VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Metamorphoses of bodies and desire: Making queer heterotopias in contemporary Japanese cinemas

This thesis discusses ‘queer’ and ‘heterotopic’ within the context of contemporary Japanese cinemas. So far, queer studies have proved how ‘queer’ is in itself peculiar and hard to pin down through a universal definition. Studying ‘queer’ thus requires multiple lenses and interdisciplinary approaches. This study argues that ‘queer’ is more than a theme confined to sex or sexuality, but also a methodology applicable to film studies and cultural studies in general. It suggests that when used to denote sexuality, ‘queer’ has become a norm and a social convention through the continuous historical reconstructions of it in relation to the changing socio-cultural context. Thus, by coupling ‘queer’ and ‘heterotopic’, this thesis talks about ‘queer’ but at the same time deconstructs it so as to break free the confinements that have been enforced upon queer studies. It further argues that ‘heterotopic’ indicates a state of fluidity and non-hierarchical openness. Therefore, by using ‘queer’ as a method to deconstruct and bring together these two paradigms in film analysis, it is possible to produce a powerful deconstructive effect and refresh our understanding of conventional concepts such as family, love, and intimacy.
Instead of analysing human interactions following orthodox patterns based on institutions like lawful marriage and registered family, this study reconfigures interpersonal connectivity and proposes a heterotopic mode of love, intimacy and family that rejects hierarchy and any normalised framework. It argues that through this mentality, film studies can transcend the boundary posed by heteronormativity and eventually release visual art from its confinements.

Keywords: heterotopia
Japanese queer cinema
gender
family
Galaxy formation and evolution from deep optical and infrared surveys

In this thesis, I present results from population studies conducted on galaxies across most of cosmic time. Using the unique depth and area combination of modern, ground-based surveys allows for strong constraints to be placed on the number density of the most massive and luminous galaxies between redshifts of 0.1
First, I measure the stellar mass function of galaxies from 0.1
Second, I measure and examine the ultraviolet luminosity function of galaxies in the redshift range 3.5 -24) are high, generating a steep power law slope -2.1 < αAGN < -1.7. I propose that the large rise in space density of AGN over this time period can be attributed to a global increase in the number density of active black holes. Measurements of the galaxy population are found to match models which suggest that a steep bright-end slope is driven by dust obscuration and that mass-dependent quenching from AGN feedback is not yet significant at this time.

Keywords: Galaxy Evolution
Advisor: Bowler, R
Jarvis, M
Methods of attributing human mobility to climate change: evidence from East Africa

East Africa’s population is vulnerable to weather and climate-related events because of its reliance on pastoralism for livelihoods, economic security, and development. Recent weather and climatic extremes have included both recurring droughts and floods. This is paired with an ongoing humanitarian crisis, poverty, and conflict prompting changes in existing human mobility. However, the processes involved in these changes and the extent to which human-induced (anthropogenic) climate change plays a role are not yet understood. Despite awareness of climate impacts on society and the economy, weather and climate-related events and attributable links to anthropogenic climate change have received limited attention in research and policy. To circumvent this issue, an integrated attribution approach is developed which assesses the full chain of causality with human mobility as outcome, weather and climate-related events as human mobility drivers and potential inputs of anthropogenic climate change. This thesis focusses on the concepts, tools and techniques needed for the attributability of weather and climate-related events and human mobility in East Africa to anthropogenic climate change. It emphasizes the need for general models to account for the complexities of human mobility and how these can be applied in the context of a range of weather and climate-related events facing this region. These range from disentangling the diverse drivers of human mobility, to characterising climate-related human mobility, to modelling the probability and attributability of anthropogenic climate change. There is a need and responsibility to redesign climate science outputs to be proactive, agile, and socially just when confronted with increasingly likely compounding risks. New approaches must be utilised to feed into this need of science for society and regional decision-makers alike. Here, several examples of such approaches are presented which outline practical steps to improve our understanding of climate-related human mobility in East Africa and attributable links to anthropogenic climate change. This thesis concludes that an integrated attribution approach can be used to attribute weather and climate-related events and human mobility to anthropogenic climate change and is a promising method for modelling future implications of climate-related human mobility.

Keywords: climate change
extreme weather events
human mobility
attribution
Advisor: Otto, F
Masters and masons of the English Cathedrals in the later Middle Ages a study in management based on a systematic analysis of the surviving fabric rolls, 1290-1540

The English Cathedral fabric rolls have long been known as an essential research resource for architectural history. Yet, despite the emergence of highly significant work on individual great churches in the last fifty years, they have not been much researched as a whole. This study aims to apply modern spreadsheet techniques to the full range of almost 500 surviving accounts rolls from 1290 to 1540 and to explore the common themes which result. A shortage of fifteenth-century material was rectified by the inclusion of Westminster Abbey nave, which operated with similar fabric rolls.
The 250 years (1290-1540) from which these accounts have survived saw significant funds raised to realise the rebuilding and completion in their present form of almost half of the cathedrals. There were changes in the management of large building projects under the master masons, whose role as architects and site managers was new. Part I of the thesis discusses the fabric rolls as evidence, focusing on the origin and purpose of separate funds, the reliability of the rolls as accounts, and the adequacy of the surviving rolls as a sample of cathedral building activities. Part II explores questions of funding, including the sufficiency and sustainability of individual donations, chapter and commercial receipts, and the key role and motives of the bishop-patrons in making these projects affordable. Part III investigates the changing design and management roles and the business models of the master masons, and how these impinged on the masons’ working practices and on the ability of the cathedrals to achieve new projects. In Chapter 11 the changing pattern of costs and revenues is set against the context of the late medieval English economy and related to the completion of the cathedral building campaigns.

Advisor: Barnwell, P
Investigating protein-protein interactions of the Bloom Syndrome complex

Bloom Syndrome is a rare recessive chromosomal instability disorder, caused by loss-of-function mutations in the BLM helicase tumour suppressor. Patients develop a variety of developmental defects and have an increased predisposition to all cancers.
BLM interacts with TOP3A, RMI1 and RMI2 to form the BTR complex, which functions to promote the restart of stalled forks and the dissolution of double Holliday junctions during homologous recombination repair to the prevent the formation of sister chromatid exchanges.
Since most patient mutations abrogate all of BLM’s functions, it is unknown which specific function(s) are important for tumour suppression. Moreover, the functions of the unstructured regions are poorly defined. To address this, I aim to identify and characterize separation-of-function mutations within conserved motifs of the unstructured regions of the BTR complex.
Firstly, I identified several RPA binding motifs in BLM and RMI1 which are important for cellular resistance to HU but are not important the dissolution of dHJs. Secondly, I found that highly conserved FTF residues within the N-terminus of BLM are important for interactions with TOP3A, RMI1 and RMI2, which are partially functional in resistance to hydroxyurea treatment and suppression of sister chromatid exchanges. Thirdly, I found that conserved residues within the N-terminal dimerization helical bundle are important for BLM dimerization and that these residues are partially functional for resistance to HU treatment and suppression of sister chromatid exchanges.
My results demonstrate that there are several conserved unstructured motifs in BLM that mediate specific protein-protein interactions. Furthermore, my data proposes several models of how these motifs and interactions regulate several cellular functions of the BTR complex. This work may provide a future insight into which specific cellular functions of BLM are important for preventing tumorigenesis in future animal models in which the conserved regions we have studied are mutated.

Keywords: Bloom Syndrome
DNA damage
Advisor: Blackford, A
Thermomechanical behaviours of unfilled/filled thermoplastic polyurethane

Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) exhibits enormous mechanical performance and extensibility in both engineering, industry and scientific applications. The filled polymer which enclosed rigid particles has mainly improved on mechanical properties. The work focused on three TPUs, carbon-black-filled TPU, supramolecular TPU, and sugar-filled TPU. To characterise their advantages and fundamental properties, thermo-mechanical analysis, mechanical experiments and scattering techniques can be used. However, testing rubber material in high rate responses is difficult. Therefore a principle of time-temperature superposition was employed to associated mechanical behaviour with temperature and loading rates. The principle was as foundation connecting all experiments and modelling procedures to cooperate the thermo-mechanical data with linear viscoelastic theory. Upon this methodology, these behaviours in TPU and its composites can be calibrated, further predicted on high strain rates. The study of the interpretation of the phenomenological model is not only responsible for reproducing strain-stress behaviour from low- to high-strain rates, but also take advantage of time-temperature equivalence on thermo-mechanical behaviour for objectives linking between different conventional experiments. The purpose of the research is to characterise mechanical behaviour on different types of TPU materials, explore their properties especially in high strain rates, at last develop the application of viscoelastic theory in order to describe polymer at large deformation in high rate experiments.

Keywords: High-rate Behaviour
Thermoplastic Polyurethane
Unfilled/filled Polymer
Dynamic Mechanical Analysis
Thermomechanics
Advisor: Siviour, C
Investigating multi-regional neural dynamics associated with cocaine-paired memory

Rewarding experiences bias the formation of memories such that future re-exposure to corresponding stimuli biases behavioural selection such to increase the probability of re-encountering reward. This crucial feature of the nervous system is hijacked by drugs of abuse such as cocaine; whose neuropharmacological actions impose dramatic enhancement of neural reward signals, forging the formation of cocaine-paired memories. These memories constitute a diverse range of informational modalities spanning multiple brain areas. Due to the powerfully rewarding nature of cocaine, these brain-wide representations tend to outcompete other, more useful memories, precipitating stubborn patterns of cocaine-seeking behaviour. This thesis combined a novel model of dynamic cocaine-seeking behaviour with a parallel five brain site electrophysiological recording strategy. These experimental tools enabled me to explore the hypothesis that specific patterns of frequency-specific multiregional co-ordination support the recall of cocaine-paired experience and precipitate cocaine-seeking behaviour. My results suggest that cocaine-seeking behaviour, expressed initially after conditioning and renewed following an extinction period, was most linked to the enhancement of patterns of multiregional co-ordination (“barcodes”) in the beta (15–25 Hz) range. VTA 4 Hz oscillations emerged as an important agent for the temporal orchestration of beta activities, showing cycle-specific correlates of beta-selective modulation. Using a preliminary cell-type prediction pipeline, the putative dopaminergic population in the VTA showed firing properties which were reminiscent of the control of beta activities across regions, The results in this thesis provide the scaffolding onto which a final experiment will be developed, which aims to provide a causal demonstration to the conclusions from this thesis; that VTA 4 Hz and dopamine-controlled multiregional beta co-ordination patterns are involved in the precipitation of cocaine-seeking behaviour.

Keywords: memory
drug
tetrode
behaviour
neuroscience
cocaine
neural oscillations
electrophysiology
Advisor: Dupret, D
Bannerman, D
Mediate words: translation, nationalism, and religion in the works of Robert Browning and B. Kojo Laing

This thesis mediates comparative encounters between two authors themselves interested in mediating between different linguistic and cultural communities. By reading the Victorian British poet Robert Browning and the twentieth-century Ghanaian poet and novelist Kojo Laing alongside one another, and by allowing the numerous and surprising points of similarity, congruence, and connection between them to organise critical reading, the three main chapters of this thesis explore the affiliative range of literary texts outside of their ‘format of habitual connection’. This entails developing a comparative criticism attuned to the ways in which congruent contexts (times of nation-building, tensions between liberalism and imperialism) and shared contexts (Anglicanism, English as a ‘global’, imperial language) relate to congruent and shared stylistic techniques (multilingualism and grotesque comedy, for instance). It also entails a revised notion of ‘world literature’ that reflects how a text’s tendency to gesture towards interrelationships past national borders might remain in tension with a reticence or uncertainty about the ways in which this gesturing can overlook local difference. Proceeding from an analysis of both authors’ translational desire to stretch the English language through the incorporation of foreign linguistic elements (Chapter One), and their different but related tendencies to interrogate the limits of nationalist discourse and national geographies (Chapter Two), to their shared interest in the relationship between religious and spiritual affiliative communities and comic and grotesque literary styles (Chapter Three), this thesis explores the manifold junctures between Laing’s and Browning’s texts—and, indeed, junctures between different ways of reading them. What emerges is a literary cartography capable of reflecting the ways in which texts that themselves attempt to think beyond the confines of national borders, cultural limits, and linguistic communities relate to one another.

Keywords: Postcolonialism
Comparative Literatire
translation
Victorian Poetry
Religion
Kojo Laing
World Literature
Ghana
Nationalism
Robert Browning
Advisor: Reynolds, M
Investigating the regulation of membrane protein assemblies by lipids and other small molecules using native mass spectrometry

In this thesis I describe the application of native mass spectrometry to investigate membrane protein interactions with lipids and other small molecules. This work is a combination of method development, resulting in novel ways to study membrane protein-lipid complexes by native mass spectrometry, and application of established techniques to important biological targets.
In chapter 2, I demonstrate for the first time the ability of surface-induced dissociation to distinguish between interfacial and non-interfacial phospholipid binding. Additionally, I show that combining this method with the modern high sensitivity instrumentation and statistical analysis enables the observation of subtle differences in oligomeric stabilities of membrane proteins in the presence of different species of interfacial lipids.
Chapter 3 describes application of native mass spectrometry to the investigation of a selected set of novel and established detergents. Controlled delipidation of membrane proteins is readily achieved by selecting a specific detergent from this set. Furthermore, a protocol for selective removal of either phospholipids or lipopolysaccharide with the aid of these detergents is presented. These findings contribute both towards the practical applications to membrane protein research and also towards a better fundamental understanding of detergents in general.
Chapter 4 describes the use of native mass spectrometry to probe the effects of lipid binding on a horse Na+/H+ transporter, NHE9. I show, that in the absence of specific lipid interactions NHE9 is unable to maintain its dimeric form. These results complement the recently obtained high-resolution structure of this protein.
Finally, chapter 5 illustrates investigation of the human MAPEG protein family. I use collision-induced dissociation experiments to demonstrate the preference of one member of this family, LTC4S, for particular phospholipid classes. I also identify appropriate native mass spectrometry conditions for another member of this family, MGST2, and link its instability to the removal of structurally important lipids by membrane mimetics.

Keywords: membrane proteins
ion mobility spectrometry
native mass spectrometry
surface-induced dissociation
detergents
Advisor: Robinson, C
The last thing: perception of value in Aristotle

This thesis defends the view that, for Aristotle, perception is a mode of cognition capable of grasping particulars, including (and especially) under value descriptions. It begins by identifying the Two Worlds Problem that motivates Aristotle’s repeated deference to perception. Deliberation alone will never reach the concrete individual captured in a demonstrative thought standardly expressed as ‘This loaf here’. But without such a cognition, we would never be able to act in the world. I then defend the view that perceptual content includes kind properties and so is sufficient to provide the object acquaintance necessary for demonstrative thought. I do this by showing that Aristotle is committed to the Conscious Attention Thesis, which entails the Content View, the view that our perceptual experiences have structure and content and, therefore, contain kind properties since to attend to something is to grasp it as a such-and-such. I then argue that perceptual content also includes value properties. I do this by showing that Aristotle’s account of the passions entails a commitment to the Perception of Value Thesis. Therefore perception can grasp not only that this is a man or that is a loaf but it can also grasp that this man is brave or that loaf is baked just right. This is how Aristotle avoids his own Two Worlds Problem: we have two modes of cognition that can be coördinate. I confront a major objection to this picture, which is that the psychic faculty of phantasia performs the work of grasping evaluative appearance (and appearance more generally). I reject this interpretation and argue for a deflationary view of phantasia. Finally, I show a major advantage to my view, which is that it solves a riddle in Aristotle’s account of akrasia in NE 7.3.

Advisor: Coope, U
The historiography of the village community in medieval law

This thesis explores the English medieval village community as both a lived historical reality and as a legal historical concept. It traces the study of the village community from the historical studies in the early nineteenth century, and through to current research on the topic. It does so in order to make the following claims: first, the village community remains an interesting and valuable object of legal historical study in demonstrating a ‘bottom-up’ notion of law, despite having fallen out of favour; secondly, the early scholarship still has some interesting concepts to offer in the form of a focus on community-led decision making and its role in the early common law, despite many of its premises being disproved in the intervening one-hundred-and-fifty years; thirdly, a definitional framework other than legal positivism, which does not accommodate concepts emerging from custom unless and until they are given the authoritative weight of a sovereign authority, is required in order to describe these customary law concepts. This partly explains why today’s legal theory, often dominated by legal positivism, does not tend to engage with customary law, but doing so is a valuable enterprise as one of many enlightening models of law. A detailed consideration of the substantive customary laws of village communities demonstrates alternative ways of making and conceiving of law not dependent directly on state authority, and property rights not focused on individualistic aims. It engages in a discussion as to whether medieval customary law ought to be considered ‘law’, concluding in favour and arguing that this enables a more fulsome consideration of the English medieval legal landscape.

Keywords: legal custom
legal history
village community
medieval law
customary law
law
medieval history
Paul Vinogradoff
Advisor: Getzler, J
Garnett, G