Value co-creation through digital technology in developing economies : reflections from Indonesian agri-food E-commerce chain

PhD ThesisValue co-creation (VCC) has supported the expansion of research in marketing by embracing service innovation within the digital-driven era. However, a small number of studies provide a comprehensive examination of VCC through digital technology from the perspective of multiple local market actors at developing economies at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) market. This research explores the role of digital commerce in VCC with the empirical focus on the Indonesian horticulture industry, moving towards e-commerce for marketing innovation. This research aims to: (1) explore VCC manifestation within the local BOP market, (2) discover the role of e-commerce in the exchange process of co-creation at the local BOP market, (3) explore the dimensions of VCC of engagement amongst the local e-commerce supply chain actors of BOP, and (4) investigate the causes and effects of customer engagement to VCC of using e-commerce in this marketplace. This research adopted a mixed-method approach of qualitative semi-structured interviews and a quantitative survey. VCC identified as occurring in a newly emerging e-commerce marketing channel via the interaction amongst channel members. Inclusive, collaborative, and empowerment ideology contribute to market scripting scenario by local entrepreneurs who identify as ‘socio-entrepreneurs’. This research argues that the exchange logic underpinning this new transformative business approach of digitally enabled VCC in local BOP markets is akin to a ‘social justice logic’. For consumers, digital technologies create online ‘consumption communities’ where information is exchanged concerning product provenance and food preparation opportunities supporting online purchases and innovation in value chain ‘pull’ strategies. The research indicates that customer VCC behaviour was influenced by the significant effects of customer-related VCC resources of social expertise and openness, customer motivation, and its effects on value-in-use, willingness-to-engage, positive emotions, and behavioural intentions. Finally, the results highlight the moderating role of customer age and the length of engagement in VCC processes on these relationships.Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP

Data-driven modelling and monitoring of industrial processes with applications in nuclear waste vitrification

PhD ThesisProcess models are critical for process monitoring, control, and optimisation. With the increasing amount of process data and advancements in computational hardware, data-driven models are a good alternative to mechanistic models, which often have inaccuracies or are too costly to develop. One problem with data-driven models is the difficulty in ensuring that the models perform well on new data and produce accurate predictions in complex situations, which are frequently encountered in the process industry. Within this context, part of this thesis explores developing better data-driven models through using a latent variable technique, known as slow feature analysis, as a pre-processing step to regression. Slow feature analysis extracts slow varying features that contain underlying trends in the data, which can improve model performance through providing more meaningful information to regression, reducing noise, and reducing dimensionality. Firstly, the effectiveness of combining linear slow feature analysis with a neural network is demonstrated on two industrial case studies of soft sensor development and is compared with conventional techniques, such as neural networks and integration of principal component analysis with a neural network. It is shown that integration of slow feature analysis with neural networks can significantly improve model performance. However, linear slow feature analysis can fail to extract the driving forces behind data in nonlinear situations such as batch processes. Therefore, using kernel slow feature analysis with a neural network is proposed to further enhance process model performance. A numerical example was used to demonstrate the effective extraction of driving forces in a nonlinear case where linear slow feature analysis cannot. Model generalisation performance was improved using the proposed method on both this numerical example, and an industrial penicillin process case study. Dealing with radioactive nuclear waste is an important obstacle in nuclear energy. Sellafield Ltd have a nuclear waste vitrification plant which converts high-level nuclear waste into a more stable, lower volume glass form, which is more appropriate for long term storage in sealed containers. This thesis presents three applications of data-driven modelling to this nuclear waste vitrification process. A predictive model of the pour rate of processed nuclear waste into containers, an early detection system for blockages in the dust scrubber, and a model of the long-term chemical durability of the stored glass waste. These applications use the previously developed slow feature analysis methods, as well as other data-driven techniques such as extreme learning machine and bootstrap aggregation, for enhancing the model performance.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Sellafield Lt

Negotiating eldercare in Chinese middle-class families : a case study of Tianjin, China

PhD ThesisThis study investigates changing views and practices of eldercare in Chinese middle-class families. It aims to understand the context in which shifting expectations, dynamics and various forms of family practices influence the lives of older people. The thesis concludes by making suggestions for policymakers, planners, and the market to provide appropriate support and options for the rising number of middle-class families. This thesis begins by exploring the fusion of two phenomena: the rising middle-class and increasing percentage of older people in China driven by increased longevity and the one child policy. The interaction of these is producing new dilemmas for families providing elder care and new strategies. Fieldwork took place in the urban region of Tianjin, China, to collect narratives of participants’ eldercare practices, their life stories and later life plans. After six-months fieldwork, a total of ten families were interviewed, including: seven families with three generations (grandparents, older parents and one-child) and three families without the oldest generation (older parents, one-child). Their family stories are analysed in three chapters (6,7,8) that discuss those families who are self-reliant; those who buy in support for the grandparents and finally those whose older parent generation are the oldest in the family who reflect on their own preferred ageing trajectory. The key findings are that in middle-class families, the grandparent generation have little need to rely on their adult children financially but can use their own good pensions. Older generations were able to use their wealth and housing assets to benefit younger generations and through that to promote familial support. Families had different interpretations of filial obligations but shared common values. For example, grandparents are happiest to age in the community with regular visits from their children. With only one child to rely on, older parents are very reluctant to burden their children and look to reciprocity in their family practices. The research revealed that while these middle-class households have stronger economic conditions, they still expect to care for the grandparent generation but, with many calls on family resources of time, need to navigate buy in support particularly when there is frailty in the very old. In the past co-residence would have supported filial piety but new living arrangements of living close by or ‘living with’ on a rotational or short-term basis are options embraced by middle class families. The research exposes the fragility of market based elder care support and the thesis concludes by making recommendations for building more robust services

Jordanian Cinema and Gender Regimes: Representations and Audience Reception

Ph. D. Thesis.This thesis investigates the reception of gender regime representations in selected contemporary Jordanian films among a Jordanian audience. The study adopts an audience reception theoretical framework that is mainly influenced by Janet Staiger’s theorization of audiences and their film reception, which is based on the audience, text, context nexus. Moreover, the gender theoretical framework of this research is inspired by multiple intersecting concepts, mainly Judith Butler’s conception of gender as a social construct and performative act, R.W. Connell’s theorization of gender regimes and gender roles as social practices, and the notions of femininity and masculinity which are crucial to underpin the understanding of gendered social expectations important in gender regimes. The study is also influenced by research exploring film, gender, society, and media in Jordan and the Arab world. Utilizing a qualitative methodology focusing on the empirical study of film audience reception, my fieldwork in Jordan in 2019 involved organising three screenings for each of the three selected Jordanian films followed by focus groups with a group of Jordanian women and men in higher education. Follow-up interviews and a Facebook poll on reception of Jordanian films were also included in the qualitative analysis. A thematic analysis of the fieldwork data, managed and coded on NVivo qualitative data analysis software, was conducted to arrive at the findings of this study. Major findings indicate that the audience participating in the current study tend to have different perspectives regarding Jordanian films; while at times they seem to be reinforcing the gender regime that endorses a patriarchal social structure at other instances it can be read that some audience members attempt to subvert gender norms that create this regime. Through tensions, transformations, critiques, and contrasting understandings in the focus group discussions and follow-up interviews, a context of change appears to be evoked by the audience responses to the conservative representations of Jordan society in the films, specifically with regards to gender regimes in the Jordanian context

Investigation of the functions of sumo in conserved biological processes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

PhD ThesisThe small ubiquitin-like modifier (sumo) is a conserved post-translational modification found throughout eukaryotes. Over the last 25 years a large range of studies have investigated the role of sumoylation, identifying hundreds of substrates and linking sumo to a diverse range of key cellular processes, including stress responses, the response to DNA damage and cell cycle progression. Although sumoylation has also been shown to be essential in a number of eukaryotes, including the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the fundamental role(s) of sumoylation remains unclear. Sumo dysregulation is associated with a number of human diseases, including cancer, hence it is important to understand and characterise the role(s) of sumo pathways within these diseases. In an attempt to identify the important functions of sumoylation, a recent SGA screen carried out in our lab used a S. cerevisiae strain with reduced sumo (Smt3) function to identify a number of suppressor proteins which were able to suppress the growth defects of this smt3 mutant. Excitingly, several novel cytoskeletalrelated suppressors proteins were identified which rescued the smt3 growth phenotype, including subunits of the CCT chaperonin complex, b-tubulin and branched F-actin. Hence, the aim of this thesis was to further characterise the phenotypes associated with the smt3 mutant and to investigate the relationship of other proteins in the sumo conjugation/deconjugation pathways, the role of polysumoylation and the effect of different S. cerevisiae strain backgrounds within stress responses including exposure to cold temperature, responses to oxidative stress and cell cycle progression. In addition, another aspect of this study was to investigate the relationship of the smt3 mutant with the novel suppressor proteins including subunits of the CCT complex, b-tubulin and F-actin. Excitingly, this study has revealed novel and strain specific roles for sumoylation and polysumoylation within S. cerevisiae stress responses, cell cycle progression and chromosome dynamics, including a novel, strain specific role for sumoylation during S phase. In addition, data in this study also revealed that enzymes within the sumo conjugation and deconjugation pathways respond differently when presented with different stresses. Interestingly, our studies of the relationships between smt3 and the novel cytoskeletal suppressor proteins iv revealed that although these suppressors partially suppress the smt3 growth defects, the smt3 strain also suppresses several phenotypes associated with the cytoskeletal suppressors. Furthermore, our data suggests that b-tubulin is a substrate of sumoylation in S. cerevisiae cells. Thus, these results are consistent with a model in which sumoylation is functionally linked to the cytoskeleton by the interaction of sumo with microtubules and F-actin. Given that dysregulation of sumo, the CCT complex, F-actin and microtubules are common in many human diseases, this study provides novel insights into the relationship between the mutations in these complexes, potentially identifying new routes for the development of therapeutic treatments for human diseases.BBSR

The Road to Recovery : understanding and improving the process of rebuilding seismic resistant schools in Nepal.

PhD ThesisMany schools in Nepal were damaged or destroyed in the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, highlighting major vulnerabilities in Nepal’s school infrastructure. Schools are particularly important within communities, providing education, and often acting as a centre for aid distribution and shelter following disasters. Therefore, it is vital that when these facilities are reconstructed, they have an improved resilience to enable them to resist future earthquake events. Since the 2015 earthquake, school reconstruction programmes have been initiated and there are examples of good school reconstruction both within Kathmandu and in some of Nepal’s more remote areas. However, there are a wide range of challenges affecting this process, and evidence that knowledge transfer between stakeholders is limited, meaning that practices to reduce challenges are not being utilised in all projects, impeding successful and efficient construction. This thesis presents data collected within two fieldwork visits to Nepal. These took the form of a pilot study to identify key challenges, and understand the broader context, followed by a phase two study, building on the pilot study findings, understanding the challenges in more detail, and identifying good practice to overcome or mitigate the challenges. Across the two visits, 20 interviews were conducted, with stakeholders at both a case-specific school level, and a high-level with broad involvement across multiple projects, in addition to other complementary research activities such as meeting with engineering professors, visiting case specific schools, and visiting earthquake affected communities to explore broader resilience efforts. Six key challenges that affect the school reconstruction process have been identified: 1) accessibility and transportation, 2) skill and availability of labour, 3) quality and availability of materials, 4) suitability and availability of land, 5) community involvement, and 6) government processes. Of these, accessibility and transportation was the most frequently reported challenge, and had the greatest perceived impact, of 0.75 on a scale of zero to one. It was also found that different challenges were perceived differently by different stakeholder groups, and the impact varies relative to the contexts in which they occur. Good practices have also been identified, specific to the contexts in which they were implemented, and would be applicable, including: 1) training of labour, 2) training for SMCs, to better manage projects, 3) planning projects around the monsoon, for projects that are only accessible via seasonal roads, and 4) accounting for higher transportation costs to harder to reach sites. Based on these findings, a decision-making framework has been created, to help stakeholders identify practices to improve project delivery, specific to the individual project context. The process of producing this framework, and subsequent validation, conducted via an online questionnaire with nine stakeholders, are also presented. Five out of nine participants reported that most or all of the good practice recommended would have been suitable for the projects they considered, and eight out of nine reporting that the framework would be valuable for either themselves or less experienced stakeholders, if implemented within a project. A range of benefits of implementing the framework were reported, including: 1) better managing and planning projects, 2) bringing additional benefits to the school and community, 3) increasing the quality of construction, and 4) reducing delays. Utilising this framework within projects would therefore work to improve the resilience of Nepal’s school infrastructure and assist in efforts to build back better and safer following the 2015 earthquake or future earthquake events

Designing with and for social innovation: service design by working with youth civic groups in Lebanon

Ph. D. ThesisWithin contested contexts marked by profound political, social, and economic changes, social innovation emerges to reconceptualise services, ideas, and products. At the intersection of multifaceted agendas, social innovation brings forward a paradigm shift in tackling problems that traditional methods fail to adequately address. In this thesis, I focus on the context of Lebanon which suffers from political, economic, public health, and social turmoil. In light of a fragmented, politicised and weak welfare system, Lebanon is a fertile ground for the proliferation of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and particularly youth-led, grassroots organisations that challenge the existing status quo by devising novel ways of creating and delivering services. Therefore, how can we surface, structure, and scale youth-driven social innovation in service design and delivery, through participatory methods within contested spaces? With participatory action research (PAR) as an overarching methodology and by applying embedded ethnography, participatory design (PD), and service design methods, this thesis examines social innovation focussed on designing services across three distinct contexts of civic engagement. These include: 1) large-scale organisations in which the youth are positioned as beneficiaries; 2) small-scale youth-led organisations; and 3) the Lebanese social movement of 2019, encompassing a constellation of local and transnational grassroots. Findings reveal tensions when attempting to adopt participatory research methods within environments which lack inherent participatory attributes. Conditions needed for the creation of technology-supported social innovation for service delivery within such a complex context surface, and new forms of socio-technical infrastructures resulting from circumstances of emergency and uncertainty are highlighted. I contend that a hybrid model of design with top down and bottom-up elements is most suited to be able to structure and scale out social innovation especially while navigating both embedded and emerging issues of participation and power. Also, the design and adoption of digital technology within such contexts requires re-purposing familiar tools and building new social practices around them. Finally, due to the ongoing and evolving negotiations that need to take place as a result of circumstances on the ground, researchers ought to shift roles ranging from facilitators to activists when working within such contested spaces

Re-Designing Planning Policy Processes and Embedding Technology: The Case of Neighbourhood Planning

Ph. D. ThesisNeighbourhood planning provided citizens with new rights through the Localism Act 2011, empowering them to organise together to produce their own policy which would be adopted by local planning authorities. By December 2020, over 2700 communities had embarked on the neighbourhood planning process with just under 1000 plans adopted. However, challenges remain in the way neighbourhood planning is enacted by citizens with a complex process, uneven geographical take up and a lack of appropriate support for citizens. At a broader level, citizen participation in policymaking processes has shown a contested picture over many decades with calls for more and better participation whilst questions of the level of influence such participation has on decisions have been raised. Furthermore, the configuration of citizen participation has long been questioned, particularly in relation to the methods used to reach out to communities. Alongside this, research regarding digital technology for policymaking and citizen participation has increased but has yet to have an impact in practice. In this research, I explore how digital and non-digital tools could be designed to better support citizens to shape places through the example of the neighbourhood planning policy process. I engaged with neighbourhood planning groups and planners to learn from their experiences, particularly centring citizens’ needs in considering the need for support in the citizen-led policy tool. Using an action research approach, I used a cycle of action and reflection to inform research design, enabling participants to help direct research through their own experiences. To understand how citizens enact the neighbourhood planning process and explore the use of digital tools, I engaged in an exploratory deployment of a participatory media technology, then moved to deliver interactive workshops to explore the neighbourhood planning process in-depth and co-designed new modes of digital and non-digital engagement. Through this research, I first demonstrate the complexity of neighbourhood planning, exploring the nuances of the process from a citizens’ perspective and, second, I identify both opportunities and barriers to the use of digital modes of participation. Through identifying the issues within the neighbourhood planning process, I put forward approaches to designing better support mechanisms to enable citizens to shape places, including two key design principles, cross-disciplinary design thinking and inclusive design, which can ensure an inclusive and equitable approach to the design of policy and support tools. I demonstrate how these design principles should manifest within the neighbourhood planning context and provide recommendations for specific policy changes and the development of digital and non-digital support. Ultimately, I argue the need to design and embed digital and non-digital tools and technologies within a re-designed neighbourhood planning process to enable an appropriate, navigable and sustainable citizen-led policy tool where modes of participation can link directly to policy outcomes allowing citizens to shape places

Trans Forms: Gender-Variant Subjectivity and First-Person Narration

Ph. D. ThesisMy thesis argues for the ‘gender-variant’ narrator as a key figure in contemporary Anglophone literature. I examine first-person narratives from the past five decades in a range of genres (memoir, literary fiction, science fiction, historical fiction) that explore gender identities that are other than binary or fixed. The purposes and impacts of these narratives vary according to their different engagement with feminist, queer and trans theory and activism. These differences can be ultimately read in the formal choices (uses of temporality, pronouns, metaphors, focalisation, description, etc.) of the texts representing gender-variant narrators. Throughout the thesis, I establish a methodology at the intersection of studies of narrative form and studies of trans and non-binary gender identity. In Chapter One, I develop two key concepts as part of this methodology: trans-inhabitation and re-narration. Trans-inhabitation builds on theorisations of gender as space in trans, queer and feminist theory and on narratological understandings of metaphor: it designates an inhabitation of gender categories that is successive, multiple and/or in between, and I argue that gender-variant narrators trans-inhabit genders and texts. Re-narration designates the way in which narratives of gender variance exist in tension with canonical plots of transition, disrupting them and reconfiguring them. In Chapters Two to Six, I test this methodology on a range of contemporary texts with gender-variant narrators. My conclusion summarises what has emerged from these readings in relation to the politically and textually resonant concepts of ‘visibility’ and ‘voice’ and argues for an examination of metaphors of time and space that does not only apply to gender in an abstract manner but considers the geographical realities of borders, homes and inhabitations.S.Y. Killingley Memorial Trus

Development of a dual sensor polymer-based system for antibiotic detection in water samples

Ph. D. ThesisIn April 2019, the UN issued a warning that the overuse of antibiotics could lead to 10 million fatalities annually by 2050. It would also be a significant financial burden as there can be losses of €1.6 billion per single strain of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria, occurring primarily but not limited to the costs of medical care, hospitalisation, and patient care. Infiltration of antibiotics into groundwater arises from multiple sources; agriculture, highly populated residential areas and pharmaceutical effluents. These leached antibiotics journey to river systems cause selective pressure, thereby giving rise to accelerated AMR development. One route for aiding this issue is to slow the growth rate the emergence of AMR by controlling the levels of antibiotics that gain entry to water systems. To monitor this, a low-cost and reliable sensor platform is needed that can rapidly and on-site identify contaminated areas. Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) are synthetic receptors that have potential for specific detection of contaminants in complicated matrices but have found limited commercial applications. The work within this thesis will explore the rational design of MIPs, their optimisation for a plethora of targets and the investigation of various applications to exploit their favourable characteristics when deployed as sensor platforms. Looking at how these imprinted polymers have been developed and utilised in recent times (primarily 2010-2020) and assessing any limitations encountered. These limitations have holstered MIP use, giving rise to the need for the critical review, which has been carried out in this thesis, on what development is needed to boost their applications to convert them into a mainstream commercial tool. Most MIP-based sensor systems focus primarily on a single analysis technique. Chapter 3 sees a novel, dual detection system developed which facilitates direct validation of the results and therefore can realise reliable detection of antibiotics in aqueous samples. Fluorescent monomers have been incorporated into the MIP complex allowing for fluorescent analysis as well as thermal, producing a dual sensor platform thus vastly enhancing the reliability of the biosensor. 3 Two applications of MIPs, that have been deployed as sensors, have been experimentally assessed. A focus on mounting these polymers onto Screen Printed Electrodes (SPEs) and the subsequent thermal analysis will be describe in chapter 4. This work comprised of a comparison of two techniques was carried out to determine the most appropriate method for attaching the polymers to the surface of the SPE, direct polymerisation onto the SPE against dropcasting of MIP particles synthesized by free radical polymerisation on the SPE surface. The direct polymerisation proved to afford MIP-modified SPEs to have higher levels of binding affinity. Chapter 5 explores an investigation into the evolution from small molecule targets to large macromolecules including whole bacteria. This proof-of-concept study saw a yeast mixture used as a target for MIP detection since yeast resembles bacteria in size and shape but does not need to be handled in a certified biosafety lab. A full evaluation of the work carried out concludes the thesis with an aim to gauge how the work undertaken will contribute to the development of a new division of quantitative sensor platforms. Secondly, the work produced will construct foundations for what is still needed to push the use of MIPs into commercial use to combat the rise in AMRManchester Metropolitan Universit