title: Disciplining identities: gender, geography and the culture of fieldtrips

authors: Nairn, Karen

abstract: This is an examination of geography disciplinary identities and practices as they are (re)produced during seven residential geography fieldtrips. The thesis is structured around four key arguments. First, is an analysis of particular disciplinary practices of residential fieldtrips, namely geographers’ preoccupation with Difference within and between places, and with ‘seeing the real world’. It is argued that geographers’ fascination with Difference for its own sake, risks Difference as a new form of essentialism if the structure of Difference is not critically examined. Following this is a deconstruction and decentering of the taken-for-granted ways in which geography fieldtrip knowledge has been (re)produced via scopic regimes that depend on a self-evident ‘reality’.

Second, I argue that the residential geography fieldtrip is one context in which students learn what it means to be a ‘geography student’/‘geographer’. Students and staff live/breathe/eat geography. I call this embodied fieldwork. The notion of embodied fieldwork is taken further into a consideration of the ‘re-creation’ (in both senses of the word) of the geography student/geographer. Fieldwork was constructed as fun and in a parallel fashion, I questioned whether so-called fun and jokes might be better understood as achieving a particular kind of work. I examine how individual bodies are disciplined in particular ways, and how this disciplining is accommodated and/or resisted. 

Third, is an analysis of the contradictions of an assumed community of geography students and geographers. Some fieldtrip participants felt the pressure to join this corporate body even though it did not represent a group they would (usually) choose to be part of. A corporate body of geography students and staff together depends on unspecified notions of sameness. These notions, on closer analysis, turn out to have quite specific hierarchical meanings in terms of ‘race’, gender, class, sexuality, physical ability and age. 

Finally, are some suggestions for interventions in the social and epistemological practices of geographic fieldtrip education.

text: Disciplining identities: gender, geography and the culture of fieldtrips This is an examination of geography disciplinary identities and practices as they are (re)produced during seven residential geography fieldtrips. The thesis is structured around four key arguments. First, is an analysis of particular disciplinary practices of residential fieldtrips, namely geographers’ preoccupation with Difference within and between places, and with ‘seeing the real world’. It is argued that geographers’ fascination with Difference for its own sake, risks Difference as a new form of essentialism if the structure of Difference is not critically examined. Following this is a deconstruction and decentering of the taken-for-granted ways in which geography fieldtrip knowledge has been (re)produced via scopic regimes that depend on a self-evident ‘reality’.

Second, I argue that the residential geography fieldtrip is one context in which students learn what it means to be a ‘geography student’/‘geographer’. Students and staff live/breathe/eat geography. I call this embodied fieldwork. The notion of embodied fieldwork is taken further into a consideration of the ‘re-creation’ (in both senses of the word) of the geography student/geographer. Fieldwork was constructed as fun and in a parallel fashion, I questioned whether so-called fun and jokes might be better understood as achieving a particular kind of work. I examine how individual bodies are disciplined in particular ways, and how this disciplining is accommodated and/or resisted. 

Third, is an analysis of the contradictions of an assumed community of geography students and geographers. Some fieldtrip participants felt the pressure to join this corporate body even though it did not represent a group they would (usually) choose to be part of. A corporate body of geography students and staff together depends on unspecified notions of sameness. These notions, on closer analysis, turn out to have quite specific hierarchical meanings in terms of ‘race’, gender, class, sexuality, physical ability and age. 

Finally, are some suggestions for interventions in the social and epistemological practices of geographic fieldtrip education.

year: 1998

title: Behaviour-based classification of encryption-type ransomware using system calls

authors: Chew, Christopher J.W.

subjects: Ransomware

abstract: The malware landscape is ever-changing, with threat actors utilising more sophisticated techniques to compromise data. As the usage of smartphones increases, more threat actors will turn their attention to capitalise on the popularity. 

This thesis addresses this ongoing issue and focuses on encryption-type ransomware, which has been a rising malware threat in recent years, on the Android operating system. Many state-of-the-art anti-malware solutions have shifted away from static signature-based approaches as the techniques utilised by threat actors have become more advanced. Most newer solutions look towards the use of dynamic analysis to automatically identify malware. However, the large quantities of information required by dynamic analysis approaches often present a challenging task for developing robust automated anti-malware solutions and may be easily circumvented by future threat actors, which implies that more specialised automated solutions are required.

In the work presented in this thesis, we observe encryption-type ransomware behavioural patterns at a system call-level. We describe the Android Applications dataset on which a large portion of this work is based. By utilising the created dataset and the behavioural patterns, this thesis presents solutions using Finite State Machines (FSM) and supervisor reduction to quickly detect Android encryption-type ransomware. Furthermore, the solutions are evaluated on Linux encryption-type ransomware to show its transferability and generalisability.

We measured the success of our techniques by using the following accuracy metrics: true positive rates, false negative rates, true negative rates, false positive rates, and achieved an F1-score of up to 93.8%.

text: Behaviour-based classification of encryption-type ransomware using system calls The malware landscape is ever-changing, with threat actors utilising more sophisticated techniques to compromise data. As the usage of smartphones increases, more threat actors will turn their attention to capitalise on the popularity. 

This thesis addresses this ongoing issue and focuses on encryption-type ransomware, which has been a rising malware threat in recent years, on the Android operating system. Many state-of-the-art anti-malware solutions have shifted away from static signature-based approaches as the techniques utilised by threat actors have become more advanced. Most newer solutions look towards the use of dynamic analysis to automatically identify malware. However, the large quantities of information required by dynamic analysis approaches often present a challenging task for developing robust automated anti-malware solutions and may be easily circumvented by future threat actors, which implies that more specialised automated solutions are required.

In the work presented in this thesis, we observe encryption-type ransomware behavioural patterns at a system call-level. We describe the Android Applications dataset on which a large portion of this work is based. By utilising the created dataset and the behavioural patterns, this thesis presents solutions using Finite State Machines (FSM) and supervisor reduction to quickly detect Android encryption-type ransomware. Furthermore, the solutions are evaluated on Linux encryption-type ransomware to show its transferability and generalisability.

We measured the success of our techniques by using the following accuracy metrics: true positive rates, false negative rates, true negative rates, false positive rates, and achieved an F1-score of up to 93.8%.

year: 2023

title: Blue-lip'd cannibal ladies: The allure of the exotic in the illicit Resolution Journal of Gunner John Marra

authors: Ryan, Tom

subjects: John Marra

abstract: Discusses the history and content of the “Journal of the Resolution’s Voyage”, an unauthorized and illicitly published account of Cook’s second voyage of exploration in the Antipodes, by Gunner John Marra of the Resolution’s crew.

text: Blue-lip'd cannibal ladies: The allure of the exotic in the illicit Resolution Journal of Gunner John Marra Discusses the history and content of the “Journal of the Resolution’s Voyage”, an unauthorized and illicitly published account of Cook’s second voyage of exploration in the Antipodes, by Gunner John Marra of the Resolution’s crew.

year: 2001