VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Prehistoric aesthetics: an ontology of Stone Age art from the Lower Palaeolithic until the Neolithic

Within this thesis I examine how the phenomenon of ‘prehistoric art’ can be defined. The difficulty is situated within the fact that the concept of ‘art’ cannot be understood apart from the autonomy of art and the aesthetic within Western modernity. This would mean that the condition of art is contradictory to the active role of ‘prehistoric art’ in the constitution of the social. I argue that this apparent opposition is incorrect, as it is precisely the autonomous dimension of art and the aesthetic that allows understanding art’s capacity for social agency. ‘Autonomy’ should not be understood in terms of detachment from the everyday, but in terms of a universal principle. The universal principle of the aesthetic is situated within its capacity to operate as a form of plateau-constitution or world creation. Within the first part of the thesis I examine how the autonomy of art and the aesthetic can be reworked for animism through an analysis of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead, Immanuel Kant and Theodor Adorno. This theoretical examination provides the basis for the second part of the thesis, in which I theorize three different types of aesthetic experience for three different prehistoric periods: the Early Palaeolithic, the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic. Whereas it is necessary to understand the universal principle of art and the aesthetic, it is equally necessary to understand that this principle can only take up a particular form and therefore can be modified in different ways. By theorizing three different modifications of aesthetic experience across prehistory, I argue that one develops insight into the way prehistoric art takes up different forms through time. I construct a definition of prehistoric art by examining whether one can detect continuity across the three different types of aesthetic experience that I propose.

Keywords: Neolithic Art of Britain and Ireland
Aesthetic Autonomy
Modern and Contemporary Art
Process Metaphysics (Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead)
Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art
Philosophical Aesthetics (Immanuel Kant, Theodor Adorno)
Lower Palaeolithic Art
Prehistoric Art
Advisor: Gosden, C
Malafouris, L
Homer's comparisons: types, patterns, and effects

Comparisons are an integral part of language and literature, but there are no comprehensive studies that take into account both their linguistic features and literary effects. There are four kinds of comparisons, comparatives, superlatives, equatives (expressing similarity in degree), and similatives (expressing similarity in kind), but most linguistic and literary studies focus on only one or two. Typological and language-specific studies tend to look at the dominant types, and do not include every comparison found in their corpus.
In this study all of Homer’s comparisons are collected and categorized according to their syntactic structure. The differences between the four kinds of comparisons and the concepts they express are described in semantic and cognitive terms. Not only complete comparisons are taken into account, but also those in which one element, for example the standard of comparison (i.e. the entity with which another entity is compared), is missing.
The complete comparative and superlative constructions in Homeric Greek are presented according to the syntactic types in which they appear, followed by an analysis of incomplete expressions. Equatives and similatives are discussed together since they are not consistently distinguished in ancient Greek. They are presented according to the semantic and cognitive relationship between the comparee (the entity about which the comparison is made) and the standard of comparison. Their syntactic types are analysed in light of the comparatives and superlatives, and two special structures are examined separately: comparison compounds and the extended Homeric simile.
The final part is concerned with the narrative and rhetorical function of com- parisons, starting with ‘hybrid’ comparisons, which are the result of negation or syntactic/semantic peculiarities. The linguistic features of comparatives and su- perlatives provide the basis for analysing their use by characters in speeches and by the narrator for creating suspense and tragic effect. The Homeric similes and shorter comparisons of similarity are approached not as aids to communication and interpretation, but as poetic devices that make the epic story and its characters more complex.

Keywords: simile
Homer
typology
comparison
gradation
Advisor: Willi, A
Evaluating medical leadership development programmes

In recent years, effective medical leadership has been recognised across healthcare as being a vital component in the saving of money, staff turnover and patient lives. Increase in the perceived importance of medical leadership has resulted in an explosion of both medical leadership development programmes and investments of public money into these programmes.
These investments into medical leadership development programmes rely on the assumption and conviction that such programmes lead to significant clinical impact. The current lack of effective evaluation of these programmes leaves this an untested assumption. My research has therefore been focused on developing insights into evaluation of medical leadership development programmes.
In Part I of my thesis, I establish a lack of effective evaluation methods for medical leadership development. In Part II, I establish a gap in medical leadership development in medical schools through a needs analysis and a systematic review. In Part III, I shift my focus to qualified doctors and I develop, pilot and critically appraise medical leadership development programme evaluation questionnaires. At the end of Part III, I return to programme stakeholder interviews to more carefully establish their expectations for the medical leadership development programmes and evaluations. In Part IV, to better understand the state of current research and to focus future research, I conduct a second more extensive review of studies evaluating medical leadership development programmes for qualified doctors. Finally, in Part V, I discuss limitations of this research and possible implications for evaluations and future research.
One theme recurs throughout this thesis. If we want to ensure that investment into medical leadership development programmes achieves the ends that commissioners, organisations and politicians intend, we need to get better at questioning our assumptions and evaluating our investments into medical leadership development programmes.
One theme recurs throughout this thesis. If we want to ensure that investment into medical leadership development programmes achieves the ends that commissioners, organisations and politicians intend, we need to get better at questioning our assumptions and evaluating our investments into medical leadership development programmes.

Keywords: Medical Education
Programme Evaluation
Medical Leadership
Evaluation
Leadership Development
Advisor: Fahy, N
McCulloch, P
Canter, R
Impersonal selves: flat characters in the neoliberal novel

The thesis starts from the observation that a significant number of novels from the 1990s and early 2000s present two salient stylistic features. First, they are sprawling with characters; second, these fictional renditions often read as ‘flat’, in that they are endowed with little psychological specificity. I contend that the sub-genre I identify as the ‘neoliberal novel’ originates at the intersection of these two traits, and that its specimens can be said to be ‘neoliberal’ inasmuch as they respond to the challenges posed by their historical juncture. Through their deployment of characters, these novels delineate the problematic nature of the idea of ‘person’ in the age of neoliberalism and elaborate varieties of perception and experience that can be said to be ‘impersonal’. Often, in the neoliberal novel, flatness of character represents impersonality, and the latter is consistently associated with the specifically biopolitical aspects of neoliberal ideology. 
In order to explore these issues, I read four novels from the United States and Latin America: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997), Salvador Benesdra’s El traductor (1998) and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004). I contend that the American hemisphere is particularly productive as a point of observation of the general workings of the ‘neoliberal novel’ in that the historical facts surrounding the spread of neoliberal policies and practices in the region makes the continent a compendium of its stratified social and anthropological effects. Finally, I conclude that impersonality per se, while offering an escape route from the traps of liberal individualism, does not stand in any definite relationship to either authority or social change. Rather, it represents the plane of contrast in which the two constantly made and re-made each other.

Keywords: don delillo
impersonality
salvador benesdra
flat characters
roberto bolaño
latin american literature
neoliberalism
david foster wallace
Advisor: Pratt, L
Blanco, M
Towards an efficient spin-photon interface based on cavity-coupled NV centres in diamond membranes

Quantum computation and information processing is an exciting multi-disciplinary field, whose objective is to harness the power of superposition and entanglement of quantum states to establish a new regime of computation for Mankind. This work demonstrates our efforts, in both materials and device engineering, towards building an efficient spin-photon interface for a promising solid-state spin qubit, namely the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre in diamond. Improvement in optical coherence of NV centre is realised via the novel laser-writing fabrication technique and quantified using high-resolution spectroscopy. A new metric concerning the charge-state stability of the NV centre is introduced to better translate the measured NV quality to entanglement generation efficiency. To address the low branching ratio of NV emission into the zero-phonon line (ZPL) transition, a hybrid open-cavity device incorporating low-dimensional micro-structured NV-containing diamond membrane is fabricated and characterised. In addition to the more commonly quoted emission enhancement factor, the collection efficiency of the cavity device is also quantified via numerical simulations. Combining all observed improvements in key metrics under the framework of double-heralding entanglement schemes, a two order of magnitude increase in entanglement generate rate can be expected. The established simulation methodology is widely applicable in the design and analysis of similar devices with an emitter-in-cavity setup.

Keywords: quantum information processing
nitrogen-vacancy centre
light-matter interaction
diamond
micro-cavity
solid-state
qubit
quantum computation
spin-photon interface
single-photon emitter
Advisor: Smith, J
Contingent Chaucer: experience, time, and modality in Chaucerian poetics

This thesis makes a new case for Chaucer as a philosophical poet, arguing that his art is profoundly entwined with the philosophy of contingency. Previous studies of contingency in Chaucer have interpreted the poet’s treatment of related issues (such as the mutability of language and the nature of free will) in relation to contemporaneous doctrinal controversies such as nominalism, voluntarism, and Lollardy. Going beyond these approaches, this thesis contends that Chaucer, synthesising a memorial omnium gatherum of philosophical learning, innovated a radical, anti-teleological poetics of contingency. Chaucerian contingency, the thesis states, is a comprehensive (yet by its nature fragmentary and modular) understanding of the relationship between individual lives and artistic creation under the conditions of phenomenal experience: the experience of time as linear, sequential and extensive; the translation of immediate consciousness into discrete concepts and words; the epistemological limits imposed by the temporality and multivocality of language. The thesis moves retrospectively through Chaucer’s career, first reassessing the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale and Clerk’s Tale, before passing through Troilus and Criseyde and the House of Fame, revealing in each case how Chaucer reworks his sources to articulate his vision of contingency, and contest humanist narratives of utopian perfectibility and idealistic, teleological poetics. It situates each poem’s ideas of contingency in their fuller context within intellectual history, tracing the arc of Chaucer’s developing philosophical vision. In the process, it frees Chaucerian contingency from the strictures of nominalist analyses, using a new paradigm which asserts the basic homology and continuity of medieval and postmedieval thinking on the subject. Linking the conceptual affinities of Chaucer’s sources in the Neoplatonic, Augustinian, Boethian, Scotist and Thomist traditions with their counterparts in postmedieval contingency theory, it concludes that Chaucer was a critical node in a period-spanning tradition of literary explorations of contingency.

Keywords: medieval poetics
epistemology
metaphysics
scholasticism
Chaucer
nominalism
contingency
Advisor: Gillespie, V
Effects of labour and credit market frictions on shock propagation, allocation, and recoveries

This thesis contains three papers studying the consequences of labour and credit market frictions on the efficient allocation of resources and business cycle dynamics. A common theme of the three papers is that they focus on markets, where some market elements can be captured well with search frictions. The first paper estimates the extent to which aggregate job creation is driven by non-fundamental noise rather than fundamental news shocks employing maximum likelihood estimation of a DSGE model with search and matching in the labour market. The paper finds noise to play no role in aggregate job creation. Motivated by survey data on income growth expectations and labour market flow data, the second paper develops a mechanism where the information acquisition about idiosyncratic match quality is pro-cyclical. The mechanism, which is integrated into a directed search dynamic block recursive equilibrium model allows for a parsimonious explanation of observed survey data, labour market transition rates and finds counter-cyclical labour market mismatch. The third paper finds that the share of non-performing bank loans in total bank loans can be viewed as a mirror image of capital misallocation in many developed countries. The model developed from this observation shows that search frictions in used capital markets may drive non-performing, as will forbearance incentives. The paper estimates the extent to which changes in forbearance incentives and in the efficiency of used capital were responsible for variation in the share of non-performing loans. The introduction and conclusion of the thesis explain common themes and point to further applications of the content in the papers.

Keywords: Non-performing loans
Search and Matching
Investment
Capital allocation
Job ladders
News and Noise
Directed search block recursive equilibrium
Information frictions
Uncertainty
Business Cycles
Labour Markets
Advisor: Zanetti, F
Representative democracy and political entitlement

The thesis is a monographic work on the Right to Candidacy, in relation to the way in which it is most commonly shaped within extant practice today. The matter has been so far neglected by democratic theory. The focus of attention of democratic interest has been on the role, duties and claims of citizens as voters. But the Right to Candidacy is also a paramount political right within modern representative democracies. Glossing over its status has led to a myopic understanding of the status of citizens as political equals, handicapping their agency in the amelioration of the problems that democracy faces, and impeding the achievement of democratic justice. As a response to this, my thesis asks and answers what the scope and the content of the Right to Candidacy would be if it were a (reasonably) substantive democratic right within contemporary liberal and representative democracies?
Chapter 1 presents an overview of extant empirical practice in relation to legal qualifications for office, which formally define the set of its right-holders. It contrasts them with those of the Right to Vote and claims that the formal construction of the limits of the Right to Candidacy should be symmetrical with that of the Right to Vote. Chapter 2 looks at the hurdles on the individual right to candidacy set at an informal level that impede substantive equality of opportunity for the exercise of the right. It argues that the instauration of intra-party candidate nomination quotas can constitute a salutary measure against this. Chapter 3 develops an argument for the claim that, other things equal, intra-party deliberation is a civic responsibility for political parties in face of their role as funnels of candidates for political office in the sort of representative democracies we have today.

Keywords: representative theory
Right to candidacy
democratic theory
political parties
legitimacy
democratic justice
electoral rights
Advisor: Laborde, C
Evolved P450 mutants for streamlining synthesis via late-stage C-H activation

This thesis describes synthetic studies towards the carbon framework of the natural product viridiol and the application of mutant P450 enzymes to effect late-stage oxidations on these substrates.
The introduction provides a short summary of existing C-H activation and biocatalytic strategies in synthesis. An overview of P450 enzymes is also given and the background of viridiol and past synthetic studies are discussed.
Chapter 1 explores the construction of the ABE tricycle of viridiol, starting from the furan unit.
Chapter 2 introduces an alternative synthetic approach, focusing on the synthesis of the steroidal core from cyclohexenyl and 4-indanyl fragments. The challenges encountered in the preparation of single regioisomers of the indanyl system are also discussed.
Chapter 3 describes the development of an efficient route to 4-substituted indanes.
Chapter 4 continues the synthesis of the steroidal core from the 4-indanyl unit and details the completion of the viridiol carbon framework.
Chapter 5 investigates the late-stage oxidation of both tri and tetracyclic substrates with mutant P450 enzymes.

Keywords: Natural Product Synthesis
Biocatalysis
Enzymatic Oxidation
Organic Synthesis
Enzymes
C-H Activation
Cytochrome P450
Viridiol
Indanes
Steroidal Scaffold
Advisor: Robertson, J
Mathematical modelling of electrical, thermal, and chemical processes occurring within a silicon furnace

Silicon is produced in submerged arc furnaces (SAFs), with the heat needed for the endothermic chemical reactions provided by an electric current. The interacting physical processes occurring in SAFs are tightly coupled, and vary over a range of timescales. As a result, SAF modelling efforts have generally neglected to include many of the chemical, thermal, and electrical effects. In this thesis, we develop a mathematical framework to understand the mechanisms by which these processes interact.
We propose a new, simplified model for electric arcs in a SAF, with heat radiation as the dominant heat loss mechanism, based on dimensional analysis of a magnetohydrodynamic model. To understand the alternating current effects, we incorporate this arc model into an equivalent-circuit model for the SAF electrical system. We investigate the effects of hot gases flowing through the porous bed of raw materials in a SAF, by studying the interaction of a counter-current flow with an endothermic, temperature-dependent chemical reaction in the asymptotic limit of large Péclet number. Having better understood these mechanisms, we then develop a tractable model for the coupled processes taking place within a SAF, combining our arc model with simplified models for the raw material bed. In order to efficiently model processes on both the fast timescale of the alternating current, and the slower timescale of heat transfer and flow of the raw materials, we perform a multiple-timescale homogenisation.
Our modelling efforts give insight into the interaction of a counter-current flow with an endothermic chemical reaction across a range of parameter values for the heat transfer coefficient between the phases. Our arc model is derived from first principles, and compares favourably with empirical models currently used in the metallurgy literature and industry. Our homogenised furnace model provides a simple framework to explore interacting furnace processes of industrial relevance; solutions provide insight into the distribution of current in the furnace, the evolution of the internal structure, and how stoking may improve furnace efficiency.

Keywords: heat radiation
reacting flow
asymptotic analysis
magnetohydrodynamics
electromagnetism
heat and mass transfer
silicon furnace
mathematical modelling
electric arc
Advisor: Please, C
Oliver, J
Van Gorder, R
The role of CD1a in dengue infection

Dengue is one the most prevalent tropical infectious diseases. It causes a heavy healthcare burden globally, while treatment and prevention approaches are limited. Like other virus-induced diseases, T cells are considered to play an important role in the immunity against dengue virus infection. However, compared to conventional MHC-activated T cells, the role of CD1a-restricted, lipid-specific T cells in dengue infection has not been studied.
The aim of this project was to investigate the role of CD1a in the immunity of dengue virus infection.
Human monocyte-derived dendritic cells (moDCs) were used as models to study the regulation of surface CD1a expression in the context of dengue virus infection. Components in sera derived from acute phase dengue patients were found to downregulate CD1a expression by moDCs which may in part be explained by IL-10. To investigate the effect of dengue infection on the function of CD1a-reactive T cells, polyclonal blood T cells from patients and controls, and CD1a-autoreactive T cells clone/lines were utilised. The production of IFN-γ and GM-CSF by CD1a-autoreactive T cells was reduced when co-cultured with dengue-infected presenting cells. Receptors for dengue viral entry are incompletely understood. Langerhans cells represent an early target cell for dengue virus, and express langerin, a C-type lectin which supports CD1a antigen presentation. Here, we define langerin as a novel target for dengue NS1 and E proteins in vitro, and provide data supporting an anti-viral effect of langerin engagement.
In summary, this thesis describes the first study of the role of CD1a in dengue virus infection. The data show that the expression of CD1a and the activity of CD1a-reactive T cells are regulated by dengue virus infection, and that langerin is a novel dengue receptor. Collectively the data implicate the CD1a pathway in dengue pathogenesis and provide insights into future therapeutic and vaccine development.

Keywords: CD1a
Dengue virus
T cell
Advisor: Ogg, G
Hardman, C