography. This doctoral project focused on using 4D-STEM to characterize graphene, MoS2, and WS2 with atomic defective structures by producing a series of maps of the local electronic environment with atomic resolution. Monolayer MoS2 and WS2 were first investigated to form the basis of this project. The projected electric field map was first extracted since it is linearly proportional to the centre of mass shift of the CBED pattern caused by the atomic electric field, which can then be used to calculate the charge density map and electrostatic potential. Simple defective structures were subsequently investigated, leading to a detailed study of the enhanced electric field on TMD zigzag edges and MoS nanowire. Next, more complex structures, bilayer and trilayer twisted graphene were investigated. The electric field map showed that the bilayer with a large twist angle of 28.4° has decoupled based on comparison between the independent atom model (IAM) simulation and experimental results. A study on a backfolded trilayer further showed that, even though the top and bottom layer have a small twist angle of 3°, they show no strong interlayer coupling in the electric field due to a layer with large twist angle in between, though the observation may be obscured by the insufficient sensitivity of the current technique. Post-acquisition reconstruction modes of 4D-STEM were also investigated and compared. Results showed that the annular bright field (ABF), ptychographic phase, and divergence of differential phase contrast (DPC) can identify low and high atomic number atoms simultaneously with high resolution, surpassing the annular dark field (ADF)-STEM mode under the same imaging conditions. Series of reconstructed low angle ADF (LAADF)-STEM images from confined angular range showed potential in locating and identifying surface adsorbed atoms due to their different intensity profile as a function of reconstruction angular range, and combined with simulation, it will be possible to achieve atomic resolution elemental mapping after data acquisition.

Keywords: defective structure
2D materials
4D STEM
Advisor: Warner, J
Beyond doubt, beyond justification: Hume, Strawson, and Wittgenstein on the existence of bodies

My aim in this dissertation is to examine P. F. Strawson’s claim, in his Skepticism and Naturalism, that both Hume and Wittgenstein see our belief in body, that is, our belief in mind-independent objects, as groundless and, at the same time, not open to serious doubt. Theirs is what he calls a “naturalistic” answer to scepticism: the proper attitude towards the sceptic’s request for a justification of our belief in body is not to produce such a justification—the belief is groundless—but to point out that this request idle, a pretence. I examine Strawson’s claim from an exegetical and philosophical perspective and reach four conclusions, two exegetical and two philosophical. First, Strawson’s comparison is not the right one, as there are substantial differences between his position, that of Hume, and that of Wittgenstein. Secondly, there is room for another comparison since their writings contain claims which suggest a similar anti-sceptical argument, one purporting to show that our inability to rule out that we are in Cartesian sceptical scenario does not preclude us from having knowledge of many everyday empirical truths, because the question whether one is in such a scenario has no bearing on the truth of everyday empirical propositions. Thirdly, the naturalistic argument that Strawson attributes to Hume and Wittgenstein, and that he himself endorses, fails. Fourthly, the anti-sceptical line of argument that I uncover in the writings that I examine fails as well.

Keywords: Peter Frederick Strawson
certainty
scepticism
Ludwig Wittgenstein
David Hume