13506 research outputs found
Sort by
Theology and Prayer: Ignatian Discernment as Theological Methodology
Get PDFIf we conceive of theology as prayerful thought, then the relationship of the prayerful element and the thoughtful element is not straightforward: this thesis argues that the difficulties become apparent when we examine the specifics of a particular prayer practice and ask how it can be brought into the work of a theologian. The prayer practice explored in this thesis is Ignatian discernment. It is argued that this practice is not confined to individual vocational choices but is an ongoing practice that can guide the work of a theologian. This thesis further argues that Ignatian discernment: is already a place where prayer and rigorous thought co-exist; is a specific form of prayer which is, notwithstanding this specificity, epistemologically and even methodologically plural; promotes an active receptivity to all experience; and is a way of interpreting that experience that approaches it with a degree of caution and epistemic humility. This thesis argues that the ongoing practice of discernment should retain a Christological focus that can discipline Christian theology to keep to its proper task of following Christ to God’s greater glory.
This thesis also argues that the critical thrust of Heidegger’s later thought is directed against our pervasive misrelation to everything as meaningless resource. This misrelation is itself grounded in the Nietzschean ontotheology which holds sway in present times. The response to it, found in the constructive movement of Heidegger’s later thought, requires a way of thinking akin to a spiritual discipline, rather than a metaphysics which proposes a particular relationship between God and being. It is argued that Ignatian discernment can resist this misrelation as a spiritual discipline which is, in a number of important respects, analogous to ways of thinking contemplated by Heidegger’s response.
Making A Difference : Service User and carer involvement in Social Work Education – a mixed methods approach within a participatory paradigm.
Get PDFSocial work is committed to challenging inequality and discrimination, supporting social justice and valuing diversity throughout the world. Unique to the United Kingdom is the formal recognition of the involvement of those in receipt of services or providing informal carer support as an essential part of social work training. Since this commitment to involvement was established in 2003 with the introduction of the new degree in social work, a wide and variable range of activities has developed across universities to involve people with experiences of social work services. Research to evaluate the effectiveness of involvement has found that evidence of practice impact is limited. Further, research has identified that university structures have not been inclusive of those most marginalised in society.
This qualitative research study explores a key question emanating from those with lived experiences who have contributed to social work education, as well as researchers who have identified a knowledge gap; what difference does involvement make in social work education?
Five focus groups, predominantly including those who have contributed to social work education from their lived experiences, social work students , qualified social workers and lecturers, were conducted across the UK. The methodological design employed a triangulated approach to evaluate the impact of involvement through the university curriculum and to introduce an innovative ‘Mend the Gap’ participatory action research (PAR) approach. Three PAR projects involving participants with lived experiences who felt most excluded from traditional structures in society along with social work students and qualified social workers, promoted methods of mutual learning leading to transformative outcomes. Both research methods align with a pedagogical idea that people need to step out of dichotomous categories, such as ‘social workers’ ‘service users’, to close the division which maintains people in roles as ‘expert’ professional and person ‘being helped’ with the problem. The work of Paulo Freire (1970) provides the pedagogical framework to explore core themes of power, empowerment, oppression and critical awareness. The findings have demonstrated how the contradiction Freire highlights between the ‘oppressor and oppressed’ is overcome through the mutual learning process.
The triangulated research findings cohere through application of Braun and Clarke’s (2006, 2019) reflexive thematic analysis resulting in the identification of core themes. A new method for co-producing knowledge and learning and recommendations that build upon existing research for instigating change within social work educational structures is presented. The transferability of findings to other professional contexts adds to the value of the research contribution within the social sciences. The benefits of substantive mutual learning and how boundaries can be transcended through sharing experiential knowledge is emphasised. Most significantly, outcomes of the research demonstrate how transformation is achievable when those who feel most marginalised and stigmatised initiate the agenda. Altogether, the findings present a strong case for restructuring social work education, promoting outcome based meaningful engagement of diverse communities by putting service user- led organisations in control of an academic dominated agenda
The Collection and Exhibition of Chinese Art in Durham Perception and Interpretation of Chinese Art through Chinese Collections in the Oriental Museum
Get PDFBritain is widely recognised as the home of many significant collections of Chinese art, such as the Chinese collections in the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Ashmolean Museum. The inception and development of these collections showcases the long history of engagement with Chinese art in Britain. The Chinese collection at the Oriental Museum of Durham University, as an institutional collection of considerable quantity and of a very high-standard of quality, however, compared with other well-known Chinese collections in Britain, it has been scarcely studied. The aim of this thesis, therefore, was to provide a supplementary history of collecting and exhibiting Chinese art at the Oriental Museum, Durham University. It firstly investigates the collecting and researching activities of two major donors, i.e., Rt. Hon. Malcolm MacDonald (1901-1981) and Sir Charles E. Hardinge (1878-1968), and then explores the development in the narrative of the Chinese exhibition at two galleries of the Oriental Museum.
The primary materials that uphold this thesis come from multiple sources, that include archived papers from the Oriental Museum and the Special Collections of the Palace Green Library at Durham University, archived government documents from the National Archives based in Kew, and the Chinese collection exhibitions organised by the former School of Oriental Studies and the Oriental Museum.
“Biography of object” developed by Arjun Appadurai, Igor Kopytoff and Janet Hoskins, together with Bourdieu’s concepts of “capital and habitus”, is applied as the theoretical framework to illuminate the social-cultural meanings of selected Chinese objects from two collections by two British collectors: the Chinese ceramics collection from the Rt. Hon. Malcolm MacDonald (1901-1981), a British politician and diplomat; and the carved jades collection from Sir Charles E. Hardinge (1878-1968), the fifth Baronet of Belle Isle, Fermanagh. Both collections were donated to the Oriental Museum in the mid-20th century, and have been carefully selected and thoughtfully exhibited in the museum at different times. Through meticulous and comprehensive case studies, the socio-economic and educational backgrounds of these two collectors are presented, as well as their initial interests and motivations for collecting Chinese objects, their cultivation of taste in Chinese objects, and how their collecting activities were influenced by socio-political and economic change and the Sino-British relationship at that time.
Bourdieu’s (1984, p. 2) notion of “perception” is applied to analyse the changing narrative of the Chinese exhibition at the Oriental Museum. By means of a careful examination of the exhibition methods and information texts (archive papers and newspapers for the first exhibition, information boards and sheets for the second exhibition), strong evidence was accumulated that the progressive narrative and interpretation of Chinese exhibitions in the Oriental Museum was greatly influenced by the concurrent developments off the research of Chinese art in Britain, and significantly impacted by the development of exhibition strategies in museum studies.
The conclusion of this study is that the case study on Malcolm MacDonald reveals that a collector’s collecting motivation can be greatly shaped by his knowledge of art and history, and collecting activity can be influenced by international politics and relations. The case study on Charles Hardinge indicates that a collector’s collecting activity can be motivated and guided by his educational background and research expertise. Finally, by tracing the changing narrative of Chinese exhibition in 1956, 1960 and 2010, this thesis explores the curators’ changing perception and interpretation of Chinese art
Towards a Hybrid Theoretical Model for Neoclassical Music: Schenkerian, Neo-Riemannian and Pitch-Class Set Theories
Get PDFThis thesis explores the necessity for theoretical hybridity as an analytical tool to overcome the challenges faced in works that embody both tonal and post-tonal elements. This hybridised model responds to the lack of a single theory that accounts for neoclassical harmonic practices: Schenkerian methods prove useful in drawing out different structural levels whilst Neo-Riemannian theory recognises non-traditional chordal relationships, and the application of set theory can fill the gaps where none of the aforementioned methods are applicable. Although some have responded to this problem by extending the individual methods’ application (e.g. Baker, 1990) or by simultaneously using more than one analytical approach (e.g. Cinnamon, 1993; Pople, 1989), none of these authors have fully integrated the methods into one unified approach. And despite the large body of research that has examined perceptions of tension in tonal (Lerdahl and Jackendoff, 1983) and atonal (Dibben 1999) harmonies, there is no work that explores the perception of post-tonal harmonies.
The project begins with an appraisal of literature surrounding the conceptual issues around hybridity within music and various existing combined approaches to analyse music. This is then followed by the methodology – Voice-leading (VL) Reduction, Rhythmic Segmentation and Calculation, Beat-Class BC Set Theory, and an experimental enquiry into the measurement of post-tonal harmonic tension – exemplified through selected sections from a small number of studies: Mathis der Mahler by Paul Hindemith, “Tanec Loutek” (No. 5) from Puppets by Bohuslav Martinu, Passacaglia by Aaron Copland, Violin Concerto in D Minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sonata No. 3 by George Enescu, Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, Piano Sonata No. 2 by Paul Hindemith, and Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments by Igor Stravinsky.
The application of the model is then carried out through two complete case studies: First Movement of Hindemith’s Second Piano Sonata, and the first movement of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. My analyses first perform the three approaches separately, before synthesising the results. To determine which pitch collections will be examined, the music is segmented into its core beat classes. My voice-leading analysis overlays three systems (treble and bass voice-leading reductions, pitch collection), describing the transformation between pitch collections. Line graphs chart the voice-leading movement between pitch collections against the treble voice-leading reduction, capturing the correlation between the melodic and harmonic factors. The rhythmic-phrase analysis is then integrated into the diagrams as a set of tables detailing its different hierarchies. The results reveal the correlation between middleground layers and phrase design, and between rhythmic features and other musical parameters. In all, the detailed examination of different musical parameters reveals that this hybridised model enables a comprehensive structural narrative for each piece, filling in existing theories’ lacunae by revealing a more detailed explanation of the harmonic content, an enriched middleground chart, and its articulation in other musical parameters. This thus reveals the model’s potential to revolutionise analytical approaches to neoclassical compositions and to understand their compositional techniques. Current findings also indicate that these graphical representations account for all types of chords as pitch collections and illustrate the relationship between each vertical sonority; that the aggregated voice-leading movement (AVL) – the total amount of voice-leading movement – can better account for the identification of post-tonal closure, and the results from the empirical study suggest that external factors need to be accounted for along with the AVL in order to relate theoretical to perceived tension.
This research will therefore not only contribute to post-tonal theory and analysis but also to music perception, to understand better how we conceive harmonic tension in music that embodies tonal and atonal elements
On Deep Machine Learning Methods for Anomaly Detection within Computer Vision
Get PDFThis thesis concerns deep learning approaches for anomaly detection in images. Anomaly detection addresses how to find any kind of pattern that differs from the regularities found in normal data and is receiving increasingly more attention in deep learning research. This is due in part to its wide set of potential applications ranging from automated CCTV surveillance to quality control across a range of industries. We introduce three original methods for anomaly detection applicable to two specific deployment scenarios. In the first, we detect anomalous activity in potentially crowded scenes through imagery captured via CCTV or other video recording devices. In the second, we segment defects in textures and demonstrate use cases representative of automated quality inspection on industrial production lines. In the context of detecting anomalous activity in scenes, we take an existing state-of-the-art method and introduce several enhancements including the use of a region proposal network for region extraction and a more information-preserving feature preprocessing strategy. This results in a simpler method that is significantly faster and suitable for real-time application. In addition, the increased efficiency facilitates building higher-dimensional models capable of improved anomaly detection performance, which we demonstrate on the pedestrian-based UCSD Ped2 dataset. In the context of texture defect detection, we introduce a method based on the idea of texture restoration that surpasses all state-of-the-art methods on the texture classes of the challenging MVTecAD dataset. In the same context, we additionally introduce a method that utilises transformer networks for future pixel and feature prediction. This novel method is able to perform competitive anomaly detection on most of the challenging MVTecAD dataset texture classes and illustrates both the promise and limitations of state-of-the-art deep learning transformers for the task of texture anomaly detection
Social learning and cooperative behaviour: Evaluating the influence of social learning in social dilemmas
Get PDFHumans are characterised by a strong proclivity towards two traits: cooperation and social learning.
Our ability to cooperate in large unrelated groups and selectively copy and improve upon cultural
traits through cumulative cultural evolution are fundamental drivers for our widespread success as a
species. However, we know comparatively little regarding the extent that cooperative behaviour
spreads through social learning. This thesis focused on three widely studied social learning strategies
(payoff bias, conformity and prestige bias) and investigated their influence on cooperative behaviour
across three studies. I used online experiments (studies 1 and 2) and an agent-based model (study 1) to
assess cooperation (and spite) in economic games and a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews
to investigate social learning and cooperation within a real-life context, environmental sustainable
behaviour (study 3).
In study 1, model comparison indicated that the changes in cooperation observed across rounds in a
cooperative game were best explained by payoff biased social learning than by prestige bias or
conformity, though a follow up agent-based model showed that the effect of social learning was small
compared to variation within participant’s inclination to cooperation. There was additionally some
evidence of higher cooperation under a snowdrift payoff structure than under a prisoner’s dilemma.
Study 2 found marked preferences towards altruism over spiteful behaviour: participants were not
influenced by the source (success weighted or frequency weighted) of social information but were
slightly more altruistic after viewing altruistic social information. Study 3 found indirect support for
payoff bias and conformity within real-life sustainable behaviour decisions, but little support for
prestige bias. Individuals reported perceiving strong environmental injunctive norms in their friends
and family (conformity) and that the biggest barrier to their sustainable behaviour was the costs of
such behaviour (payoff). Sources of social information such as familiar or knowledgeable individuals
were generally preferred to conformity or high status weighted social information. Like study 1, this
effect was small compared to the influence of individual’s personal norms towards sustainability. In
addition, experimentally manipulated vignettes framed with payoff, conformity or prestige information did not encourage individuals to choose a more sustainable over less sustainable participant reward.
Overall, the findings in this thesis indicate a clear hierarchy in social learning strategy use: payoff bias
was the most influential, then conformity and then prestige. This generally supported previous
research identifying the influence of payoff bias but contrasted with strong theoretical predictions
concerning prestige. However, the impact of social learning throughout this thesis was small
compared to other influential factors. The thesis is concluded by discussing some methodological and
theoretical limitations of the studies presented alongside ways that these general findings may be built
upon by further applied and theoretical research
A Local Phenomenon: An Analysis of Regular Architecture in the Localities of England 1660-1770.
Get PDFThis thesis explores the use and development of Regular Architecture in Warwick, Bath, Blandford Forum and Berwick upon Tweed. Using the works of Peter Borsay as a starting point, the research focuses upon whether the use of Regular Architecture throughout England can, and should, be viewed as a singular phenomenon rather than a set of localised transitions. The study works through each settlement in turn examining respective architects as well as broader aspects of town planning, architectural stimuli and emerging trends
Alessandro Tassoni and His World: Science and Knowledge in Early Modern Italy
Get PDFThis thesis examines the evolution of cosmology in the first half of the seventeenth century
through a case study of the erudite Alessandro Tassoni (1565−1635) and his Pensieri diversi
(1608−1627), an encylopedia covering scientific, literary, historical, and philosophical topics.
Highly successful during the seventeenth century, read even by Galileo Galilei, the Pensieri
diversi has received little scholarly attention. However, it offers a significant contribution to
our understanding of the evolution of early modern cosmology because it was published during
the early seventeenth century when profound changes in representations of the structure of the
cosmos were occurring. Specifically, it sheds light on scientific debates in the decades
immediately preceding Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (1632).
With his Pensieri diversi, Tassoni facilitated the dissemination of scientific disputes
across a wider public of erudite non-specialists by using an easy-to-read question and answer
format. Yet, he did not simply reproduce opinions from late medieval thought and
contemporaneous cosmological debates but instead offered his own critique.
I analyse three key themes from the Pensieri diversi (motion, cosmos and immobility of
the Earth). These topics open up more nuanced understanding of those complex issues that,
over time, led to epistemological changes in the field of the history of science. In order to point
out Tassoni’s contribution to the science of early seventeenth century, I set his scientific and
philosophical speculations in their historical and sociological context, and I also provide close
textual and theoretical analysis of Tassoni’s cosmological ideas. Thus, I address, more
generally, the relationship between scientific and scholarly culture at the dawn of the Scientific
Revolution
Materia Magica Aegyptiae: The ancient Egyptian offering table as funerary landscape, ritual utensil, and unifier of elements
Get PDFFounded on a sample of 387 thoroughly studied cult items from museum collections in Europe, the US and Egypt, as well as 90 Asyutian offering tables, most of which were studied in situ, this thesis offers a diachronic analysis of the design, use, context, and provenance of ancient Egyptian offering tables and similar materia magica. A hands-on description of artefacts, including offering tables, soul-houses, offering trays and amulets, places them within a time- and geographic specific context, and relates their function and design to written and pictorial sources, tomb architecture, means of production, as well as ritual practice and religious/mythological notions. By applying an in-depth analysis of single, specific items, an attempt is made to reconstruct their function and meaning for users within a specific socio-cultural, geographical, and temporal setting. The unifying role of water within the Egyptian landscape and culture is highlighted. A conclusion is reached indicating how offering tables over time mirrored their socio-economic and religious context. From being a simple tool used during offering rituals, the offering table eventually became multi-functional and an essential element within ancient Egyptian religious practice – an embodiment of the entire funerary/ancestral cult, becoming a magical, transformative object in its own right
Optical tweezer arrays of strontium atoms
Get PDFThis thesis presents the development of a strontium optical tweezer array apparatus for precision measurements, towards a spin squeezed tweezer array clock. We demonstrate fast single atom detection of strontium atoms in a tweezer in just , with fidelity 0.989(6). With the addition of Sisyphus cooling we measure comparable fidelity though with a longer exposure time, and can resolve zero, one, and
two atoms all with fidelity . Holographic magic wavelength tweezer arrays of strontium atoms are constructed, demonstrating loaded arrays of over 20 tweezers. High magnification imaging is used to show site-resolved imaging of atoms in tweezers spaced by as little as , despite aberrations in the design of the objective
lens collecting the fluorescence. The precision measurement and cancellation of the electric field at the location
of the atoms is demonstrated using Rydberg atoms as sensors, measuring the stray electric field to be , before cancelling it to a residual field of
. The demonstrated residual electric field produces an environment compatible with precision measurements, where the residual electric field would
not be limiting on any atomic clock, while also opening a pathway to precision measurements of Rydberg states. Our clock laser is introduced and characterised
against a GPS-referenced difference frequency comb, showing stability compatible with the use as a local oscillator for an atomic clock. We consider plans for the implementation of this clock laser system towards making clock measurements
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Open Research Online? Become a CORE Member to access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard! 👇