bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Drawing on the Past, Regenerating the Present: A Comparison of the Works of Ayi Kwei Armah and Nicolás Guillén
Authors:   , Novieto Setor 
Published: December 2021

<p>Novelist Ayi Kwei Armah and poet Nicolás Guillén are, respectively, Ghanaian and Cuban writers who embody the efforts of mid-twentieth-century artists to depict the day-to-day socio-political conditions and struggles of societies seeking to move beyond histories of racial and economic oppression. Both engage powerfully and controversially with ongoing debates around damaging colonial histories and disappointing contemporary realities. The achievement of independence did not usher in the new, improved nations sought by way of struggle and suffering in either country. Uncompromisingly, Armah’s and Guillén’s works portray both the irredeemable parts of colonial histories and those that can be put to the benefit of the present, together with the tension that this disparity between expectation and achievement engenders. Granted the varied nature of the subject matter of the works of the two authors and the seeming lack of relation between them, this study makes use of a selection of theoretical frameworks to find common ground for analysing their work. The analysis of Nicolás Guillén’s poetry is based on concepts fundamental to Latin American social and cultural criticism, notably, the ideology of whitening or blanqueamiento, cultural mixing or mestizaje, and feminist criticism. The study of Ayi Kwei Armah’s first novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) employs socio-cultural theories including traditional Ghanaian concepts such sankofa and the Akan symbol of adinkra, together with Jean Paul Sartre’s concept of the “engaged writer.” This thesis argues that, in spite of their different national and ethnic backgrounds, both writers draw on traditional aspects of African culture to provide the impetus for social and cultural regeneration in their societies. Critics have read Armah as presenting disillusioned and decadent images of Ghana and promoting limited roles for women in his work. Guillén too has been portrayed by critics as offering an objectified representation of women in his poetry of the 1920s and 1930s and has been accused of ignoring, as a poet of meztizaje or ethnic mixture, the issues of Blacks and Blackness. This thesis contests these limiting critical positions, arguing that the writers’ representations of women, Blacks and Blackness are more positive and progressive than has been allowed. Acknowledging the burden of racist histories, the false promise of postcolonial liberation, the blatant corruption and the unrealised expectations of their times, they nevertheless allow for the possibility of regeneration in the societies they both dissect and, in part, restore.</p>
A New Heart for East Porirua, Waitangirua
Authors:   , Shilling Phoebe 
Published: December 2021

<p>Waitangirua is a vital piece of the puzzle when completing the Porirua Regeneration Scheme and The Transmission Gully Motorway. Waitangirua is a small suburb of 4020 residents located in the East of Porirua City. The current regeneration of East Porirua is seeing 2000 state homes being renovated or demolished and 2000 additional dwellings on site. With that in mind, a transmission gully link road drives straight to the heart of the community’s village centre: this road alone will see an additional 3000-4000 cars travelling down it daily. Waitangirua currently hosts a diverse and young population, but it lacks the architectural features to encourage diversity and social interaction. With Transmission Gully’s completion in 2020 and the regeneration at the beginning of its 25-year plan, it is timely to think about the future of Waitangirua, not only for the social growth of the suburb but also the liveability for the community. The current village centre does not match its neighbourhood, let alone have the capability to host all these new people. Leading to the research question, ‘How can an under-utilised centre be re-imagined for the social growth and liveability of its residents?’ This thesis examines the importance of connections for social growth and liveability; while considering the priority of community engagements in the success of the design. It also investigates the significance of architecture and urban planning in integrating the identity of the community and their culture into the design schemes. A New Heart for East Porirua proposes this can be achieved by renewing the flow and connection of the people; to each other, their village centre and wider Porirua. At the same time as engaging with the community and cultural narrative to enhance the site; and finally, by re-imagining the under-utilised centre and community hub in a holistic approach for the on-going journey of the community of Waitangirua.</p>
Inclusive Housing: Exploring Culturally Inclusive + Accessible Design in the Contemporary New Zealand State House
Authors:   , Powrie Lydia 
Published: December 2021

<p>The aim of this research is to establish and apply design methods that define an appropriate dwelling for New Zealand’s state housing. The central criteria for this is accessibility and cultural inclusivity. New Zealand’s current state housing scheme is struggling to provide for an ever-growing waitlist of eligible households. Furthermore, the size and design of state homes have remained relatively stagnant, while the average occupant has significantly deviated from the nuclear family it once was. Not only is the current housing stock predominantly low density, but it is also built for a nuclear family in bi-cultural society. However, state home occupants are no longer comprised of two parents + child(ren) from Pakeha or Maori backgrounds. Instead, single-person households, couples with no children or only one child from all ranges of ethnicities make up the majority of the state housing register. This change suggests there is a potential need for a paradigm shift from three-four bedroom dwellings to one-two bedroom and five+ bedroom dwellings becoming the majority of the housing stock. Not only are the homes incorrect in bedroom size, but many are also inaccessible or culturally inappropriate for households. Due to New Zealand’s diverse range of cultures, there is ‘no one size fits all’ home type for each cultural group. The findings of this thesis identify a lack of consideration in Housing NZ’s design guides and New Zealand Standards to the wider demographics of its residents. International and domestic case studies are comparatively analysed to identify spatial features that can inform the way state houses should be designed for New Zealand residents. This research has been used to create a design guidelines that provides flexible and inclusive dwellings. Finally, these guidelines are tested on a specific site in inner-city Wellington, proposing a range of dwelling typologies designed for accessibility and inclusivity that are explored at three key scales – the urban landscape, the building envelope and the interior.</p>
Ownership and Immutability in Coq
Authors:   , Mackay Julian 
Published: December 2021

<p>A significant issue in modern programming languages is unsafe aliasing. Modern type systems have attempted to address this in two prominent ways; immutability and ownership, and often a combination of the two [4][17]. The goal of this thesis is to formalise Immutability and Ownership using the Coq Proof Assistant, a formal proof management system [13]. We encode three type systems using Coq; Featherweight Immutable Java, Featherweight Generic Java and Featherweight Ownership Generic Java, and prove them sound. We describe the challenges presented in encoding immutability, ownership and type systems in general in Coq.</p>
The importance of site on house heating energy modelling in Wellington - Integrating EnergyPlus with ENVI-met for site modelling
Authors:   , Sunarya Wendy 
Published: December 2021

<p>Site is an important factor in the building design process, where it is analysed to determine design strategies for responding the microclimate. It is also considered important in Building Energy Simulations (BES) where a weather file is used to represent the site location and its microclimate. However, many cases of BES in the design process use weather file from a nearby weather station rather than site specific microclimate. In fact, site microclimate can be affected by nearby parameters such as ground surface and vegetation, with unknown effects. In the Wellington, New Zealand context, micro-climates vary widely due to the local topography while suburban houses can be located on the side or bottom of a hill. These houses are likely to have different exposure to the sun and wind which can influence energy consumption for space heating. Many studies about site-parameters impacts mainly focus on the vegetation and nearby buildings effect on microclimate. Only a few estimated the impact of site-parameters on building energy use and mostly their cases are in urban areas (flat terrain). Unfortunately, site parameters, such as altitude and slope, associated with the Wellington topography (hilly terrain) have never been examined. This thesis investigates the importance of site parameters on house heating energy modelling for the Wellington context. BES software, EnergyPlus, was used and explored to identify limitations in modelling site parameters. An attempt was made to solve these limitations through the integration with microclimate software. Three microclimate software programmes were reviewed: ENVI-met, UWG (Urban Weather Generator) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) software. ENVI-met was selected to generate the local air temperature and relative humidity affected by site parameters, which was used for EnergyPlus weather-file modification. A parametric study of ENVI-met basic input with model evaluation was also conducted. The results of parametric test integrating ENVI-met with EnergyPlus showed that ENVI-met mostly produce insignificant impacts of site parameters on house heating energy, unlike the results found in the literature review. This is likely due to the cool weather conditions (winter in Wellington) used in simulation, which suggests that the idea of microclimate modelling using ENVI-met is not applicable for house heating energy modelling in the temperate, Wellington context.</p>
Là où dialoguent les musées: The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa at the Musée du Quai Branly
Authors:   , Phillips Lily 
Published: December 2021

<p>The opening of the Musée du quai Branly in 2006 signalled a new approach to the display of Māori and Pacific collections in France and the beginning of a new relationship with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Between 2006 and 2012, the two museums were brought together by two challenging events: the repatriation of toi moko (Māori tattooed heads) from France to New Zealand and the 2011 exhibition Maori: leurs trésors ont une âme at the quai Branly. Through a close study of the repatriation and exhibition, and interviews with participants, this thesis considers the questions these events raise. How can museums with very different approaches to the treatment of artefacts negotiate issues of repatriation and the exhibition of sacred objects? How should colonial-era anthropological collections be exhibited today? What is the place of contemporary indigenous art in the museum? By focusing on the exchanges between two institutions, Te Papa and the quai Branly, this thesis suggests how conversations at an individual level can lead to shifts in the perception and exhibition of museum objects, and how dialogues between museums internationally can contribute to an evolution in the treatment and display of indigenous artefacts and art in museums.</p>
High Street
Authors:   , Sawicka-Ritchie Alexandra Maria 
Published: December 2021

<p>High Street addresses the problem of disconnection between high-rise buildings and the life of the street. High-rises are often adopted as an efficient means of creating more usable space per square meter. However, their height also isolates them from the urban milieu below. This thesis investigates how to unite the two typologies by elevating the street through the high-rise. As more people are living in cities, the high-rise has become the most prevalent building type to accommodate this increasing urban density. It is important to continue to address how the built environment can enhance urban life architecturally. This proposition investigates externalising the circulation of a ten storey apartment building in central Wellington in a way that encourages the pedestrian to come above the ground plane and gives the resident a direct connection to the outdoors. In doing so elevating the street challenges the norms of circulation design in high-rise buildings. This thesis draws on the observations of Jan Gehl, Jane Jacobs and Richard Sennett to develop a circulation space that acts a social condenser (Koolhaas 73) for the resident and the pedestrian. A series of formal experiments and case study analyses were used to further the design solution through comparison and critique. The research process revealed the tension between the need for efficiency and humaneness in the design solution and analysis showed that circulation design in high-rise buildings is often underdeveloped as a social condenser. High Street creates a solution which three-dimensionalises the city from a pedestrian perspective and simultaneously improves the communal spaces of high-rise living. The elevated street redefines the connection between built environment and the public infrastructure of the city and a means by which the pedestrian can traverse it.</p>
Tragedy, Pluralism, Agonism: Ancient Greek Tragedy as a foundation for pluralist theory, with an application to pluralist agonism
Authors:   , Forde Xavier Lloyd 
Published: December 2021

<p>In Fifth Century B.C. Athens, the tragic playwrights took upon themselves the traditional mantle of poet-sage and responded to the cultural crisis of their time: the rupture within the Athenian mindset between on the one hand, an emergent Enlightenment-style discourse based on the juridico-political rationality of the democratic polis and on a confident assessment of the human condition, and on the other, the archaic discourse of myth and its “pessimism of strength”. Their plays held the two in an uneasy yet creative tension, projecting a pluralist ethos grounded in the assertion of the ambiguity and limits of the human condition. The thesis seeks to elaborate on the nature of this pre-philosophical ethos through the exploration of ancient Greek history and thought and the plays themselves. It delineates the expression in this ethos of a dual movement of problematisation and renewal: a critical, problematising, attitude towards both “rational” and “mythic” discourses, and in the space of thought created by this self-questioning, the elaboration of a minimalist platform for claim-making compatible with both the tragic onto-epistemology of limits and moderation and life in the democratic polis. This reading of the plays recognizes the problematisation of monistic claim-making in terms of truth, identity, values and politics. For instance, the playwrights call into question the archaic code of honour of the hero or the instrumental rationality adopted by some of their contemporary Athenian politicians: both systems of value are deemed too rigid and too simplistic to accord with the ambiguity and diversity of life in the city. It also outlines the values of moderation, reciprocity, and public-interestedness that are put forward by the tragedians as palliatives to the antagonism generated by monistic claim-making. These form a pluralist platform on which the democratic contest can be played out without reifying any singular and substantive account of politics, and with a lesser likelihood of dividing the city into factions that seek power at the expense of the city’s survival. The thesis then concludes with an application of the pluralist ethos of classical tragedy to a contemporary pluralist theory. By maintaining the tension between rationalist and mythic discourses, classical tragedy presents to Athenians a “constructive deconstruction” of their worldview. Tragedy’s pre-philosophical and pluralist ethos can underpin the democratic theory of “pluralist agonism”, helping it to navigate a course between modern foundationalist and anti-foundationalist philosophical ethos and their expressions in democratic theory: the liberal reification of constitutionalism and the democratic privileging of popular sovereignty.</p>
Essays in law and economics
Authors:   , Winkler Kay Eric 
Published: December 2021

<p>The thesis consists of four chapters concerning different topics of Law and Economics. The first chapter deals with economic issues in competition law. In order to distinguish predatory pricing from competition on the merits, the courts in the United States and in the European Union have established cost-based tests that also include an assessment of the market structure. The tests miss a causal connection between conduct and foreclosure. In contrast, Australia and New Zealand make use of a counterfactual analysis that establishes causality. However, the causal connection there relates to the market power and the conduct, and does not answer whether the conduct has only been done because of the foreclosure effects. A counterfactual test could be useful in predation cases if it establishes a causal link between the profitability of the conduct and the foreclosure effect. The second chapter explores the effect of excluding tort law for workplace accidents. In countries with workers’ compensation schemes, employees receive compensation for injuries at work regardless of fault, while private law liability of employers is either limited or fully excluded. The degree of liability matters for workplace safety, and different legal arrangements influence incentives of employers and employees to take care. An empirical analysis of several jurisdictions reveals a consistent pattern. The combination of arrangements that increase private law liability and mitigate moral hazard seems to be important for safety at work. No-fault workers’ compensation with the benefit of effective compensation comes with a cost: more injuries of those, which it seeks to protect. The third chapter assesses the effect of no-fault automobile insurances on safety incentives. In order to examine how no-fault motor vehicle insurance affects accident rates, insurance regimes in various countries are compared. A random effects model on fatality data of 29 countries reveals that some motor vehicle insurance systems increase moral hazard. The incentive to take care seems not to be negatively affected by no-fault rules, but by moral hazard due to limited experience rating. Restrictions on experience rating lower the level of care taken by motorists. A combination of no-fault insurance and flat-rate premiums, as found in New Zealand or the Northern Territory in Australia, has a detrimental effect on the safety of roads. The fourth chapter primarily builds on the finding of the second chapter that the exclusion of tort law for workplace injuries results in higher accident rates. In this respect, the question arises whether health and safety regulation can counteract the detrimental effect by providing deterrence from criminal sanctions. This is particularly relevant for New Zealand where a tendency of the law towards a reliance on regulation and criminal law can be observed. In practice, however, criminal law cannot fully replace common law in establishing incentives to take care, and is not as effective as private law actions.</p>
Sex trafficking, victimisation and agency: The experiences of migrant women in Malaysia
Authors:   , Abdul Hamid Haezreena Begum binti 
Published: December 2021

<p>Malaysia has criminalised sex work. However, its geographic location, porous borders and proximity to major trade and traffic routes have ensured a growth in sex trafficking activities. As a result, the ‘United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’ and the ‘United States Trafficking in Persons Report’ have categorised Malaysia as a destination, transit and source point for sex trafficking in Asia. In response to such categorisations, Malaysia has ratified the (Palermo) ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children’ and structured its anti-trafficking laws around prosecution, protection and prevention (referred to as the ‘3P’ policy). This thesis shows that the enforcement of victim-protection policies is carried out in contradictory ways in Malaysia. Trafficked women are portrayed as victims in need of care and protection, but also as individuals who have violated immigration laws and engaged in ‘immoral’ acts. This results in state practices that (re)victimise women through policing, immigration and court processes which are often deeply stressful, traumatising and violent. Punitive practices – including ‘state and rescue’ operations and long-term detention – have been legitimised and branded as ‘victim protection’. In this context, the thesis argues that current policies and practices represent a continuing form of violence against migrant women in Malaysia. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews, the thesis draws upon the stories of twenty-nine women who have been arrested and detained on the basis of their sex trafficked status as well as the perspectives of twelve anti-trafficking professionals involved in delivering the 3P policy. In doing so, the thesis shows how women are subject to prolonged victimisation at the hands of both traffickers and state authorities. However, it also provides an understanding of the ways in which ‘sex-trafficked’ women exercise courage, strength and resiliency in the face of the continuing harms against them. By demonstrating the nuances of agency throughout women’s migration experiences, the thesis challenges the stereotypical understanding of an ‘ideal’ victim of trafficking – commonly linked to images of passivity, weakness and worthiness. By providing an insight into women’s experiences of sex-trafficking and state ‘protection’, the thesis develops a more nuanced account of agency. Thus, the thesis argues that the state’s prevention of sex-trafficking as well as the protection of trafficked women cannot be progressively advanced without a fuller appreciation of women’s dual ‘victim’ and ‘agent’ identities. The thesis explores the implications of these findings on developing ‘anti-sex trafficking’ policies towards women in Malaysia.</p>