VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The search for a stable self in Ángel González' and Jaime Gil de Biedma's poetry of the Posguerra

This study analyses the principal collections of two of Spain’s most representative poets of the Generation of 1950, Ángel González (1926-2008) and Jaime Gil de Biedma (1928-1990). As writers of the ‘Second Post-War Period’ (1955-1974), the poets of the Generation of 1950, including González and Gil de Biedma, draw on their lived experiences as a means of poetic expression, perhaps most readily characterised by feelings of loss and a nostalgia for a lost or inaccessible past. In the midst of this overarching conception of loss, González and Gil de Biedma express a veiled longing for a sense of stable identity in the wake of the trauma of the Civil War, as developed throughout their ‘historical realist’ poetry of the 1950s and 1960s.
In building on the stylistic and thematic studies of the Generation of 1950, this study traces the fundamental preoccupation with lost individual and collective identity in González and Gil de Biedma. It firstly identifies their related concerns with lost collective and individual identity while highlighting the connection between their lived experience and that of their contemporaries or Spain’s so-called ‘Children of the Civil War’.
In the first chapter, the examination begins with the analysis of their lament for a lost collective identity among Spain’s ‘children of the war’ owing to the imposition of official memory on the part of the dictatorship. In the subsequent chapters, the study examines their central preoccupation with lost individual identity in the wake of their experience of Civil War trauma and the impact of such trauma on their access to their formative memories. This focus on lost individual identity will then lead to an exploration of the culmination of their search for stable identity in the final chapter as they seek to recover their memories of their respective Civil War experiences.
To this effect, the dissertation aims to explore the central preoccupation within the poetry of González and Gil de Biedma with lost identity, arising from their unstable sense of individual identity in the wake of their traumatic experience of the Civil War and the absence of collective identity on the part of Spain’s ‘Children of the War’. This study thereby looks at the complexities of identity formation, through individual and collective identity, and the connection between identity and memory, as witnessed in the sense of lost identity in the poetry of González and Gil de Biedma.

Keywords: historical memory
Jaime Gil de Biedma
children of the war
traumatic memory
Spanish Civil War
collective Identity
Poesía de la experiencia
Ángel González
Sociotechnical imaginaries of safety and reporting technologies in US higher education

This dissertation thesis titled “Sociotechnical imaginaries of safety and reporting technologies in US higher education” examines how reporting technologies reconfigure the ecosystem of campus safety in US higher education. Reporting technologies refer to case management systems for incident reporting developed by third-party vendors and implemented by campus administrators for use by students. In this thesis, I apply Jasanoff and Kim’s (2015) concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to argue that product vendors, campus administrators, and students’ sociotechnical imaginaries of safety mediate how they articulate and experience campus safety. The central contention of this thesis is that ideas about sexual violence and technology mutually shape sociotechnical imaginaries of safety that mediate how vendors, campus administrators, and students perceive and experience campus safety.
This thesis is organized as follows: (1) a brief cultural, sociopolitical, and legal backdrop of campus safety policies and practices through which ideas about sexual violence and technology co-produce safety imaginaries; (2) two case studies of reporting technologies—LiveSafe and Callisto—that trace the sociotechnical imaginaries that mediate the design process; and (3) ethnographically informed examination of how each reporting system operates on campus grounds to mediate the relationship between campus authorities and students. The concluding chapter considers directions in gender and sexuality studies, human-computer interaction (HCI), and science and technology studies (STS) for future scholarship.

Keywords: title IX
higher education
sexual assault
information and communication technology
case management system
reporting
sociotechnical imaginaries
Advisor: Nash, V
Neff, G
Complex and Riemannian geometry: quaternionic manifolds

The starting point of the thesis is the definition of an almost quaternionic manifold as a real 4n---manifold admitting a GL(n,H) Sp(1)-structure. It is showh that there exist two obstructions C0,C1, to the integrability of such a structure, and the condition C0 = 0 is used to define a cuaternionic manifold. It is proved that a_ quaternionic manifold M has a natually associated complex (2n+1)-manifold Z fibring over M with fibre CP1, and the relationship between the complex structure of Z and the quaternionic structure of M- is studied.
The above theory is then applied to the case in which M is a Riemannian manifold with holonomy contained in Sp(n)Sp(l), using properties of Z to gain information about M. Special emphasis is given to the situation when M has positive scalar curvature and it is shown that M is then isometric to quaternionic projective space HPn provided a certain mod 2 cohomolocly class vanishes. When M is 8-dimensional, estimates for its Betti numbers and isometry group are obtained.

Advisor: Hitchin, N
Diplomacy as controversies - a study of the materialisation of the Nordic embassy complex in Berlin

Diplomacy constitutes one of the most important fields of study within International Relations (IR). While significant process has been made to understand how diplomacy operates, scant attention has been devoted to understand creativity and materiality within diplomatic practice. This thesis aims to remedy this lacuna by developing a framework for studying diplomacy as controversies. The structure of the paper is as follows. To place the paper in context, I start by reviewing the existing literature, arguing that it provides a poor toolkit for capturing creativity and materiality. I then outline a methodological framework better equipped for this purpose. Applying a critical understanding of methods, I develop a two-layered approach, which consists of (1) setting the methodological ‘scene’ and (2) identifying methodological ‘tools’. This allows me to establish a robust link between the ‘processing’ and ‘gathering’ of data. Having sketched out the methodological framework, I then move onto the main body of the thesis. The thesis will be structured into three chapters. The first chapter develops a framework for studying ‘diplomatic controversies’. Drawing upon a wide range of literature, it shows how the study of controversies can give valuable insights into understandings of diplomacy. The second chapter explores how the study of controversies can help us rethink Nordic diplomatic practices by drawing on a case study concerning the establishment of the Nordic embassy complex in Berlin. The third chapter delves further into this by exploring how the materialisation of the Nordic embassy complex can allow us to rethink concepts within IR: the Nordics, creativity and materiality.
Improving the quantification of cerebral haemodynamics using optimally sampled arterial spin labelling MRI

Arterial spin labelling (ASL) is a non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that utilises arterial blood water as an endogenous tracer to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF). While the ASL white paper recommends the clinical use of a single post-labelling delay (PLD) pseudo-continuous ASL (pCASL) method to robustly quantify CBF, there has been a growing body of research on multi-delay ASL which provides the ability to estimate for parameters other than CBF.
A framework applying optimal sampling strategy (OSS) to multi-PLD pCASL sequences has been developed to obtain optimised protocols by minimising the estimation uncertainty on both CBF and arterial transit time (ATT) or CBF only. Although this framework is flexible for designing ASL protocols with a variable number of target parameters, it adopted an idealised kinetic model and used a narrow range of prior values in the optimisation, rendering the optimised protocols susceptible to various sources of error during estimation.
This thesis seeks to systematically investigate the estimation sensitivity of existing optimised protocols to a number of physiological effects that are not accounted for in the idealised model. Additionally, it aims to extend the current framework and develop novel protocols optimised for both delay and echo times to improve the estimation of blood-brain barrier (BBB) water exchange.
Firstly, four pCASL protocols were examined for CBF and ATT estimation performance with the effects of flow dispersion, macrovascular signal contamination (MVC), and prolonged ATT. It was found that the protocol optimised for CBF estimation had the lowest CBF sensitivity to MVC, and extended kinetic models were beneficial to control for the presence of these effects. Results from simulation were validated using a previously acquired in vivo dataset.
Next, parameter sensitivity to MVC were evaluated for a comprehensive set of protocols optimised for CBF estimation. A wide range of tissue and macrovascular transit time ground truths was considered, and different assumptions regarding the relationship between the two transit times were compared and discussed. The resulting sensitivity maps further illustrated the benefit of adding an extra compartment in the analysis to account for MVC and could be used for data interpretation.
Finally, the OSS framework was extended to enable the combined optimisation of PLD and TE in multi-TE pCASL to measure water exchange time, Texch, across the BBB. Protocols were optimised with different optimality criteria under two multi-TE schemes and evaluated in terms of their theoretical estimation root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) using simulation. While the optimised protocols resulted in lower RMSEs of corresponding parameter estimation, reliably detecting a pathological level of Texch change in an individual using the optimised protocols within five minutes remains challenging.

Keywords: kinetic modelling
optimal sampling strategy
perfusion MRI
arterial spin labelling
Advisor: Michael, C
Bulte, D
Anatomically informed Bayesian inference for physiological imaging

Anatomy interacts with all aspects of physiological imaging. Notably, volumetric techniques of limited spatial resolution struggle to image complex anatomies such as the cerebral cortex. One consequence of this is the partial volume effect, which introduces bias or confound into parameter measurements derived from such images. Fundamentally, the effect arises because the manner of image acquisition and analysis is not well-suited to the anatomy in question. Correction for partial volume effects is generally regarded as an optional post-processing step without a commonly agreed-upon strategy and it does not address the root cause of the problem.
Recently, surface-based methods have been shown to offer substantial advantages for the study of the cortex. The benefits follow from the fact that a surface representation is more appropriate for the anatomy of the cortex, namely, a thin and highly folded sheet that forms a topological sphere. Thus far, little work has investigated perfusion measurement in the cortex via arterial spin labelling in an explicitly surface-based manner, though such measurements could improve the understanding of brain function and disease.
This work represents the convergence of these two themes of partial volume effects and surface-based analysis. The major contribution is a framework for performing parameter estimation in a simultaneous surface-aware and volumetric manner, i.e., in the spaces that are most appropriate for the different anatomies present within the brain. The motivation for doing so is to realise the benefits of surface-based analysis for perfusion measurement in the cortex via arterial spin labelling, without negatively impacting measurement in the subcortex. As a consequence of the combined surface and volumetric approach, however, a new treatment of partial volume effects is obtained. Rather than considering these effects as a secondary problem that can be mitigated via post-processing, the entire approach is in fact built around them. By incorporating the anatomy that causes PVE directly into the generative model that is fit to the data, correction becomes an intrinsic feature of the estimation framework and not an afterthought.

Keywords: arterial spin labelling
perfusion
surface
physiological imaging
variational bayes
Advisor: Chappell, M
Bulte, D
Essays on immigration, labour markets, and political behaviour

This thesis is composed of three self-contained empirical chapters that tackle the labour market implications from COVID-19, and the political and trade implications from recent immigration, in the Brazilian context. The first chapter presents a short and medium term analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian labour markets. I find that informal workers, females, youth, and workers in small firms are the ones most adversely impacted in the short term. In the medium term, I show that there seems to be a lingering negative effect on women’s employment and wages, while informal workers seem to recover much faster than their formal peers. I further study the role of the government response in mitigating the shock of the pandemic, and the distributional impacts under different counterfactual targeting scenarios of the generous but temporary cash transfer program, Auxílio Emergencial. I find that the Auxílio Emergencial transfers more than offset the labour income losses for the bottom four deciles, such that inequality and headcount poverty ratio decreased relative to the pre-COVID baselines. The second chapter explores the impact of international immigration flows, exploiting the spatial variation across Brazilian municipalities from 2010 to 2017. I estimate the correlation between immigration and trade using a rich set of fixed effects, motivated by an augmented gravity model. I then provide a causal estimate of the impact using a Bartik shift-share instrumental variable approach. I find evidence of a pro-trade creation effect, particularly on differentiated imports, at the intensive and extensive product levels. I document that this impact differs depending on certain characteristics of the immigrants’ country of origin. The third paper analyses the impacts of the Haitian immigration on the voting outcomes and electoral participation of citizens in Brazil’s 2018 Presidential elections. I exploit this quasinatural experiment, and I use a variation on the shift-share instrument to arrive to a causal impact. I find that the presence of Haitian immigrants led to an overall average decrease in political participation across different education groups and an increase in vote shares towards right-wing parties. I analyse potential channels through which immigrants influence voting behaviour. While I rule out the mechanisms of natives’ fear over public resources, natives’ flight (voting with their feet), and changes in candidate composition, I present evidence that suggests that the change in voter behaviour is happening through cultural and economic mechanisms.

Advisor: Gollin, D
Ulyssea, G
Modulation of basal ganglia local field potentials by deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease and dystonia

Subthalamic (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment option in advanced Parkinson’s disease, however, its underlying mechanism remains largely speculative. Continuous DBS may come with side effects such as speech impairment, paraesthesia and mood changes, which necessitates research into adaptive DBS. Adaptive DBS requires feedback signals reflecting pathological activity to guide stimulation. Previous studies have focused on beta oscillations in the STN as a potential biomarker for parkinsonian symptoms and beta power suppression has been suggested as a potential action mechanism of DBS. In this thesis, we sought to investigate mechanisms underlying STN stimulation beyond beta power suppression and studied other potential feedback markers to improve current frameworks of adaptive DBS.
In the first part, we performed local field potential (LFP) recordings from Parkinson’s disease patients and studied evoked and induced changes with DBS. DBS-evoked resonant neural activity (ERNA) consists of a high-frequency, high-amplitude activity focal to dorsolateral STN that has fast and slow components. Furthermore, the ERNA is highly adjustable and varies with different DBS frequencies, intensities, medication states and stimulation modes. DBS also induced instantaneous power suppression in the beta and gamma frequency range and de-novo finely-tuned gamma (FTG) oscillations that are modulated during and after DBS.
In the second part, we demonstrate in rodent data that aperiodic exponents of subthalamic LFPs reflect excitatory and inhibitory input to STN and report higher aperiodic exponents ON levodopa and stimulation, in keeping with more inhibition. Subsequently, we found aperiodic exponent changes with levodopa and DBS in Parkinson’s disease patients, consistent with more inhibition of STN when symptoms are alleviated.
In the third part, we recorded subthalamic and thalamic LFPs from cervical dystonia patients and found that neither ERNA, FTG, power suppression or aperiodic exponent changes with DBS are specific to Parkinson’s disease.
Overall, this thesis extends the knowledge on existing feedback signals for adaptive DBS and supports the inactivation hypothesis of subthalamic DBS.

Keywords: Parkinson's disease
local field potentails
feedback markers
deep brain stimulation
Advisor: Tan, H
Sharott, A
Torrecillos, F
Brown, P
Vaccine and assay development for nairoviral diseases

Emerging zoonotic diseases present a significant risk to global public health, as evidenced by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Nairoviruses are a genus of viruses, which include Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic Fever Virus (CCHFV) and Nairobi Sheep Disease Virus (NSDV), and present a significant risk of epidemics in humans and animals. As such there is an urgent need to develop effective therapeutics and prophylactics to protect humans and livestock from nairovirus mediated infection and disease. Vaccines are a highly effective healthcare intervention, and ChAdOx vaccine platforms have been used extensively to develop vaccines against emerging diseases, including the ChAdOx1-nCoV19/AZD1222 vaccine. This thesis aims to characterise the development of ChAdOx vectored vaccines against a range of nairoviral antigens, and determine if nairoviral vaccines in ChAdOx vectors are immunogenic following vaccination in mice. As part of this thesis, new pseudotyping assays using CCHFV and NSDV glycoproteins were developed to test neutralising antibody responses induced following vaccination. This thesis demonstrated that CCHFV GPC (GlycoProtein Precursor), Gn, Gc, and NP (Nucleoprotein) antigens were all immunogenic, inducing cellular and humoral responses, and that ChAdOx vectored CCHFV GPC vaccination could induce neutralising antibodies. Further the immunogenicity of NSDV GPC, Gc, and NP antigens in ChAdOx1 vectors was demonstrated following vaccination. Development of multivalent ChAdOx1 CCHFV vaccines showed that a single vaccination could induce broad cellular and humoral immune responses. Anti-vector neutralisation responses induced by vaccination were also assayed in the ChAdOx1-nCoV19 vaccine clinical trial at the University of Oxford. The work in this thesis determined that no correlations were measured between anti-ChAdOx1 neutralisation titres and anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike immune responses following vaccination with ChAdOx1-nCoV19/AZD1222. Overall, this thesis highlights the development of immunogenic vaccines against the emerging pathogens CCHFV and NSDV, which will be crucial to managing future epidemics.

Keywords: Crimean congo haemorrhagic fever
emerging diseases
assay
disease
epidemic
vaccine
Nairobi sheep disease
pandemic
nairovirus
Advisor: Lambe, T
Gilbert, S
Bailey, D
Structural foundations for probabilistic programming languages

Probability theory and statistics are fundamental disciplines in a data-driven world. Synthetic probability theory is a general, axiomatic formalism to describe their underlying structures and methods in a elegant and high-level way, abstracting away from the mathematical foundations such as measure theory. We showcase the value of synthetic probabilistic reasoning to computer science by presenting a novel, synthetic analysis of three situations: the Beta-Bernoulli process, exact conditioning on continuous random variables and an investigation into the relationship of random higher-order functions and fresh name generation.
The synthetic approach to probability has merit not only by matching statistical practice and achieving greater conceptual clarity, but it also lets us transfer and generalize probabilistic ideas and language to other domains: A wide range of computational phenomena admit a probabilistic analysis, such as nondeterminism, generativity (e.g. name generation), unification, exchangeable random primitives and local state. This perspective is particularly useful if we wish to compare or combine those effects with actual probability: We develop a purely stochastic model of name generation (gensym) which is not only a tight semantic fit, but also uncovers striking parallels to the theory of random functions.
Probabilistic programming is an emergent flavor of Bayesian machine learning where complex statistical models are expressed through code. We argue that probabilistic programming and synthetic probability theory are two sides of the same coin. Not only do they share a similar goal, namely to act as an accessible, high-level interface to statistics, but synthetic probability theories are also the natural semantic domains for probabilistic programs. Conversely, every probabilistic language defines its own internal theory of probability. This is a probabilistic version of the Curry-Howard correspondence: Statistical models are programs. This opens up the analysis and optimization of statistical inference procedures to tools from programming language theory.
Much as category theory has served as a unifying model for logic and programming, we argue that probabilistic programming languages arise precisely as the internal languages of categorical probability theories. Our methods and examples draw from diverse areas of computer science and mathematics such as rewriting theory, logical relations, linear and universal algebra, categorical logic, measure theory and descriptive set theory.

Keywords: denotational semantics
categorical probability
programming languages
probabilistic programming
category theory
Advisor: Staton, S