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Reimagining the Socialist Blocks of New Belgrade: Exploring Rehabilitation and Identity through Architectural Inquiry
No full textThe fall of socialism across Eurasia in the 1990s led to housing decentralization, severe welfare cuts, and the rise of private real estate markets. Serbia has since struggled to maintain its building stock, leading to declining conditions, particularly in large housing districts like New Belgrade. This thesis draws from archival sources, field observations, and resident interviews to examine New Belgrade’s layered histories and contemporary challenges. It proposes design strategies that materially improve building conditions while fostering residents’ agency in shaping their spaces. The research explores occupants’ lived experiences and expressions of identity in private and public spaces, balancing both physical repair and socio-cultural investment. The work ranges in scale, done to achieve a flexible design specific to individual priorities while staying aware of community needs
Effects of Pesticide Exposure and Experimental Temperatures on Amphibian Immunity and Stress
Full text linkAmphibians are experiencing global declines, partly due to pesticides, climate change and emerging diseases. These factors do not always act independently but can interact to have exacerbated effects. Independently, pesticides and warming can cause stress and reduce immunity in amphibians, increasing disease susceptibility. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding how these factors combine to affect amphibian stress/immunity. Understanding how these factors affect amphibians, both independently and in combination, is critical for informing regulatory decisions regarding pesticide usage. This thesis investigated the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on wood frogs (Rana sylvatica [or Lithobates sylvaticus]) and northern leopard frogs (Rana [Lithobates] pipiens). Two immunologically vulnerable stages of amphibian development, tadpoles and metamorphs, were examined. Corticosterone concentrations were assessed after six days of exposure. Corticosterone was reassessed, and blood smears were collected, three weeks post-metamorphosis (R. sylvatica) or immediately following metamorphosis (R. pipiens). Chronic exposure to neonicotinoids affected differential leukocyte counts, indicating stress and possibly increased disease susceptibility. In a follow-up laboratory study, R. pipiens tadpoles were exposed to high concentrations of thiamethoxam or clothianidin in combination with trematode parasites. While neonicotinoids did not affect parasite susceptibility, they affected differential leukocyte counts, possibly due to suppression of the inflammatory response. These results highlight the importance of incorporating stress/immune metrics in ecotoxicology testing, especially given the role of diseases in amphibian declines. I then examined the effects of atrazine independently and in combination with warming temperatures on R. pipiens in a mesocosm experiment. While atrazine alone did not affect tadpoles or metamorphs, atrazine combined with warming to have exacerbated effects on metamorph stress. Furthermore, warming had overarching effects, reducing tadpole locomotor activity, and reduced survival, immunity and increased stress in metamorphs. These findings underscore the importance of incorporating multiple temperatures into toxicity testing and lend insights as to how amphibian susceptibility to parasites/pathogens may be affected by climate change. This thesis provides important insights as to the effects of commonly used pesticides and warming temperatures on amphibian stress/immunity. My findings underscore the need to incorporate more realistic exposure scenarios in ecotoxicity testing and will help inform pesticide regulatory decisions in Canada
The Greco-Roman Historians & Their Geographic Mentalité : Word Embeddings to Investigate the Imagination of Space in Representations of the Early Roman Republic
Full text linkThis thesis explores the concept of "geographic mentalité," how ancient historians conceptualized and understood geographical space, through the application of computational text analysis methods. Using word embedding models, I analyze how Latin and Greek authors from the late Republic through the Empire described cities and places, particularly focusing on central Italian sites currently unknown to archaeology. The model reveals that several undiscovered sites, such as Apina, Sabata, and Scaptia, were discussed using patterns of language closely aligned with mythological references rather than known locations, implying that ancient authors conceptualized these places through cultural and narrative frameworks instead of geographic relationships
Mapping Ecologies of Presence: Connecting Site to Place
No full textThis thesis explores how a place in the east end of Montréal/Tiohtià:ke offers architects a space for pause—not for design solutions per se, but for critical reflection on our site methodologies. Addressing places that exist as vague and in-between, reveals the longstanding colonial, extractivist, and ableist relations to land underlying contemporary notions of third landscapes. Immersion in the site, through events, souped photography, material traces, and interviews, offers a more nuanced understanding of competing and co-existing site processes, providing traces of how bodies and environments come together and change over time. For designers, it is crucial to examine how our understanding and representations of sites reflect the complex social, political, and material realities of places, with the in-between offering a valuable space for pause
Pentecostal Christianity and Yoruba Oracular Practices: Religious Differences and Ambivalences in the Utilization of the Media in Lagos/Environs
Full text linkAbstract Using a comparative framework, this research analyses religious media forms and their contents, as they pertain to religious conversion, differences, and ambivalent practices of adherents of Yoruba oracular religion and Pentecostal Christianity in Lagos, Nigeria. Taking cognizance of the physical space as a primordial dimension of religion, this research examines how Yoruba oracular religious and Pentecostal Christian practices have engaged the Lagos urban space with its attendant multiple and plural religious outlook through the contents of these media forms (Christian tracts, pamphlets, microphones, loudspeakers, billboards, signboards, painted walls, drawings, masks, drums, and gong). Through an ethnographic engagement at the time of the outbreak of Covid-19 and, drawing from the information that was obtained from participant observations, document and archival materials, unstructured oral interviews conducted in physical and virtual formats and visual methods, this research demonstrates and contextualizes the performative ways through which Yoruba oracular practitioners and Pentecostal Christians make their religions visible in the city. This visibility is not only through the media contents adherents produce and consume, but also through their performances in evangelical street preaching and oracular ritual processions. Building on and contributing to previous scholarship on Pentecostalism, especially by the focus of this thesis on evangelical street preaching and Yoruba oracular elements (Ifa, Esu, Egungun, Yoruba-Gelede, Aje, e.t.c), this study explores the differences and similarities in the utilization of these media forms by adherents, in order to gain a better understanding of the core dynamics of a multi-faith setting where religious practitioners interact, borrow from, and align with each other in the production of religious subjects despite the erection of boundaries and the conventional rules that define their religions