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Vulnerability to exploitation: a Bourdieusian investigation among people experiencing homelessness
Get PDFThis study asks what shapes vulnerability to exploitation. It builds on evidence that
some populations are more vulnerable to exploitation than others, as seen in various
policy documents and studies (Lewis et al., 2015; Brotherton, 2019; Heys, 2023).
People experiencing homelessness are one such population, yet there is little rigorous
evidence regarding the nature of this vulnerability. This thesis produces new insights
about the homeless-exploitation nexus, reducing that evidence gap while theorising
vulnerability to exploitation more broadly.
It begins by reviewing how vulnerability to exploitation is understood in relevant
literature, along with key concepts pertaining to homelessness, work and exploitation,
and to victimhood and agency. It shows how insights from those literatures led to the
selection of Bourdieu’s “theory of practice” (1977) to structure the study. Twenty-three
interviews were conducted with people experiencing homelessness (n=16, 2
interviewed twice) and support workers/key informants (n=5). Migrants with no
recourse to public funds were excluded due to the politicisation of exploitation as a
‘migrant issue’ (Kenway, 2021) and the evidence gap for British victims (Heys et al.,
2022), resulting in a sample of mostly British people. Two methods of analysis –
thematic analysis across the sample and thematic narrative analysis of individual
interviews – were used to identify the ways in which Bourdieu’s habitus and capitals
shaped people’s vulnerability to, and actual experiences of, exploitation. Interviewees
experiencing homelessness had worked in various sectors including begging, busking,
car maintenance, cleaning, construction, drug running and sex. 38-50% had
experiences commensurate with victimisation under modern slavery and trafficking
legislation. Given that the research design did not explicitly seek people already
identified as victims and it predominantly interviewed British people, this is a higher
prevalence than was expected – statistics on this subject find most victimisation
among migrant homeless people rather than nationals (The Passage, 2025). This
meta-data suggests that there may be more exploitation occurring among British
homeless people than is currently recognised.
The results and discussion theorise interviewees’ vulnerability to exploitation
according to the Bourdieusian framework. Specifically, the study shows how habitus
type appears to shape vulnerability, and how capitals intersect to produce further
differentiations. Three habitus types were identified in the sample: 1) Abdicated self in
a fluctuating world; 2) Independent agent in a dog-eat-dog world, and; 3) Morals-based
agent in a just world. Type 1 was found to be most vulnerable to exploitation and,
indeed, to have the most actual experiences of it too. This offers a potential guideline
for practitioners in homelessness services to recognise higher risk clients. Bourdieu’s
three capitals (social, economic and cultural) were found to operate in a context of
multiple exclusion (Fitzpatrick, Johnsen and White, 2011), presenting in conflicted
ways, variously – and sometimes simultaneously – raising or lowering vulnerability to
exploitation. For example, on social capital, people were less vulnerable to exploitation
due to sharing and loaning practices within social circles, but social connections were
also a channel for coercion, deception and control, leading to exploitation. Benefits
(economic capital) lowered vulnerability, but this was undermined by costly drug
dependencies. Relatedly, and outwith Bourdieu’s classic triad of capitals, this study
also finds that the body was an important factor shaping interviewees’ vulnerability to
exploitation, particularly where substance dependencies were present. It offers a way
to incorporate this corporeal component into Bourdieu’s conventional theoretical
framework.
Overall, then, this study offers a theorisation of vulnerability to exploitation as a
product of dispositional, structural and bodily factors, while also contributing new
evidence to understanding the intersection of homelessness and exploitation. It finds
that there are important differences in vulnerability levels among the homeless
population which can be identified and understood through a Bourdieusian analysis.
Furthermore, by highlighting factors such as access to benefits and substance
dependencies, it shifts the focus of exploitation-related policy from a criminal and
policing domain towards social and drug policies
Russia in Africa: Embedded Markets in Violence
Get PDFThis paper analyses the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa through the lens of Alex de Waal’s political marketplace framework, drawing connections between Russia’s domestic market for violence and those of Wagner’s African client states. It argues that the privatization of security in 1990s Russia created the conditions for the emergence of Wagner, similar to the political upheaval experienced by many African countries in the late 20th century. By examining the political and security environments of the African countries to which Wagner has deployed, this paper demonstrates how Wagner embeds itself in local and regional political marketplaces, adapting its role based on local contexts.
The analysis compares Wagner’s successful interventions with its failures, identifying the conditions that have shaped divergent outcomes. The paper explores Wagner’s involvement in resource capture and commercial ventures, and its role in advancing Russian foreign policy. It highlights how Wagner’s criminal behaviour reflects its ambiguous legal status—existing at the behest of both the Russian state and the autocratic rulers who elicit its services. Drawing from academic and investigative sources, this study provides insight into how Wagner occupies a niche in Africa’s markets in violence
Computational analysis of interactions between AMPA receptor and con-ikot-ikot conotoxin
No full textAMPA receptors (AMPARs) are a subtype of ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) found
in excitatory synapses in the central nervous system, where they mediate the majority of excitatory
synaptic transmission. AMPARs are encoded by 4 different genes, GRIA1–4, whose
protein products assemble into functional tetramers. In vivo, AMPARs can be present as homomers,
diheteromers and triheteromers. Each of these AMPAR subtypes has specific kinetics,
expression profile and hence a distinct physiological role. Synapses involved in information
storage change their AMPAR subunit composition as well as the total number of AMPARs.
This phenomenon is known as synaptic plasticity and is widely recognised as the molecular
mechanism underlying the processes of memory formation and learning. However, to date,
there are no known compounds that specifically recognise one AMPAR subunit composition
over the other.
Con-ikot-ikot (CII), a naturally occurring conotoxin found in the venom of a marine cone
snail Conus striatus, specifically binds to AMPARs with EC50 of ∼5 nM and exhibits unique
potential to serve as a scaffold to generate novel, heteromer-specific AMPAR binders and modulators.
Its unique binding site, localised within the AMPAR extracellular domains, where it
makes contacts with all 4 subunits, might provide a starting point for design of heteromerspecific
binders. At the same time, its small size, minimal perturbation of AMPAR size (about
1 nm increase in receptor height), 1:1 binding stoichiometry and the fact that it leaves AMPAR
extracellular domains open for physiological interactions make it an attractive, novel labelling
tool for fluorescent studies of AMPARs, including super-resolution imaging (SRI).
SRI was essential in demonstrating activity-dependent changes in AMPAR numbers within
synapses. In these experiments, AMPARs are labelled with a fluorescent tag either by genetic
fusions (e.g. GFP or Halo tag) or by fluorescently labelled antibodies. While overexpression of
genetic fusions can lead to non-physiological conditions, antibodies are large (10–15 nm in size)
and almost all bind to the surface of AMPAR extracellular domains. This could significantly
hinder free movement of AMPARs into and out of the already crowded and narrow synaptic
space, where AMPAR extracellular domains interact with other synaptic and presynaptic proteins.
CII toxin has the potential to overcome all these limitations.
Here, I explore the interactions between CII toxin and AMPARs using computational approaches
followed by experimental validation of the results. I have performed a series of molecular
dynamics simulations and developed NAppEd – a novel approach to analyse the resulting
trajectories based on residue interaction network analysis. Using NAppEd in combination with
computational alanine scanning, I have confirmed residues known to be important for the interaction
between the toxin and AMPAR and identified new interactions. Importantly, this
includes a network of novel interactions between the toxin and the AMPAR amino-terminal
domains (ATDs). This interaction network is of particular importance as ATD sequence varies
between AMPAR subunit types. My analysis identifies CII as the only known non-antibody
AMPAR binder that interacts with AMPAR ATDs. The results of computational analyses were
validated by mutating CII tyrosine 54 into alanine (Y54A), identified as one of the strongest
interactors with AMPARs by NAppEd. The single-point mutant resulted in a right-shift in CII
dose response curve in electrophysiology experiments, validating the computational findings.
These results, along with additional computational analyses showing minimal effects of
fluorescent labelling on CII binding to AMPARs, confirm the unique potential of the CII as a
novel fluorescent probe and as a scaffold for design of AMPAR-heteromer specific binders for
investigation of AMPARs
Statistical modelling of biological periodic processes
Get PDFPeriodic processes are ubiquitous in biology and medicine. Oscillatory behaviour can be
seen from the sub cellular level via gene expression to the organism level, such as via the
sleep/wake cycle in humans. Modelling these processes is important, for example, in the
context of disease, understanding cycles within the body can be important in developing
effective intervention strategies.
The main part of this research addresses the problem of modelling a periodic interaction
between two biological variables. We model the interaction of the two variables by a centred
two-dimensional Gaussian process with Markovian structure, as suggested by Bart et al.
(2005). We develop appropriate confidence regions for estimating periodicity and the strength
of the interaction and we adapt the model to deal with data with missing observations. We also
discuss how identifiability of the periodicity is related to the experimental design. We apply this
model to identify pairs of genes in yeast that interact periodically.
The approach is then applied to model periodicity in the disease progression of acute pancreatitis
(AP), a frequent and potentially fatal systemic inflammatory disease, where the disease
progression is described by two opposing factors, comprising of putative ‘protective’ and
‘damaging’ variables. In particular, we show that the first two principal components in the AP
data can be interpreted as the ‘protective’ and ‘damaging’ variables and have a clear clinical
interpretation, estimate periodicity of the disease progression for observed data with missing
observations and rationalise the timing and opportunities for optimal medical intervention. We
then reformulate this model into a latent growth model, which can more easily handle non-regularly
spaced observations and missing data, enabling the use of a wider range of data
sets.
The remaining part of the research involves developing inference for exponentially decaying
periodic functions, in particular when there is asymmetry in the decay rates of the maxima
and minima of the periodic function. The inference is developed on simulated data and then
applied to circadian gene expression data obtained from murine brain slices
"A mongrel liberty, a mere mock freedom": free and enslaved black Delawareans, 1790-1830
Get PDFBetween 1790 and 1830 the free Black population of the state of Delaware experienced massive growth, but the system of slavery remained intact. Unlike Delaware’s Northern neighbors, Black and white anti-slavery advocates failed to garner enough support for the passage of gradual emancipation legislation in the late-Eighteenth century. However, unlike other states in the Upper Chesapeake region, Delaware’s legislators passed relaxed manumission laws as well as legislation that criminalized the sale of enslaved Blacks beyond state lines. The passage of these laws in the late-Eighteenth century spurred a period of extensive manumissions and the exponential growth of Delaware’s free Black population. By 1830 Delaware’s free Black population made up roughly one quarter (22%) of the state’s total population, a larger percentage per capita than other slave states by that period. Pro-slavery legislators responded to this growth by creating and enforcing strict Black Codes that struck at the few rights free Blacks maintained. This series of new anti-Black legislation not only hindered the mobility and residency rights of free Black Americans but also punished any criminal convictions with up to seven years of re-enslavement and the potential removal from Delaware into the growing cotton South.
This dissertation argues that white, pro-slavery legislators maintained what some historians have referred to as the moribund system of slavery in Delaware to justify the passage of harsh anti-Black legislation and Black codes. With the passage of this legislation, Delaware, a state both geographically and ideologically split between emerging ideas of a ‘free North’ and a ‘slave South’, functioned as a key proving ground for segregation. The experiences of free and enslaved Black Delawareans are often ignored in histories of the internal slave trade, Jim Crow laws, and the formation of the carceral state. Only in the last few decades have historians given attention to how Black Delawareans grappled with issues surrounding residency rights, mobility, and freedom suits. This current research not only builds on the recent scholarship but addresses how anti-Black legislation in Delaware served as a foundational inspiration for later Jim Crow laws. Furthermore, this research demonstrates that the anti-Black legislation passed in early-Nineteenth century Delaware further marginalized free Black Americans, making them targets for kidnappers and extensive periods of indenture and removal into Southern states
A collaborative human-AI approach to mitigate phishing attacks
Get PDFPhishing involves sending fraudulent emails with links or attachments that can contain malware or trick users into revealing sensitive information or transferring money. Given the potential risks posed by phishing to both individuals and organizations, it is important to have the most advanced detection and mitigation algorithms. In this thesis, I examine the potential of combining human expertise with artificial intelligence to create hybrid defences against phishing, with a special focus on supporting two user groups (IT staff and end-users) in their email security practices.
In order to gain a thorough understanding of the research area and to review existing work, I begin with a structured literature review and systemization of knowledge of prior research on grouping spam and phishing emails. The study revealed that traditional text representation techniques are primarily used, with little exploration of advanced methods such as language models, and that researchers often overlook contextual features. Therefore, I conducted a study to investigate the possibility of using unsupervised clustering techniques to group emails by utilizing a combination of contextual and technical features extracted from the emails. I found that features based on context perform well and should be more widely used in this topic.
Based on the findings from these studies, I learned that phishing emails present challenges to machine learning (ML) algorithms. First, emails are unstructured documents with significant variations in length and structure, making it difficult to capture context accurately. Second, attackers often use obfuscation techniques, such as white-on-white text, to deceive both computers and humans. Third, very few studies have utilized descriptive, contextual features in emails. To address these gaps, I conducted a qualitative study to analyse the structure of phishing emails and understand the factors influencing human decision-making when assessing suspicious emails. I identified a novel set of descriptive features and created the Phishing Codebook, a framework for systematically extracting key information from such emails. Additionally, I developed a dataset of 503 annotated emails with high inter-rater reliability.
Subsequently, I developed PhishCoder to automate the coding process and extract contextual information from phishing emails. I defined seven information extraction tasks based on the codebook, four of which were text classification tasks with predefined labels, and three as text extraction tasks. These tasks were performed using fine-tuned language models, employing text classification for the former and question answering for the latter. As the results showed an impressive performance, I performed experiments to study the utility of PhishCoder outputs for two tasks: identifying phishing email campaigns and providing user guidance. I used the Louvain community detection algorithm and text similarity measure on the PhishCoder outputs to detect email campaigns. Additionally, I conducted a user survey on Prolific to evaluate the impact of real-time user guidance on user phishing detection accuracy and confidence. The results demonstrated that personalized real-time guidance significantly enhanced user performance.
The findings of this thesis highlight the novel ways in which artificial intelligence can be leveraged to assist users and cultivate a safer and more effective organizational environment. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates how qualitative methodologies can offer fresh perspectives on research problems and contribute to the development of better tools to support users. Given that much of the existing phishing research focuses on preventive measures before an attack (such as phishing detection), rather than post-attack mitigation measures, this thesis introduces new directions for future researchers and security professionals
Beyond the virtuous threshold: emulating civic virtues and vices in seigneurial residences in Early Renaissance Umbria
No full textIn this thesis on the communal visual language of the virtues and vices, an in-depth consideration of the portal of the Palazzo dei Priori of Perugia (1326) introduces an examination of the ways in which civic values were conveyed and how these values were animated and interrelated through visual allegories. Aligned with the most celebrated painted schemes which include the virtues and vices, of Giotto’s Arena Chapel monochromes in Padua (1303-5) and Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegories of the Good and Bad Governments in Siena (1338-39), the Perugia Portal is reinstated as an overlooked archetype of civic art.
From this starting point, the thesis explores how the communal visual language of the virtues and vices was extended to domestic palazzi in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Umbria. The case studies examined—the painted rooms in the Palazzo Trinci in Foligno (Gentile da Fabriano, 1411-12), the loggia in the Palazzo Datini of Prato (Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, 1391), the ceiling frescoes of the hall in the Palazzo Stocchi of Perugia (Cola Petruccioli, 1385-1401), and the Room of the Virtues and Vices in the Palazzo Beni of Gubbio (Ottaviano Nelli, c. 1424)—demonstrate how early Renaissance domestic cycles proceeded from the benchmark of the sculptures on the Perugia Portal. The dynamic of the portal’s allegorical scheme was deployed to lend ostensively private spaces public significance. The origin of their public function is shown by the reconstruction of the political offices of their owners, who were merchants and notaries as well as men of government. I examine how and why early fifteenth-century patrons appropriated the visual language of the virtues and vices to establish a moral framing for their public roles. Exploring how such fluid dialectic schemes support dynamic interaction prompts more fluid interpretation by viewers, first in a communal context and afterwards in a seigneurial one.
Restoration, conservation, replacement, and even detachment, of artworks from their original contexts are examined to emphasise two main points: firstly, the disruption to the dynamic engagement with the audience which depends on the original context of the artwork that therefore undermines their significance; secondly, analysis of the nineteenth-century history of the Perugia Portal and the Palazzo Stocchi paintings—of their ‘afterlife’, as I have called it—forces us to consider the artwork mediated through the political interferences of each age separating us from its initial creation. This has made it even more difficult to understand the original importance of the case studies I reconstruct in this thesis
Our Outdoors app A5 leaflet
No full textTwo sides of an A5 leaflet about the Our Outdoors citizen app, promoting the app, explaining how to use it and what the data collected can be used for.Two sides of an A5 leaflet about the Our Outdoors citizen app, promoting the app, explaining how to use it and what the data collected can be used for
Engineering novel RNA polymerases for RNA vaccine production
No full textThe safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines was thoroughly proven through their use in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic and RNA-based vaccines will likely be employed against novel diseases in the future. The synthesis of RNA vaccines hinges on in vitro transcription (IVT) with T7 RNA Polymerase (RNAP) from E. coli phage T7, which is a member of the Autographiviridae family.
Despite its many desirable properties T7 RNAP has drawbacks that have led to calls for alternative RNAPs to be evaluated. However, relatively few other RNAPs from the Autographiviridae family of phage have been characterised and many that have share significant sequence identity with industry standard T7.
In this work, five novel RNA polymerases with < 30% sequence identity to T7 RNAP were selected from the Autographiviridae family for characterisation of their IVT activities. Promoter sequences were successfully defined for three of the five RNAPs, in part using a novel promoter identification method established in this work.
Of these three RNAPs a lead candidate was established with high IVT efficiency and a novel preference for initiating nucleotides that is relevant to RNA vaccine production. The properties of this novel RNAP and its DNA promoter were thoroughly explored using fluorescent RNA aptamers to track IVT activity in real time.
The lead candidate was then engineered with a directed evolution process developed in this work, resulting in a mutant for which 2.5-fold increases in IVT activity were measured over the wild-type. This increase in IVT yield extended to production of the BNT-162b2 mRNA vaccine sequence against COVID-19.
Both the wild-type and mutant versions of the lead candidate RNAP were shown to be capable of incorporating N1-methyl-pseudouridine, a poly(A) tail and a cap into RNA; all additional requirements for RNA vaccine production. The mutant RNAP demonstrated higher efficiency of co-transcriptional RNA capping than industry standard T7, theorised to be a result of its novel initiating nucleotide preference
Exploring gender and diversity: a comparative analysis of bestselling children’s picture books in China and the UK (2010–2020)
Get PDFAs picture books are a key resource for preschool children to gain ideas of the world outside their home environment, publishers must show young readers a diversity of human experiences, including gender and intersectional identities. The recurring issues of male overrepresentation and the overall misrepresentation of gender are prominent in children’s picture books. However, these topics have not been examined in Chinese scholarship due to the recent appearance of modern picture books in China. As one of the world’s most prominent picture book industries, the UK has exported a vast number of titles to the Chinese market in the past two decades, which has therefore significantly influenced the relatively new Chinese picture book market. In addition, the publishing freedom and market-driven gatekeeping in the UK are distinct from the Chinese publishing censorship system, which impacts gender representation in picture books in the two countries.
From a comparative perspective, this thesis aims to explore and compare how gender and gender diversity are represented in bestselling children’s picture books in China and the UK. Gender is examined through three lenses: gender schema theory, feminist literary criticism, and intersectionality. Following the communication circuit of the picture book industry, analysis is divided into three dimensions: bestselling titles from online distributors and booksellers, the contents of bestselling titles from 2010 to 2020 as messages, and interviews with professional publishers, authors, and illustrators in the industry. With this categorisation, I apply three independent and connective studies to examine the topic. The first section uses text analysis to mine author gender and diverse themes in the publisher metadata of 4,000 books. This second section investigates gender and intersectionality represented by 200 bestselling picture books in China and the UK from 2010 to 2020 via a combination of comparative content analysis (qualitative and quantitative), close reading, and text mining methods. In the third section, I conduct semi-structured interviews with editors, authors, and illustrators of children’s picture books about how they view and portray gender in their publishing practice.
Results in this thesis show that gender and intersectionality are interwoven in bestselling children’s picture books in both China and the UK, although with disparities in book narratives (both textual and visual), market consumption, and book publishing. Specifically: 1) There are opposite preferences for the gender of authors and illustrators between the bestselling Chinese and UK markets. For example, male authors dominate in the authorship of Chinese bestsellers, while female authors dominate the UK; 2) Overrepresentation of male characters, as well as the subordinate positions of female characters in language, illustrations, and storytelling, exist in both UK and Chinese bestselling titles. However, stereotypical gender roles and traditional family structures are more embedded in the Chinese bestsellers; 3) UK titles show a more diverse representation of intersectional identities (e.g., race, gender, disability), while remaining white-centred and participating in tokenism. While in Chinese bestselling titles, expectations and pressure co-exist for (particularly boy) characters from single-child families to achieve, which echoes the traditional Confucianism and patriarchal ideologies in this society; 4) Publishing censorship is the main reason for unequal gender representation and the omission of gender minorities in the Chinese picture book market. Living under a shame culture and with the fear of ‘otherness’, Chinese professionals often hold conventional attitudes in portraying gender. In the UK, however, the market needs drive book production and consumption, which would lead to homogeneous gender narratives and limit diversity, and the need for better presentation of gender in both texts and illustrations is widely acknowledged by the interviewed professionals.
In conclusion, gender equality, diverse representations of gender, and intersectionality remain essential topics in the Chinese and UK bestselling picture book markets. This research reveals gender inequality and gender disparities in textual and illustrated narratives, as well as how they vary between Chinese and UK bestselling children’s picture books, and it further explains the causes (e.g., publishing system, social context) from professionals’ insights. It highlights the need to improve gender representation in the picture book market by engaging publishers, authors, illustrators, distributors, and all roles involved in the book production circuit
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