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Instrument Assignment Based on LATE Results with Defiers
No full textWhile most previous studies have focused on treatment assignment, this thesis emphasises instrument assignment to estimate Local Average Treatment Effects (LATE). We introduce a refined methodology to address limitations in the traditional assumptions set by Imbens and Angrist (1994), specifically by relaxing the monotonicity assumption to account for defiers. This work extends the contributions of Liao (2022) by integrating continuous control variables, namely KWW(Knowledge of the World Work) and IQ scores, into the LATE framework. We empirically validate our approach using college proximity as an instrumental variable. This study examines the impact of college attendance on wage outcomes, offering new insights into how treatment effects vary among individuals with different cognitive and job-related skills. The results conclude that individuals with lower KWW and IQ scores experience the highest wage gains from college attendance, highlighting the potential of targeted educational interventions. By accommodating defiers, this approach improves the robustness and applicability of LATE estimation across diverse empirical settings
Sensing Ethics in Postdigital Future Classrooms
No full textIn this paper, we introduce and develop the concept of ‘sensing ethics’ as a relational approach to thinking about postdigital future classrooms that is informed by our material realities, social and institutional structures, and our responsibilities as educators towards our students. A postdigital lens on ethics emphasises the importance of relationships and interconnectedness in ethical decision-making, moving away from a focus on individual autonomy. It considers how actions affect relationships between humans and non-humans. This perspective moves beyond rule-based ethics, and towards an approach that is more relational, situated, and decentralised. We explore sensing ethics through three examples drawing on the theory of practice architectures. We analyse these examples through the entangled ‘doings’, ‘sayings’, and ‘relatings’ to unpack the complexities emerging in how educators and students enact sensing ethics and how ethics materialises in their human and non-human relationships. Sensing ethics does not require a fixed definition or definitive solutions; rather, it is a proactive and intentional practice situated in the present that shapes the near future of postdigital future classrooms
Focus group data: Instant feedback and mathematics self-efficacy
No full textTranscripts from focus group discussions.Focus group discussions were hel
Platformization in the Digital Comics Industry – Leaving Comic Creators Behind
No full textWebcomics have become an incredibly influential part of the comic industry. Traditional publishers look to webcomic platforms, where creators can establish an extensive following for their comics, to pick out successful titles to transition to print. These publishers are also trying their hand at the platform model, developing platform-like systems (PLS) to appeal to a digitally orientated readership. These movements afford platforms an immense amount of power to affect the comics industry. The ways they are shaping business directions and user expectations are consistent with the dynamics of platformization outlined by Poell et al. (2022). This thesis investigated the structures and mechanisms of webcomic platforms to determine how they engineer platformed effects and their ramifications for comic creators as a vulnerable group. Additionally, it assessed how these effects were reflected by digital comic PLS and how that affected their practice. Ten platforms and PLS, capturing a variety of industry players, were observed using a variation of Light et al. (2016)’s walkthrough method. The data captured from these observations was analysed using Braun and Clarke (2022)’s reflective thematic analysis approach. My findings revealed that the recommendation and sorting techniques of platforms and PLS demonstrate orientations towards newness, quantification (less so for PLS) and low-value exchange terms. These orientations were exaggerated by mechanics that encouraged habitual return, success based on metric logics, and comic monetisation that devalued the individual comic product. This was to the detriment of comic creators, whose efforts to support themselves via relationship- based crowdfunding were not sustained by platforms and PLS. The ways comic creators have become reliant on webcomic platforms to build a following, based on the entanglement of the print and digital comic industries, places pressure on them to weather these negative effects to seek success
Effects of Extra Virgin Olive Oil on Ulcerative Colitis
No full textInflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic, lifelong, and complex condition affecting approximately 6.8 million people worldwide. Its global prevalence is rising and Australia ranks among the countries with the highest incidence. It comprises of several conditions characterised by inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Ulcerative colitis (UC) is one of the most common forms and presents in the form of inflammation along the colonic mucosa. Symptoms include both gastrointestinal dysfunction and extraintestinal manifestations which can occur in a relapsing remitting fashion. Comorbidities is high in this population, and medications can have severe side effects. As such, there is significant interest in exploring complementary approaches to treatment which are safe and effective.
Separately, Mediterranean diets are an emerging area of interest for chronic disease management. Unfortunately, adoption of whole diets can be challenging in IBD. Furthermore, contribution of individual components of the diet towards overall health outcomes remains unclear due to limited evidence. As such, the aim of this thesis was to address the gap in the evidence and examine the effects of a single food dietary intervention on IBD, focusing on UC. To address this aim, we utilised a broad range of methodologies throughout this thesis, including a study protocol, cross-sectional study of participants living with IBD, a systematic literature review, and randomised controlled trial involving participants living with UC.
Overall, we identified several gaps in the evidence on dietary approaches in IBD, with few human trials. Furthermore, we identified a significant level of impairment and lack of support in individuals living with IBD highlighting unmet needs for comprehensive, evidence-based support strategies. Low participant numbers were identified in the randomised trial, however, through this manuscript we hope to build the case for future studies based from our learnings
Recursive virtual sensing methods in structural dynamics
No full textThe ability to acquire precise and reliable information from objects and their surrounding environments has become increasingly critical in today's data-centric world. However, direct measurement of these quantities is not always feasible due to physical and financial constraints. Virtual sensing offers the possibility to estimate or predict quantities that are difficult, expensive, or impossible to measure directly. This cutting-edge technique serves as the fundamental tool for applications in structural dynamics, such as structural health monitoring, active vibration control, model updating and online digital twinning.
This work addresses challenges in virtual sensing by developing a robust virtual sensing framework. The proposed framework contains a series of model-based methods with universal applicability and different capabilities, enabling real-time system identification of partially observed systems across various sensor networks and under different levels of uncertainties. Numerical and experimental studies demonstrate significant improvements in performance compared to other state-of-the-art methods available in the literature
Decolonizing Mo(ve)ments?: Decoloniality in/as Praxis with LGBTIQ+ Activists in Uganda
No full textAnchored in collaboration with two LGBTIQ+ organizations in Uganda, this thesis explores the possibilities of recentring the epistemic agency and authority of Africa/ns’ knowledges about LGBTIQ+ activisms. As such, this thesis seeks to confront and delink from the ‘epistemic crisis’ of Eurocentrism whereby the Eurocentric paradigm as an epistemological system produces ‘a persistent exclusion of marginalized subjects from contributing to our collective epistemic resources for interpreting our experiences and the world’ (Posholi, 2020, p. 296). Here, the epistemic crisis refers to the incongruency between the increasingly visible and vocal LGBTIQ+ activists across Africa, and their near invisibility within the growing body of social sciences scholarship positing to engage with LGBTIQ+ activism(s) and social movements globally. By contrast, this thesis seeks to elevate LGBTIQ+ activists and allies’ counternarratives to the pervasive monolithic story ‘that activism does not exist and that there is only homophobia’ within Africa/ns (Ndashe, 2013, p. 156). Drawing on the concepts of coloniality of power, gender, and being, this thesis first provides an analysis of the constitutive elements of the Eurocentric paradigm that fuel the persistent exclusion of Africa/ns’ LGBTIQ+ activisms in and by social sciences research/ers. This thesis secondly attempts to recentre the epistemic agency, and authority of LGBTIQ+ activists and allies in Uganda through the methods of accompaniment, photovoice, photo-elicitation interviews and conversational interviews. Through these horizontal research practices, LGBTIQ+ activists and allies depicted and articulated LGBTIQ+ activisms in Uganda as a praxis of knowing, being, and doing anchored in solidarity, voice, acceptance, community, love, unity, hope, resilience, resistance, yet challenged by experiences of violence, isolation, burn-out, substance abuse, (in)visibility, and the monetisation of activism
An Individual Differences Perspective on the Glass and Bamboo Ceilings in Australia
No full textWomen and Confucian Asian people remain underrepresented in Australian leadership roles. Societal and social factors have been studied extensively, yet individual differences that could enhance diverse leader emergence have received less attention. Motivation to lead and leader self-efficacy are two constructs predictive of leader emergence, but their antecedents have largely been limited to stable traits and cultural values. This narrows our understanding of gender and ethnocultural disparities and restricts training programs aimed at broadening leadership diversity. Moreover, although decision-making is central to leadership, research has overlooked the role of decision-making styles in leader emergence. The antecedents commonly studied for decision-making styles also mirror those for motivation to lead and leader self-efficacy, limiting their additional explanatory value.
This thesis addressed these gaps by examining whether personal and family perfectionism, self-compassion, and problem-solving self-concept predict decision-making styles, motivation to lead, and leader self-efficacy.
One study (N = 336) investigated how these variables relate to decision-making styles, focusing on gender (Chapter 4) and ethnocultural (Chapter 5) differences. The next study (N = 930) tested how the same variables, along with decision-making styles, predict leader self-efficacy and motivation to lead, focusing on gender (Chapter 6) and ethnocultural differences (Chapter 7).
The results showed that the predictors accounted for incremental variance beyond that of personality and cognitive ability (Chapters 4-7), and beyond individualism, collectivism, leadership experience, and leadership aspiration (Chapters 6-7). Maladaptive decision-making style played a particularly prominent role as a predictor of the leader emergence factors. Gender and ethnocultural differences in the pattern of predictors were observed and discussed in the context of improving leader diversity
Critical studies of education and technology … reasons to be hopeful?
No full textThe past couple of decades have seen the steady rise of digital technologies as a prominent element of education around the world. Digital technologies are now a key feature of education provision in the global north from pre-schools through to tertiary and community education – touching the educational experiences of young children through to seniors. In these regions, education provision now increasingly takes place through platforms and other large systems - dependent on cloud providers and the data industry in ways that were scarcely imaginable a few years previously. At the same time, ed-tech continues to grow in prominence in global south regions as governments, NGOs, philanthropic and industry actors look to implement various digital education innovations to help low-income and middle-income countries address fundamental problems around failing teacher workforces and lack of universal basic education.
While there continues to be much practitioner enthusiasm, financial investment and commercial hype around such technological developments, we are currently living through particularly unsettled times for the use of digital technologies in education. The worldwide school shutdowns triggered by the COVID pandemic and subsequent periods of ‘emergency remote schooling’ at the beginning of the 2020s have since been renounced in a detailed UNESCO report as ‘an EdTech tragedy’. This has been followed by pronounced regulatory turns in many countries – from Ireland to Indonesia - against student use of smartphones and other digital devices, accompanied by e_orts in countries such as Denmark and France to curtail the educational reach of ‘big tech’ corporations. Now we are seeing growing public and practitioner concerns expressed around the dehumanising e_ects of AI-driven education, and the environmental burdens caused by the production, consumption and disposal of digital technologies.
These shifts have certainly been reflected in the changing nature of academic scholarship and research in the area of education and technology over the past few years. In particular, we are now seeing growing interest in what can be termed ‘critical studies of education and technology’ (CSET) – bringing together academics, researchers, teachers, writers and technologists with a shared interest in approaching tech use as a problematic. This is resulting in academic research and scholarship that is focused primarily on the politics of ed-tech, and producing accounts of power, control, inequalities and disadvantage associated with and/or arising from the presence of digital technologies in education. While critical accounts of education and technology have been developed over the past 40 years, the past few years have seen a sharp increase in the number of academic researchers taking this approach. All told, there is now a fast-growing academic literature o_ering critiques of education and technology – o_ering a timely counterpoint to the traditional ‘what works’ approaches to how digital technology might be used in education settings.
In light of the increased significance of this area of research it seems appropriate that we talk more openly about what it means to take a ‘critical’ approach to education and technology. Against this background, this brief report draws on the outcomes of 53 expert ‘CSET’ meetings that were coordinated and convened around the world between the 17th and 21st February 2025 (see Appendix A for further details of this process).
These meetings brought together over 500 individuals from across academic, research, educator policymaker and industry communities – all with a shared interest in ‘problematising education and technology’. Each meeting was asked to address the following four common questions:
(1) What are the pressing issues, concerns, tensions and problems that surround ed-tech in our locality? What questions do we need to ask, and what approaches will help us research these questions?
(2) What social harms are we seeing associated with digital technology and education in our locality?
(3) What does the political economy of ed-tech look like in our region? What do local EdTech markets look like? How are global Big Tech corporations manifest in local education systems? What does ed-tech policy look like, and which actors are driving policymaking? What do we find if we ‘follow the money’?
(4) What grounds for hope are there? Can we point to local instances of digital technology leading to genuine social benefits and empowerment? What local push- back and resistance against egregious forms of ed-tech is evident? What alternate imaginaries are being circulated about education and digital futures
Novel Insights into the Pathophysiology and Diagnosis of Patients with Angina and Non-obstructive Coronary Arteries
No full textAngina with non-obstructive coronary arteries (ANOCA) comprises heterogeneous vasomotor disorders that cause recurrent angina, impaired quality of life, frequent hospitalisations and adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Yet ANOCA often evades conventional coronary assessment, demanding more nuanced diagnostic strategies. This thesis evaluates the diagnostic and prognostic utility of invasive coronary function testing (CFT) across a series of multicentre prospective studies. It quantifies the prevalence of vasomotor endotypes in contemporary cohorts, compares the diagnostic performance of alternative CFT protocols, and examines how these pathways influence patient-reported health status and clinical decision-making. Collectively, the findings provide evidence to refine diagnostic strategies, enhance patient care and inform long-term management in ANOCA. By defining where CFT adds diagnostic yield and clinical value, this work offers practical recommendations for current practice and a foundation for the development of globally standardised protocols to ensure consistent endotype identification across centres