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Precision Meets Speed: An Attention Encoder-Decoder Network for Deforestation Segmentation
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Power, Position and Practice: Conscientisation and decolonial solidarity of Southeast Asian migrants in Aotearoa
No full textScholars have conceptualised decolonial solidarity through notions of reciprocity, relationality, and mutuality. In Aotearoa New Zealand, constitutionally honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi—an 1840 agreement between sovereign nations (hapū) and the Crown—is essential for decolonisation. However, relevant scholarship in Aotearoa on honouring Te Tiriti focuses mostly on the role of the dominant white settler population. Despite making up 17.3% of the country’s population, Asian migrants (Asian tauiwi) are rarely subjects of academic exploration in this field. Yet, relations of solidarity between Indigenous Māori and Asian tauiwi are critical to advance decolonisation.This thesis fills the significant empirical and theoretical gaps in scholarship on Māori-Asian solidarity. Building on critical theories about solidarity, this thesis examines conscientisation and decolonial solidarity from the perspectives and experiences of 15 Southeast Asian tauiwi and five Te Tiriti-centred workers and educators. Through semi-structured interviews, participants discussed their experiences of growing critical consciousness of Te Tiriti and colonialism, the barriers and opportunities they encountered in the process, and forging decolonial solidarity in everyday life.This thesis’s findings suggest that Southeast Asian tauiwi participants have encountered multiple barriers to conscientisation and decolonial solidarity. This includes the colonial representations and narratives about Aotearoa, which shaped how participants understood the country’s settler colonial history and present. Despite these barriers, participants developed conscientisation in many ways. Narratives about understanding colonialism through an international context were particularly prominent. Participants’ conscientisation and decolonial solidarity expanded when they compared colonialism in Aotearoa with their Southeast Asian homelands’ histories and political contexts. As such, they confronted colonialism at multiple levels and intersections, not just based on their position as racial minorities in Aotearoa or victims of colonial forces in Southeast Asia, but also sometimes as part of privileged classes in Aotearoa and their homelands. Thus, critical education on colonialism and decolonisation beyond the boundaries of ‘New Zealand’ can be transformative for immigrant communities.This thesis makes two key contributions to conceptualisations of decolonial solidarity in Aotearoa. Firstly, participants’ narratives highlight the need for tauiwi to identify and articulate colonial power dynamics to resist reproducing coloniality in educational and organising spaces. Reflecting on their positionality as Southeast Asian tauiwi in settler colonial society, participants considered the extent and limitations of their roles in decolonial solidarity practices. This contribution extends the literature on Indigenous-migrant relations that explores how decolonial solidarity can be fostered between differently oppressed and unevenly situated groups.Secondly, this study affirms theories illustrating how conscientisation and decolonial solidarity are forms of praxis, enriched through non-linear processes that evolve through practice. For some participants, solidarity with Māori emerged emotionally (through perceived cultural similarities, understanding of marginalisation, or a personal sense of justice), before they had intellectual knowledge about Te Tiriti or colonialism. This suggests opportunities for existing social solidarity between Māori and racialised tauiwi to be politicised and transformed through critical education and practice. Te Tiriti-centred workers and educators must embrace the complexities of Southeast Asian tauiwi epistemologies and ontologies to strengthen their conscientisation and decolonial solidarity, and to galvanise them for the movement to honour Te Tiriti.</p
Optimising an Encapsulated In Vitro Follicle Growth System to Evaluate the Impacts of Cholesterol on Follicle Development
No full textEncapsulated in vitro follicle growth (eIVFG) is a 3D culture method that can be used to culture ovarian follicles. For this thesis, a protocol utilising an alginate hydrogel to encapsulate follicles was adapted for use in our lab to study and follow follicle growth, or folliculogenesis.The overall objective of this thesis was to investigate the hypothesis that increased cholesterol within in vitro follicle culture media would negatively impact follicle development. To answer the hypothesis, an eIVFG protocol had to be optimised to study follicular growth in vitro. Several parameters (follicle collected method, media pH, alginate viscosity and concentration) were optimised and baseline values for eIVFG including 17β-estradiol and progesterone concentrations, expression of key genes in the oocyte and markers of apoptosis (Gdf9, Bmp15, Bax and Bcl2), and measures of follicle health and growth were evaluated. Once these values were established, follicles were cultured in three conditions based on known differences in circulating cholesterol in individuals classified as having different levels of adiposity: high-body fat (high cholesterol), low-body fat (low cholesterol) and a control condition. It was established that there was no significant impact of any of the three conditions on follicle growth, nor any significant difference in other markers of follicle health such as antrum formation or follicle survival, or on the expression of Gdf9, Bmp15, Bax or Bcl2. However, there were higher 17β-estradiol levels in high-body fat conditions than both low-body fat or control conditions.Overall, this thesis found that increased cholesterol did not negatively impact follicle growth, and this, along with the optimised eIVFG protocol, will contribute to future studies on the impact of circulating lipids, such as cholesterol, on folliculogenesis. In time, the eIVFG system can also be used to understand how variations in conditions could impact outcomes of assisted reproductive technologies.</p
Reconstructing Lacustrine Tsunami Hazard in High-Seismicity Regions of New Zealand’s South Island
No full textLake tsunami are a significant and underrepresented hazard globally. The current understanding of this hazard is derived from only a limited number of studies, primarily in low-seismicity settings such as Switzerland and Norway. Underrepresented are studies from active tectonic settings, characterised by high relief, high sediment yields, and frequent seismic shaking, likely to cause more frequent subaerial and subaqueous mass movements with the potential to produce lake tsunami. Despite this vulnerability, the drivers and spatiotemporal distribution of the lacustrine tsunami hazard in active tectonic settings remained largely unquantified, due in part to methodological limitations for establishing long records of magnitude and frequency.Using the case study of fault-contact and fault-proximal lakes in New Zealand’s South Island, this thesis explored how the active tectonic setting controls the mechanisms and spatiotemporal distribution of lacustrine tsunami hazard by reconstructing past occurrences of lacustrine tsunami from evidence preserved in the geological record. To achieve this, the thesis developed new approaches to producing long records of magnitude frequency using the morphological and sedimentological signatures of the lacustrine tsunami. The approach of this study was threefold. Firstly, high-resolution multibeam bathymetry and seismic reflection data were collected for four lakes, Lake Rotoiti, Lake Rotoroa, Lake Brunner, and Lake Mapourika, to establish the spatial distribution and characteristics of past lacustrine mass movements. 16 previously undocumented mass movements capable of generating lake tsunami were discovered, with the most prevalent source areas being fluvial deltas and bedrock slopes proximal to active faults. The origin and characteristics of the potentially tsunamigenic mass movements indicate that the high rates of delta progradation, frequent seismic activity, and the preconditioning and displacement by active faults strongly influenced the spatial distribution of lake tsunami hazard. However, composite deposits formed by the repeated failure of deltas are challenging to deconvolve into a time series of discrete events where the timing, mass and tsunamigenic potential are resolvable.The largest mass movement identified across the four study lakes was a 6.1 km2 block field proximal to the fault-contact delta complex in Lake Rotoroa. This deposit was the focus of the second phase of research, which developed an innovative multiproxy approach to deconvolving the timing, volume, and tsunamigenic capacity of individual events with complex deltaic mass movement deposits. Using the case study of Lake Rotoroa, this approach was employed to investigate the conditions that lead to catastrophic delta collapse, specifically how fault-displacement influences the failure dynamics and tsunamigenic capacity of fault-contact delta collapse. The integrated analysis of evidence revealed that a catastrophic collapse of the Sabine and D’Urville deltas occurred between 800 CE to 976 CE and generated a tsunami in Lake Rotoroa with maximum run-up heights of 22 to 41 m. Comparisons to the regional palaeoseismic record and reconstruction of emplacement dynamics indicate that deep-seated and catastrophic delta collapse was initiated by permanent displacement on the Northern Alpine Fault that intersects the delta. The case studies highlight the significant tsunami hazard associated with fault-contact deltas, particularly in active tectonic settings where tsunami hazard potential is rapidly recharged over the seismic cycle. Given the potentially high temporal frequency of tsunamigenic delta failures, it was critical to establish a method for accurately reconstructing records of past lacustrine tsunami over a long-time scale.The potential of using lake sediment to reconstruct long records of magnitude and frequency was then investigated. An in-depth multiproxy analysis of sediment cores retrieved throughout Lake Rotoroa demonstrated that the 800 – 976 CE lacustrine tsunami left diagnostic imprints on the sedimentary record distinct from deposits produced by non-tsunamigenic mass-wasting. The findings corroborate the genetic link between lacustrine tsunami and megaturbidite formation and refined this association by demonstrating the interrelationship between the sedimentological characteristics of the event deposit and the spatial and temporal distribution of tsunami current velocity. Comparison to historic event deposits in Lake Rotoroa and globally demonstrated that tsunami deposits can be differentiated from coseismic mass-wasting turbidites and other mass transport deposits. The research highlights the potential of using sediment records to reconstruct the frequency of lake tsunami over long time scales, which is essential to advancing hazard management practices. The outcomes of this thesis demonstrate that it is of great societal importance for lacustrine tsunami to be represented in future hazard resilience and management frameworks. The novel quantitative evidence and reconstruction methodologies generated in this thesis make this goal achievable.</p
Resonant Object Interface: An Acoustic Input Device for Nuanced, Embodied Interaction with Music Software
No full textThe Resonant Object Interface is a novel sensing system that combines vibration exciters, contact microphones and resonant objects to create a unique, nuanced music controller based on an acoustic system. The initial idea for the work in this thesis emerged from observing users interacting with a sound art piece composed of large vibrating metal barrels and noticing their ability to control and repeat resonances. In developing this initial inspiration into a functioning musical interface, this thesis pursues an engineering approach to the design, development, and testing of the Resonant Object Interface. The research begins by identifying discrepancies between traditional acoustic instruments and the digital tools more commonly used for computer music. A skilled musician can play a single note a hundred different ways. This variation is intentional and controlled, forming the basis of their expressive control over their instrument. Meanwhile, computers and electronics have made it possible to generate musical material separate from the constraints of acoustic resonances. While this separation has led to an expansive field of musical possibility, some practitioners consider that the tools for physically controlling these sounds do not provide sufficiently nuanced control.This work builds on conceptual and technical trends within the fields of sonic arts and new interfaces for music (NIMEs). An examination of key literature and technical developments over the past twenty years shows a strong interest in concepts such as liveness, embodiment, embodied cognition and materiality. The increasing adoption of technical trends, such as MIDI Polyphonic Expression-enabled hardware and software, haptics, and tactile multimodality, as well as Feedback Musicianship and an enhanced interaction design literacy, suggests that computer music practitioners are eager for more advanced physical interaction modalities in their musical toolchains.This thesis investigates whether sound-based sensors facilitate greater embodiment and physical variation in playing technique. To explore this, this thesis describes the only known user study on and analysis of the affordances of using sound-based sensors (air and contact microphones) in musical controllers. The work builds on this finding by combining contact microphones with vibration exciters and resonant objects to create the Resonant Object Interface. This thesis examines the complexity of introducing a new interaction modality to users and highlights the need to guide them through presets and tutorials, while considering the role that tacit knowledge and tacit interaction play in our understanding of new musical instruments. The more controlled training and guidance that implementing these presets facilitates enable new users to quickly become capable of nuanced, repeatable, and embodied control over the Resonant Object Interface. The thesis concludes by reflecting on the transformation of the Resonant Object Interface from an initial concept as a sensing methodology inspired by acoustic instruments into an acoustic input device for computer music, which not only shares the potential for expressive nuance of acoustic instruments but also inherits the inherent challenges and complexities of acoustic instrument design.</p
Participation Management in Family Harm Emergency Police Calls Involving Co-present Others
No full textThis research project investigated participation management in family harm emergency police calls involving co-present others. Although emergency calls are typically seen as dyadic interactions between callers and call-takers, research from helplines, medical emergency calls, and police calls indicate that co-present others can influence the organisation and progressivity of these interactions. In the context of family harm, emergency police calls present a unique adversarial dynamic, as co-present others are frequently the perpetrators of the harm being reported. Despite these findings, there is a lack of research examining how these multi-party calls are managed, raising questions about who is treated as having the right to participate and how these adversarial dynamics are discursively navigated. By utilising discursive psychology’s analytic framework of conversation analysis and the analytic tool of participation frameworks, this research examines how participation is managed between co-present others, callers, and call-takers in family harm emergency police calls in New Zealand. The analysis of eight extracts revealed that co-present others formulated their participation as challenges: contesting callers’ versions of reality and their actions. Callers and call-takers used both explicit and implicit exclusionary practices to manage co-present others’ participation. The practice of ‘institutional overhearing’ also emerged from the data as another method, used by both call-takers and callers, to manage participation. These practices reflected a shared orientation to emergency calls as having a normative dyadic structure. The findings of this research have significant implications for discursive psychology, conversation analysis, and forensic psychology. By examining how participation is managed in family harm emergency police calls, this research provides a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of multi-party dynamics in a high-stakes institutional setting. This research also offers a novel conceptualisation of co-present others, highlighting their interactional influence, and emphasises the need for a more comprehensive transcription practice that accurately represents them and their contributions. These findings also contribute to forensic psychology’s understanding of family harm by providing insights into real-time family harm situations and the real consequences callers face when reporting family harm. Finally, this research offers suggestions for improving emergency call-taker training for managing participation in multi-party family harm calls.</p
Navigating course content in undergraduate study: Strategic decision-making of tools for learning
No full textHow students navigate through course content has changed over time as digital tools have become infused into higher education. This paper reports interpretive research conducted through a socio-material lens that explored how students navigate digital course content in their undergraduate studies at a New Zealand university. The participants were academically successful students from a range of faculties and data was gathered through interview, focus groups and Talanoa. The students in this study were mindful to make deliberate choices when developing digital strategies to support their academic journey. They valued technology that was easy to use, enabled task efficacy with scheduling and coordination that, in-turn, made their study activities more efficient. Students also acquired and adapted technologies for sophisticated note taking, content augmentation and used digital technology to support revision and reflection. Increasingly students are turning to AI enabled tools for authentic collaboration and to enhance their learning rather than a means to subvert learning activities. We also observed variation in how students approach the use of digital technologies for course setup and familiarisation, during course delivery and for assessment activity support
“Their System is Their System and You Fit Into It”: An Exploration of Professionals’ Experiences Supporting d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing People in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Prisons.
No full textd/Deaf and hard of hearing people are disproportionately over-represented in prisons worldwide.There is a dearth of literature on the experiences of incarcerated d/Deaf and hard of hearing people, but existing literature is clear that this cohort experiences barriers during incarceration.This research responds to the gap in literature, seeking a deeper qualitative understanding of the nature of supports for d/Deaf and hard of hearing people in prison in Aotearoa New Zealand.This research examines the experiences of d/Deaf and hard of hearing people incarcerated in Aotearoa New Zealand and asks what barriers this cohort faces to accessing health and mental wellbeing care, what creates these barriers, and what support is needed.This deeper qualitative understanding derives from semi-structured interviews with six professionals who support d/Deaf and hard of hearing people who are, or have been, incarcerated in Aotearoa New Zealand. These professionals have been working in their respective fields for decades and are either Deaf or work closely with the Deaf community, necessitating the use of New Zealand Sign Language in some interviews. Participant's experiences were analysed within the context of settler colonialism, audism, and oralism.This thesis found prisons are a site of harm where d/Deaf and hard of hearing people experience barriers to accessing support for mental wellbeing and health care, as well as to accessing entertainment, grievance processes, and rehabilitation programs. Findings include that prison is audist-centric, the state creates and enforces barriers to health care for d/Deaf and hard of hearing people, communication is important but interpreters are not uniformly provided, and that these realities are detrimental to d/Deaf and hard of hearing people’s wellbeing. Participants’ calls for change, at an interpersonal, policy, state, and legislative level, echoed those of the existing literature. Highlighting d/Deaf and hard of hearing people’s negative experiences of incarceration has implications for how prisons regard human rights in their policies and practices. This thesis encourages ethical research in this space, honouring d/Deaf and hard of hearing people’s unique culture and characteristics.</p
Perceiving Wellington: Minds and Bodies in Space
No full textIn response to how architectural theory speaks on the phenomenological and temporal factors surrounding the interpretation of urban atmospheres, this research portfolio investigates how design and the consideration of atmospheres can embody and celebrate connectedness between place and people for members of the Wellington Region. This is to achieve a better understanding of how urban design and its resultant atmospheres can speak to a range of people, rather than an assumed single body. The study centres on atmospheric interpretation as its core theme and also explores the interconnectedness of collective memory and regional identity with atmospheres and place meaning. Qualitative research data from an online survey questionnaire and follow-up photo elicitation exercise have been compiled and analysed to explore some possible trends and differences across ethnicity and age demographics on the experience of atmosphere of urban place.These findings are used to inform a design-led research investigation culminating in an architectural and urban design response on the site of the former underground carpark in Frank Kitts Park, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). This study and design response demonstrate the power of understanding a range of urban experiences as well as collective and temporal notions of place to inform our production of urban environments where everyone can feel connected to place and others around them.</p
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