NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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Topple the racists 2: decolonising the space and the institutional memory of geography
No full textIn this, the second of two linked articles,
I move from efforts to address the colonial legacy of
our public spaces to consider the colonial marking
of the spaces and institutional memory of the
discipline of geography. I use the work and legacy of
Halford Mackinder as exemplary of some of these
colonial affiliations. By the standards of his time,
Mackinder was an enthusiastic imperialist and a
resolute racist. He believed that humanity
comprised superior and inferior peoples and that
the best of the former should use force to defend its
global hegemony. When Mackinder’s intellectual
legacy is invoked it is all too often in order to
promote a similarly bellicose colonialism as with the
geopolitical imagination of Robert Kaplan. In his
own practice of geographical adventuring,
Mackinder himself set Black lives far below his own
pursuit of geographical glory and those who vaunt
his reputation in the spaces of the academy, burnish
a glory that was most cruelly won
Groves of Blarney: Fake Songs, Mock-Hoaxes, and Stage Irish Identity in William Maginn and Francis Sylvester Mahony
No full textIn this chapter, I cast the Stage Irish tradition in a new light by demonstrating its interdependence with the history of the Irish literary hoax. At first blush, these representational discourses appear to be united through a certain rhetoric of the false or the fake: the hoax is a willed self-misrepresentation, while the stock figure of the Stage Irishman is, perhaps, an imposed and othering misrepresentation. However, my argument is that the connection between these literary traditions and their histories runs deeper and is more complex than such a characterisation allows. Indeed, I suggest that closer analysis of the Irish literary hoaxer and the Stage Irishman renders such clear-cut distinctions between agency and imposition untenable. These figures are, in important ways, co-emergent and track each other’s developments closely.
The Irish literary hoax interfaces with, and functions at times as a counter-discursive foil to, the dominant Stage Irish hetero-stereotype – particularly in instances in which
Irish authors will fully assume the stereotypes of Paddywhackery to deceive certain audiences and to deconstruct or ridicule certain discourses about national identity
"Connecting research, policy, and practice": Knowledge translation in the context of child and family early intervention and prevention-based research in Ireland.
No full textThis multi-method research was carried out as part of a large, six-year research programme
called ENRICH which assessed the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of two early years
service models developed to support young children and families in Ireland. The overarching
aims of the research were twofold: (1) to explore how research evidence relevant to child and
family services and policies is disseminated in the field of public health; and (2) to increase
visibility and understanding of, and engagement with, the evidence emerging from the
ENRICH programme through a series of strategies targeted at KUs within child and family
services in Ireland.
The research comprised there separate but related phases including an evidence synthesis
using realist principles; a documentary analysis; and a KT-D case study. The results from
Phase One showed that the facilitation of engagements and relationship-building are
important KT-D strategies across a range of contexts. A combination of KT-D strategies is
likely to achieve multiple positive outcomes. More specifically, research summaries and
social media are effective at increasing awareness, promoting engagement, and/or enhancing
understanding. The results from Phase Two showed that research evidence was found to play
an increasingly significant role (but is not the only factor involved) in the decision-making
processes relating to child and family well-being policy and practice in Ireland. Phase Three
of the research involved professionals working in child and family services/research in
Ireland (N=162 ) (research n=57, practice n=67, policy n=9, other (funder, intermediary
organisations) n=29) who completed a Research Dissemination Survey designed to explore a
range of perspectives, experiences and views on research dissemination. Thirty-seven one-to-
one interviews were completed to explore the barriers and facilitators to research
dissemination and to amplify the survey findings (research n=7, practice n=7, policy n=12,
other (funder, intermediary organisation) n=3, and parents n=8). Two focus groups were also
carried out with parents (n=8) and with members of the ENRICH research team (n=3). The
qualitative data were analysed using standard thematic analysis and the quantitative data were
analysed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics; and online tracking analytics.
The main factors influencing the dissemination of evidence, as identified by the participants
were: a lack of resources; an under-developed understanding of research use and
dissemination; insufficient collaboration and communication; and conflicting stakeholder
priorities. The ENRICH research programme was also found to benefit from a multi-
component KT plan, as guided by the Knowledge Translation Planning Template (Barwick,
2008, 2013, 2019). The case study was the first of its kind to provide important insights for
stakeholders in Ireland and elsewhere, about how to improve the research dissemination
process. Exploring the KT planning process resulted in more efficient and targeted
dissemination of research findings, thereby delivering a better return on research investment
and producing positive outcomes from research outputs
Characterisation of Mucosal Associated Invariant T cells function and metabolism in health and obesity
No full textObesity has developed into a worldwide pandemic, affecting individuals
regardless of their socio-economic status, gender or age. It is associated with
development of multiple co-morbidities including type 2 diabetes mellitus, which
have been shown to be underpinned by inflammation. Indeed, excessive
adiposity has been shown to be associated with a large dysregulation of immune
cell function, including altered phenotype of mucosal-associated invariant T
(MAIT) cells. MAIT cells from people with obesity were shown to have enhanced
IL-17 production, accompanied by impaired IFNγ expression. As of now, very little
is known about the control of MAIT cell function, therefore more research is
required to understand their biology in order to identify the altered process, which
leads to their dysfunction in obesity. Immunometabolism of MAIT cells became
the focus of this thesis as previous data indicated it as a key biological process
that controls immune cell function. Here we confirmed previously published data,
showing that MAIT cells are potent producers of IFNγ and IL-17 cytokines and
that MAIT cells can proliferate and expand upon stimulation. In addition, we
reported that MAIT cells enhance glycolysis upon activation, which in turn is
controlled by the influx of amino acids into the cells via LAT1 amino acid
transporters. Glycolytic metabolism was required for successful IFNγ production
as well as proliferation and expansion of MAIT cells. People with obesity have
impaired IFNγ expression and MAIT cell expansion that was accompanied by
impaired glycolytic metabolism. Collectively our data indicates that MAIT cells
effector functions are in part controlled by the intrinsic metabolic pathways
including the glycolytic metabolism. Defect in glycolysis or glycolysis-associated
pathways as observed in obesity, leads to their dysfunction and altered immune
cells responses
Learning to live with ghosts: spectres of “the Troubles” in contemporary Northern Irish cinema
No full textThat Northern Ireland remains profoundly troubled by its own violent past becomes readily apparent in many of the movies that have appeared since the Good Friday Agreement and not least those released since its tenth anniversary. In this article, I provide a broad sketch of recent Northern Irish cinema before moving to a close reading of two critically and commercially acclaimed features released in that period: Hunger (2008) and ’71 (2014). The discussion is framed by Mark Fisher’s reading of the Derridean notion of “hauntology” and focuses specifically on the idea that the spectre is a figure that is both retrospective and prospective. In their evocation of the ghosts of the Troubles, these movies offer an insight into a society that remains haunted both by the “no longer” of those who died during the conflict and also, perhaps, by the “not yet” of that which suffered a similar fate during the peace process that followed
Dynamics of the Gross-Pitaevskii Equation and Shortcuts to Adiabaticity
No full textProcedures which vary the parameters of a model in an adiabatic way
have applications in many areas of quantum technology. However, explicitly employing adiabatic evolution often leads to decoherence issues due to
systems interacting with their environment. For this reason, there has been
much interest in developing shortcuts to adiabaticity in which the target final
state is reached in a finite duration change of parameter. In this thesis, we
design and study a shortcut to adiabaticity in an interacting Bose-Einstein
condensate. In particular, we study the response induced by ramps in the
interaction strength of such a system. We determine the power law decay
exponents of the induced excitations as well as the characteristic frequency
with which these excitations oscillate with respect to the duration and mean
values of the ramps
Enabling Participation Income for an Eco-Social State
No full textWe revise Atkinson’s concept of a ‘participation income’ (PI), repositioning it as a form of green conditional basic income that is anchored in a capabilities-oriented eco-social policy framework. This framework combines the capability approach with an ‘ethics of care’ to re-shape the focus of social policy on individuals’ capability to ‘take care of the world’, thus shifting the emphasis from economic production to social reproduction and environmental reparation. In developing this proposal, we seek to address key questions about the feasibility of implementing PI schemes: including their administrative complexity and the criticism that a PI constitutes either an arbitrary and confusing, or invasive and stigmatising, form of basic income. To address these concerns, we argue for an enabling approach to incentivising participation whereby participation pathways are co-created with citizens on the basis of opportunities they recognise as meaningful rather than enforced through strict monitoring and sanctions
“The Road We Travel”: Developing a co-produced narrative for a photovoice project
No full text4.1 Introduction:
PhotoVoice is a participatory methodology in which marginalized communities represent their lived experiences through photography. While the methodology aims to foster partnerships throughout all phases, the literature suggests that in the field of mental health, some phases are often completed without participant involvement.
4.2 Aims:
This paper elaborates on how the PhotoVoice method was used to engage service users and family members around their experience of involvement in a co-produced and co-facilitated mental health education intervention, in order to enhance public and policymakers knowledge of the project.
4.3 Methods:
Ten participants were recruited and trained in the PhotoVoice method. Participants documented, through photography, their experiences of involvement in the education intervention. Following this, participants came together to co-produce and disseminate the photography exhibition to the public.
4.4 Results:
PhotoVoice proved to be a flexible and creative method by which to include marginalized groups. By adhering to the collaborative principles of the methodology, service users and family members can retain decision-making power from the project's inception to its conclusion.
4.5 Implications for Practice:
PhotoVoice is ideal for use within mental health nursing as it coincides with the recovery principle of promoting collaborative partnership between service users, family members and clinicians
A control-orientated analytical model for a cyclorotor wave energy device with N hydrofoils
No full textWe present a new analytical model from which a model-based controller can be derived for a cyclorotor-based wave energy converter (WEC). Few cyclorotor-based WEC concepts and models have previously been studied and only one control strategy for the entire wave cancellation has been tested. Our model is derived for a horizontal cyclorotor with N hydrofoils and is suitable for the application of various control algorithms and the calculation of various performance metrics. The mechanical model is based on Newton’s second law for rotation. The cyclorotor operates in two dimensional potential flow. This paper modeled the velocity field in detail around the turbine with N hydrofoils by explaining each velocity term and estimated the generated torque using two methods (point source method and thin-chord method). The developed model is very convenient for control design, using the power take off torque and hydrofoil pitch angles as control inputs. The authors of this work have derived new, exact analytic functions for the free surface perturbation and induced fluid velocity field caused by hydrofoil rotation. These new formulae significantly decrease the model calculation time and increase the accuracy of the results. The new equations also provide useful insight into the nature of the associated variables, and are successfully validated against the results of physical experiments and numerical calculations previously published by two independent research groups. Representation of hydrofoils as both a point source and a thin chord were analysed, with both models cross-validated for the case of free rotation in monochromatic waves