VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
'State of emergency': the politics of Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak, 2008/09

This thesis examines the politics of Zimbabwe's catastrophic cholera outbreak in 2008/09, which caused an unprecedented 98,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths. Epidemiologically, the outbreak can be explained by the breakdown of the country's water and sanitation systems. Such a reading, however, belies the byzantine political, economic and historical processes that precipitated the dysfunction of the water systems, that delineate the socio-spatial pattern of the outbreak and that account for the fragmented and inadequate response of the national health system. The complex causal factors and the far-reaching consequences of the outbreak indicate that cholera is a unique prism through which to view different political phenomena including the dilemmas and contradictions of political change, bureaucratic order, humanitarianism, crisis and citizenship in Zimbabwe.
Drawing on extensive field research, I make three inter-locking arguments in this thesis. First, I argue that Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak was a 'man-made' disaster. It was the final stage of both path-dependent and contingent processes rooted in questions of political economy such as the collapse of public health infrastructure, failing livelihood strategies and violent repression. Second, I argue that cholera reproduced and exacerbated a multiplicity of socio-political crises pertaining to the legitimacy of the Zimbabwean state, the nature of structural inequalities in Zimbabwean society and fundamental flaws in the global humanitarian response to epidemics. Third, I look at the myriad meanings, memories and narratives the epidemic has left in its wake across public institutions and in civic life. I argue that cholera has been committed to historical memory as a health crisis, a political-economic crisis, and a social crisis as well as a crisis of expectations, history and social identity.

Keywords: Humanitarianism
Epidemics
Zimbabwe
Politics
Cholera
Advisor: Alexander, J
The Austin Friars in pre-Reformation English society

This study examines the role of the Austin Friars in pre-Reformation English society, as distinct both from the Austin Friars of Europe and from other English mendicant orders. By examining how the Austins formulated their origins story in a distinctly English context, this thesis argues that the hagiographical writings of the Austin Friars regarding Augustine of Hippo, whom they claimed as their putative founder, had profound consequences for their religious platform. As their definition of Augustine’s religious life was less restrictive than that of the European Austin Friars and did not look to a recent, charismatic leader, such as Dominic or Francis, the English Austin Friars developed a religious adaptability visible in their pastoral, theological, and secular activity. This flexibility contributed to their durability by allowing them to adapt to religious needs as they arose rather than being constrained to what had been validated by their heritage. The behaviour of these friars can be characterised foremost by their ceaseless advancement of the interests of their own order through their creation of a network of influence and the manoeuvring of their confrères into socially and economically expedient positions.
Given the propensity of the Austin Friars towards reform, this study seeks to understand its place within and interaction with English society, both religious and secular, in an effort to reconstruct the religious culture of this order. It therefore investigates their interaction with the laity and patronage, with heresy and reform, and with secular powers. It emphasises, above all, the distinctiveness of the English Austin Friars both from other mendicant orders and from the European Austin Friars, whose rigid interpretations of the religious example of Augustine led them to a strict demarcation of the Augustinian life as eremitical in nature and to hostile relations with the Augustinian Canons. Ultimately, this thesis interrogates the significance of being an Austin Friar in fifteenth- or sixteenth-century England and their role in the religious landscape, exploring the exceptional variability to their behaviour and their ability to take on accepted forms of behaviour.

Keywords: Robert Barnes
Late-Medieval Religion
English Reformation
Austin Friars
Henrician Reformation
Dissolution of Monasteries
Mendicant Orders
Monasticism
Miles Coverdale
English Church
Early Modern Religion
Advisor: MacCulloch, D
Arnold, J
The right of actio popularis before international courts and tribunals

The concept of actio popularis defined as a right to take action in vindication of public interests has been utilized in a variety of contexts. The academic literature uses the concept to refer e.g. to a right to bring claims before courts, third party countermeasures or exercise of universal jurisdiction. However, the thesis examines actio popularis solely as a judicial concept, i.e. the right of action to protect collective interests before international courts and tribunals.
The central argument in the thesis is that except cases where the right of actio popularis is expressly vested in the claimants by virtue of treaty provisions such a right may be inferred from the primary norms (substantive norms) which are established to protect collective interests. In the context of claims before international courts and tribunals such inference is possible by permissive interpretation of secondary norms (procedural rules/the rules of standing) subject to judicial policy concerns which will vary from one international court to another. Hence the relationship between collective norms and permissive interpretation of standing rules is not invariably symmetrical. The differences in judicial policy concerns have led some tribunals to impose self-restraint and refuse to permissively interpret the standing rules by deferring the matter to decision by States and in effect dismiss actio popularis. Other tribunals acted more actively and interpreted the rules of standing so permissively as to allow for actio popularis. The latter has been a fairly recent development informed by the gradual recognition by the international community of the concept of collective obligations and willingness of some international tribunals to adjust the procedural norms to the collective nature of substantive norms. This development has had the effect of relativisation of procedural normativity in line with relativization of substantive normativity.

Advisor: Redgwell, C
Lowe, V
Domains and functionality in multiferroic BiFeO3 films

For over half a century, the technological promise of spins manipulable by a small voltage has captivated the interest of experimental and theoretical researchers alike. However, if thin-film multiferroics are to be incorporated into future data storage devices, a much greater understanding of their behaviour and how they differ from their bulk counterparts is required. In this thesis, we probe the fundamental multiferroic properties of BiFeO3 films through a combination of state-of-the-art diffraction and microscopy techniques. We investigate the coupling between magnetic, ferroelectric, and structural order, with a focus on domains, and how the domain structure may be manipulated in order to tailor the multiferroic properties of the material.
Using non-resonant magnetic x-ray scattering (NXMS) and neutron diffraction, we study the magnetic and structural properties of (111)pc-oriented BiFeO3 films. Contrary to the general belief that to they grow as a rhombohedral monodomain, we find that they comprise a sub-micron texture of monoclinic domains. The magnetic structure is found to be intimately coupled to the structure, resulting in the propagation vector being locked to the monoclinic b-axis. This magnetoelastic coupling opens up a route to strain-engineer the magnetic domains via epitaxial strain. By growing BiFeO3 films on a lower-symmetry, TbScO3 substrate, we are able to engineer a magnetic, structural and ferroelectric monodomain, coherent over the entire film, constituting an increase in the domain size by over five orders of magnitude.
We directly demonstrate the coupling between ferroelectric and magnetic order parameters of the cycloidal magnetic structure. Using NXMS polarimetry to measure directly the magnetic polarity, we show that upon switching the ferroelectric polarisation, the magnetic polarity switches accordingly---a major rearrangement of the magnetic structure, with each spin rotating by 90 degrees on average. This goes counter to idea that magnetic and ferroelectric order parameters are only weakly coupled in type-I multiferroics.
Finally, using photoemission electron microscopy we are able to directly image the sub-micron magnetostructural domain structure. We further show that there is a strong interfacial coupling between the magnetostructural domains of BiFeO3 with a ferromagnetic overlayer. The BiFeO3 domains are found to impose a uniaxial anisotropy in the overlayer, opening up a route to control ferromagnetic domains.

Keywords: Thin films
Multiferroics
X-ray photoemission electron microscopy
BiFeO3
Magnetic x-ray diffraction
Magnetic neutron diffraction
Ferroelectrics
Magnetism
Advisor: Radaelli, P
Dhesi, S
Organizational choices and organizational adaptability in political parties. The case of Western European Christian democracy

While political parties in Europe are incredibly adaptable organizations, they have varied in the extent to which they are able to adapt to social and political transformations.
I explain parties' adaptability in two steps. 1) Adaptability depends on factionalism in a nonlinear way. Giving too much room and no room at all to factions undermines a party's ability to adapt. 2) Factionalism depends on early organizational characteristics. The more centralized the initially introduced leadership selection process is, the more party elites will be incentivized to form factions. This argument applies to political parties that allow for internal competition and elect their leaders according to formal rules.
I use statistical tools, a medium- and small-N analysis and systematic process tracing to test my framework against competing explanations. I focus on Christian democracy to use a most-similar system design. The main empirical part of the thesis relies on a structured focused comparison of the Italian DC, Austrian ÖVP and German CDU. It is guided by a nested analysis and builds on a large amount of primary data which has not been analyzed before. I test my theory on the additional cases of the Portuguese, Dutch and Luxembourgian Christian Democrats and the French MRP.
My main finding is that early organizational choices matter. The initial form the leadership selection process takes has a decisive impact on the incentives of intra-party actors to form factions. The initial level of factionalism becomes deeply entrenched in the party's organization and internal code of practice. This explains why party elites are unlikely to change it when they realize that their party's level of factionalism undermines its adaptability. Moving beyond the focus of path dependence on a single level has thus important implications for the literature on party politics, factionalism, party organizations and institutional development.

Keywords: Political parties
Comparative-historical analysis
Party organization
Historical institutionalism
Comparative politics
Factionalism
Advisor: Capoccia, G
The ethics of the novel in the life of the town: provincial communities in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and George Eliot

This thesis analyses the function of the provincial town in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and George Eliot (1819-1880). It demonstrates that the small town, far from being a neutral backdrop to their narratives, functions as a sociological space in which to appropriate or challenge the discourses of modernity with which Dostoevsky and Eliot were explicitly preoccupied.
The first chapter examines how their provincial communities negotiate biblical narrative in a world in which, thanks to nineteenth-century attempts to historicise the Bible, an acceptance of the Bible’s authoritative status is no longer a given. The instability of language itself is then interrogated in my second chapter, which shows that the transition from denotative, referential meaning to connotative, abstract forms causes ethical and narrative tension within the world of the novel, and which explores the aesthetics and ethics of gossip in the provincial town and novel. The third chapter details what becomes of the nineteenth-century discourse of heroism when characters seek to enact it in a provincial setting, showing that the environment of the provincial town proves hostile to heroic ambition, whilst the fourth argues that the provincial application of professional discourse (particularly that of medicine and the law) is critiqued and perfected by these authors.
Through the analysis of this discourse, it is shown that Eliot and Dostoevsky’s treatment of provincialism is ambivalent. As urban intellectuals who did not consent to inhabit the provincial milieu they depict, they in many respects censure the world they describe. However, this censure is not absolute, and through their chosen setting, as well as their chosen genre of the novel, they provide ethical instruction for their readers, then and now. Ethics, for them, are best tested in community, and explored in narrative.

Keywords: English literature
Community
Provincialism
Dostoevsky
Russian literature
George Eliot
Advisor: Kahn, A
Dihydrogen driven cofactor recycling for use in bio-catalysed asymmetric organic synthesis

Asymmetric reductions are used to produce chiral molecules, which are important precursors for the pharmaceutical industry. Bio catalytic reductions often display high enantioselectivity without the cost and toxicity associated with metal catalysis. However, unlike metal catalysts which use H2 directly, many useful redox-enzymes require the hydride donor NADH. NADH is expensive; therefore for a bio-catalytic process to be viable it must be recycled, usually by using a sacrificial carbon based substrate, generating super-stoichiometric amounts of waste.
Two different methods for H2-driven NADH recycling are explored in this project: using soluble hydrogenases (SH) and, carbon particles modified with a hydrogenase and an NAD+-reductase moiety. The conductive carbon particles allow electrons from H2-oxidation to be channelled from the hydrogenase to the NAD+ reductase for reduction of NAD+.
This project focuses on four main areas. The first looks at using the enzyme-modified particles for the production of high value chiral amines. A yield of &GT;98% was achieved using the enzyme-modified particles with an L alanine dehydrogenase for H2 driven conversion of pyruvate to L-alanine. Moreover, a faster rate of reaction was demonstrated with the L-alanine dehydrogenase immobilised on particles versus with the L-alanine dehydrogenase in solution.
The second section focuses on elevated temperature NADH recycling: an SH and an NAD+-reductase from a thermophilic organism were characterised. The NAD+-reductase was subsequently used as part of a system for recycling NADH at &GT;35 °C. When demonstrated in combination with an enoate-reductase a 62 % yield was obtained for the reduction of 2 methyl 2 cyclopentenone.
In the third strand SHs and enzyme-modified particles were investigated as recycling systems for NADH analogues. In summary, this thesis expands the scope for application of H2-driven biocatalytic reduction reactions.

Keywords: Catalysis
Cofactor recycling
H2 Driven Catalysis
Electrochemistry
Enzymes
Biocatalysis
Advisor: Vincent, K
Supersymmetry searches at the LHC and their interpretations

One of the primary goals of the CERN Large Hadron Collider is to search for new physics. Many such searches have been carried out, in particular searches for supersymmetry, yet no new physics beyond the Standard Model has been found. With a large number of free parameters introduced by frameworks such as supersymmetry, it can be difficult to interpret the null results of searches. The first analysis presented in this thesis attempts to tackle this difficulty head-on, and gives a summary of the constraints from the Run-1 ATLAS searches. A combination of 22 searches were used, with integrated luminosities of up to 20.3 inverse femtobarns of 7 and 8 TeV data. The results are interpreted in the context of the 19-dimensional phenomenological MSSM, and are presented in terms of the masses of supersymmetric particles. Constraints from dark matter, heavy flavour and precision electroweak measurements were incorporated, and results are also interpreted in terms of these observables. Properties of models missed by the Run-1 searches are also shown. The second analysis presented in this thesis documents a direct search for new physics, using 18.2 inverse femtobarns of 13 TeV data collected during 2015 and 2016 by the ATLAS detector. The search targets final states with large jet multiplicity (at least 7 to at least 10 jets), which can arise from the pair production of gluinos decaying via a cascade. Further requirements are imposed on the sum of masses of reclustered large-radius jets. No evidence for new physics is found, and the results are interpreted in both a model-independent way and in terms of two simplified supersymmetric models, one of which was inspired by the results of the first study. Limits on the gluino mass of up to 1600 GeV are set at the 95 % confidence level, extending previous limits.

Keywords: Large Hadron Collider
Supersymmetry
Advisor: Barr, A
Bayesian inverse problems and seismic inversion

The Bayesian formulation for inverse problems gives a way of making inferences about unknown quantities not directly observable. The application of Bayes' Theorem combines the prior information and the observation to give a posterior measure, which contains information about the quantity we are trying to estimate. In this thesis, we review a particular formulation, conventionally known as the strong constraint formulation of inverse problems. We describe methods to obtain summaries of information from the posterior measure. We also describe how prior measures are constructed using linear differential operators, to quantify as accurately as possible our knowledge of the parameters, independent of any observations.
Then, we note that the strong constraint formulation of inverse problems makes it hard to obtain summaries of information of the posterior measure, typically obtained through an optimization of a misfit functional. Therefore, we introduce the weak constraint formulation in a Bayesian context for inverse problems, which eases the task of optimization. We use this formulation to perform sampling of the posterior measure. This method is tested on some simple test problems. We also compare the results between a strong and weak constraint formulation of inverse problems by studying a one-dimensional example.
Finally, we apply the weak constraint formulation to the problem of full waveform inversion, which is a common problem in seismology. The forward problem we use here is the Laplace transform of the acoustic wave equation, and the inverse problem is solved in several frequencies. There are two approaches when observations at several frequencies are available. First is the sequential method, which processes the observation at different frequencies individually. The second method, which is the simultaneous method, processes the observations at all frequencies at once. We use the simultaneous method here, and used a non-trivial model problem, which yields promising results.

Advisor: Farmer, C
Moroz, I
Fighting in the shadow of epic: the motivations of soldiers in early Greek lyric poetry

This thesis explores the theme of the motivation of soldiers in Greek lyric poetry while holding it up against the backdrop of epic. The motivation of soldiers expressed in lyric poetry depicts a complex system that demanded cohesion across various spheres in life. This system was designed to create and maintain social, communal, and political cohesion as well as cohesion in the ranks. The lyric poems reveal a mutually beneficial relationship between citizen and polis whereby the citizens were willing to fight and potentially die on behalf of the state, and in return they received prominence and rewards within the community. It is no coincidence that these themes were so common in a genre that was popular at the same time as the polis and citizen army were both developing.

Keywords: Warfare
Epic Poetry
Motivation
Lyric Poetry
Advisor: Rutherford, R
Direct monitoring of speciation for minor actinide separations

One of the major challenges in the development of future generations of nuclear reprocessing procedures is the separation of the minor actinides from the chemically similar trivalent lanthanide ions.
In this thesis, the potential of two purely N-donor ligands for minor actinide separations is evaluated and behaviour in aqueous and extraction conditions investigated. Of two chosen ligands, 12N4Py4 and 9N3Py3, only the larger 12N4Py4 was found to be able to complex lanthanide ions; however, both bind readily to divalent calcium ions. In comparison to earlier published properties of Ln(III)- 12N4Py4 complexes, the cerium complex was found to show differences based on greater d-orbital mixing.
Conjugated acid dissociation constants and metal binding constants were determined using newly developed fitting functions in several conditions and found to be comparable to those of other extractants. As the investigation was performed in aqueous conditions, side reactions such as hydroxide formation and precipitation had to be considered and included into fitting procedures. Studies on U(IV) and Am(III) were conducted, but due to unfavourable conditions complexation by 12N4Py4 could not be verified beyond reasonable doubt.
Extraction of ligand species and metal complexes was studied in various conditions and in the presence of various anions. Beside the main target cations, Ln(III) and An(III), 12N4Py4 is also capable of complexing and extracting protonated ligand species and Na+ with considerably higher partition coefficients than those observed for species with higher charge. Low solubilities of potassium, sodium and protonated species involving 12N4Py4 in presence of lipophilic anions such as pertechnetate, perrhenate and triiodide lead to precipitation. Formation of solids is of considerable concern in minor actinide separations, but could also offer novel pathways for iodine trapping.

Advisor: Faulkner, S