773 research outputs found

    Interdisciplinarity in the Scholarly Life Cycle

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    This open access book illustrates how interdisciplinary research develops over the lifetime of a scholar: not in a single project, but as an attitude that trickles down, or spirals up, into research. This book presents how interdisciplinary work has inspired shifts in how the contributors read, value concepts, critically combine methods, cope with knowledge hierarchies, write in style, and collaborate. Drawing on extensive examples from the humanities and social sciences, the editors and chapter authors show how they started, tried to open up, dealt with inconsistencies, had to adapt, and ultimately learned and grew as researchers. The book offers valuable insights into the conditions and complexities present for interdisciplinary research to be successful in an academic setting. This is an open access book

    Authoritarianism and Subject Formation in Post-Independence Egypt: Egyptian Literature and Western Social Theory in Dialogue

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    The study grew out of a desire to examine how it feels to be denied what Hannah Arendt famously referred to as the ‘right to have rights,’ including the right to disobey. More specifically, this study seeks to understand how people living under particular regimes of power—characterised by distinct politics of fear, uncertainty, and silence—feel, define, and express themselves in relation to power, whether in the form of submission or resistance. In other words: How do authoritarian power dynamics affect individuals’ perception of self and how does it play into and shape the everyday life of the individual? At the heart of this inquiry is the notion of the subject, which forms both the conceptual foundation and the central focus of this study. The study draws primarily on the theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt on the interplay of power, resistance, and subjectivity. To frame the discussion, a socio-historical examination of post-independence power practices in Egypt and their impact on the constitution of the political subject is conducted. Research data is generated through an art-inspired qualitative research approach, primarily using Egyptian novels as a source of data to uncover the nuances and interiorities of the process of subject formation. Through a dialogue between Western social theory and Egyptian literature, the study provides an understanding of power practice in Egypt from 1952 to the present, particularly at the level of the inner panorama of the self in society and expands it into a reading of social and political theories on the question of power, subjectivity, resistance, and agency. The study is divided into six main chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Each empirical chapter of this study tells the story of a particular episode in time and is somewhat self-contained, yet all chapters are connected into a large coherent reading of modern Egyptian power practices. Just as the novels examined in this study tell a story with their words, so does my research. The study concludes that the process of subject formation in Egypt should be understood as an artefact of historical continuity that connects the past to the present, not necessarily in a linear fashion, but in a way that gives it a genealogical context, and as a dynamic process of shifting subject positions. The study further argues for the limitations of the status conception of citizenship as a defining framework for the state—society relationship in the context under study and proposes instead the use of the power—subject framework as a substitute. Last but not least, the study suggests that the connection between theory and method, expressed in the very structure of the research, reveals the epistemic relevance of literature to the conceptual imagination, contributing in a sense, to the discussion of the decolonisation of knowledge production. In some ways, this interdisciplinarity underscores the sheer breadth and hybridity of the concept of subject formation that has become apparent throughout this analysis. Keywords— Power, Subject Formation, Subjectivity, Egyptian Literature, Resistance, Agenc

    Spice, culinary tourism, and expressions of whiteness in London, England and Nashville, Tennessee

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    Using curry in East London in the United Kingdom and hot chicken in Nashville, Tennessee as case studies, this dissertation explores how ideas of spice and heat in “ethnic” foodways become linked to conceptions of authenticity and exoticness within the context of culinary tourism. Drawing on scholarship of folk narrative, culinary tourism, critical whiteness studies, and vernacular rhetoric, among others, I investigate the ways in which the concept of spice is used rhetorically in ongoing conversations about links between “ethnic” foods and cultural appropriation, identity invention, and representation from both local and touristic perspectives. I have concentrated mainly on how specifically white racial identities are expressed through the consumption of spicy food within the context of culinary tourism, in which “ethnic” foods are a primary attraction and are often understood to be non-white. This investigation includes historical context on both curry in east London and hot chicken in Nashville, interviews with locals, culinary tourists, and tourism professionals, participant observation on culinary tours in east London, and analyses of online restaurant reviews in each location. An analysis of these collected materials reveals that consumers in both locations share a frontier orientation towards the act of consuming spicy foods that utilizes aspects of the white racial frame (Feagin 2013), and consumers use the concept of spice to signify that they have had an experience that is sufficiently or insufficiently exotic. In both locations, the concept of spice also opens up opportunities for individuals (both locals and tourists) to push back against master narratives created by tourism agencies and local governments that oversimplify their lived experiences and understandings of history

    Managing distributed situation awareness in a team of agents

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    The research presented in this thesis investigates the best ways to manage Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) for a team of agents tasked to conduct search activity with limited resources (battery life, memory use, computational power, etc.). In the first part of the thesis, an algorithm to coordinate agents (e.g., UAVs) is developed. This is based on Delaunay triangulation with the aim of supporting efficient, adaptable, scalable, and predictable search. Results from simulation and physical experiments with UAVs show good performance in terms of resources utilisation, adaptability, scalability, and predictability of the developed method in comparison with the existing fixed-pattern, pseudorandom, and hybrid methods. The second aspect of the thesis employs Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) to define and manage DSA based on the information obtained from the agents' search activity. Algorithms and methods were developed to describe how agents update the BBN to model the system’s DSA, predict plausible future states of the agents’ search area, handle uncertainties, manage agents’ beliefs (based on sensor differences), monitor agents’ interactions, and maintains adaptable BBN for DSA management using structural learning. The evaluation uses environment situation information obtained from agents’ sensors during search activity, and the results proved superior performance over well-known alternative methods in terms of situation prediction accuracy, uncertainty handling, and adaptability. Therefore, the thesis’s main contributions are (i) the development of a simple search planning algorithm that combines the strength of fixed-pattern and pseudorandom methods with resources utilisation, scalability, adaptability, and predictability features; (ii) a formal model of DSA using BBN that can be updated and learnt during the mission; (iii) investigation of the relationship between agents search coordination and DSA management

    The Edge of Perception : The Psychology of the Seen and the Unseen in the Works of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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    This thesis investigates the psychological dimensions of sense perception in the works of two key poets in the British Romantic tradition - William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge - using a combination of traditional close reading and a newer psychobiographical approach. The thesis proposes that Wordsworth's and Coleridge's works can be seen as staging a dialogue between two mutually incompatible habits of sense perception, with Coleridge experiencing perception as metaphysically divisive, and Wordsworth experiencing it as metaphysically unifying (once the mind learns to correctly process sensory gaps). In this dialogue, Wordsworth eventually takes center stage as the dominant 'seer' of the two, while Coleridge takes on the role of auditor, alternating between vicariously adopting, interrogating, doubting and philosophically augmenting Wordsworthian perception. Furthermore, I argue that this dialogue represents a philosophically significant attempt to combine transcendent values with a tangible and intuitive connection to real objects, with Wordsworth and Coleridge attempting to forge a middle road between idealism and empiricism - a pursuit of transcendent objectivity that, I argue, problematizes the conventional reading of Romanticism as an inward turn

    A hydrodynamical perspective on the turbulent transport of bacteria in rivers

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    The transport of bacteria in turbulent river-like environments is addressed, where bacterial populations are frequently encountered attached to solids. This transport mode is investigated by studying the transient settling of heavy particles in turbulent channel flows featuring sediment beds. A numerical method is used to fully resolve turbulence and finite-size particles, which enables the assessment of the complex interplay between flow structures, suspended solids and river sediment
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