8,457 research outputs found
More-than-words: Reconceptualising Two-year-old Childrenâs Onto-epistemologies Through Improvisation and the Temporal Arts
This thesis project takes place at a time of increasing focus upon two-year-old children and the words they speak. On the one hand there is a mounting pressure, driven by the school readiness agenda, to make children talk as early as possible. On the other hand, there is an increased interest in understanding childrenâs communication in order to create effective pedagogies. More-than-words (MTW) examines an improvised art-education practice that combines heterogenous elements: sound, movement and materials (such as silk, string, light) to create encounters for young children, educators and practitioners from diverse backgrounds. During these encounters, adults adopt a practice of stripping back their words in order to tune into the polyphonic ways that children are becoming-with the world.
For this research-creation, two MTW sessions for two-year-old children and their carers took place in a specially created installation. These sessions were filmed on a 360Ë camera, nursery school iPad and on a specially made child-friendly Toddler-cam (Tcam) that rolled around in the installation-event with the children. Through using the frameless technology of 360Ë film, I hoped to make tangible the relation and movement of an emergent and improvised happening and the way in which young children operate fluidly through multiple modes.
Travelling with posthuman, Deleuzio-Guattarian and feminist vital material philosophy, I wander and wonder speculatively through practice, memory, and film data as a bag lady, a Haraway-ian writer/artist/researcher-creator who resists the story of the wordless child as lacking and tragic; the story that positions the word as heroic. Instead, through returning to the uncertainty of improvisation, I attempt to tune into the savage, untamed and wild music of young childrenâs animistic onto-epistemologies
Conversations on Empathy
In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy â be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" â others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice
Mapping the Focal Points of WordPress: A Software and Critical Code Analysis
Programming languages or code can be examined through numerous analytical lenses. This project is a critical analysis of WordPress, a prevalent web content management system, applying four modes of inquiry. The project draws on theoretical perspectives and areas of study in media, software, platforms, code, language, and power structures. The applied research is based on Critical Code Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that holds the potential as a theoretical lens and methodological toolkit to understand computational code beyond its function. The project begins with a critical code analysis of WordPress, examining its origins and source code and mapping selected vulnerabilities. An examination of the influence of digital and computational thinking follows this. The work also explores the intersection of code patching and vulnerability management and how code shapes our sense of control, trust, and empathy, ultimately arguing that a rhetorical-cultural lens can be used to better understand code\u27s controlling influence. Recurring themes throughout these analyses and observations are the connections to power and vulnerability in WordPress\u27 code and how cultural, processual, rhetorical, and ethical implications can be expressed through its code, creating a particular worldview. Code\u27s emergent properties help illustrate how human values and practices (e.g., empathy, aesthetics, language, and trust) become encoded in software design and how people perceive the software through its worldview. These connected analyses reveal cultural, processual, and vulnerability focal points and the influence these entanglements have concerning WordPress as code, software, and platform. WordPress is a complex sociotechnical platform worthy of further study, as is the interdisciplinary merging of theoretical perspectives and disciplines to critically examine code. Ultimately, this project helps further enrich the field by introducing focal points in code, examining sociocultural phenomena within the code, and offering techniques to apply critical code methods
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Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on Ethnic Minority Students: a Case Study of Open University Level 1 Computing Modules
As reported in [1] âOf the disparities that exist within higher education, the gap between the likelihood of White students and students from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds getting a first- or upper-second-class degree is among the starkestâ. In the Open University (OU) for example, a recent research [2] found students from ethnic minorities to be at least 20% less likely to achieve excellent grades and to spend 4-12% more of study time to achieve the same performance as white students. Moreover, with the advent of COVID-19, a growing body of research suggested that students from these groups of the population, suffer disproportionally from the impacts of the pandemic [3], which inevitably impacts on their study experiences. However, recent research in the OU found that some COVID-19 arrangements such as the change of examination mode and change in work-life patterns have impacted students from ethnic minority backgrounds differently. In this paper we present findings from a project aiming to understand the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minority studentsâ study experiences and performance. By means of a combination of qualitative and quantitative data analytics we first analysed the study performance and the patterns of progression, then by conducting focus groups with the teaching staff we assessed the impact of COVID-19 on the lived experiences of the students.
[1] Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Student Attainment at UK Universities (2022). Available at: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk.
[2] Nguyen Q., Rienties B. Richardson J.T.E. (2020) Learning analytics to uncover inequality in behavioural engagement and academic attainment in a distance learning setting, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45:4, 594-606.
[3] Arday, J. and Jones, C. (2022) âSame storm, different boats: The impact of covid-19 on black students and academic staff in UK and US higher education,â Higher Education. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00939-0
Archaeological palaeoenvironmental archives: challenges and potential
This Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) sponsored collaborative doctoral project represents one of
the most significant efforts to collate quantitative and qualitative data that can elucidate practices related to
archaeological palaeoenvironmental archiving in England. The research has revealed that archived
palaeoenvironmental remains are valuable resources for archaeological research and can clarify subjects that
include the adoption and importation of exotic species, plant and insect invasion, human health and diet, and
plant and animal husbandry practices. In addition to scientific research, archived palaeoenvironmental remains
can provide evidence-based narratives of human resilience and climate change and offer evidence of the
scientific process, making them ideal resources for public science engagement. These areas of potential have
been realised at an imperative time; given that waterlogged palaeoenvironmental remains at significant sites
such as Star Carr, Must Farm, and Flag Fen, archaeological deposits in towns and cities are at risk of decay due
to climate change-related factors, and unsustainable agricultural practices. Innovative approaches to collecting
and archiving palaeoenvironmental remains and maintaining existing archives will permit the creation of an
accessible and thorough national resource that can service archaeologists and researchers in the related fields
of biology and natural history. Furthermore, a concerted effort to recognise absences in archaeological
archives, matched by an effort to supply these deficiencies, can produce a resource that can contribute to an
enduring geographical and temporal record of England's biodiversity, which can be used in perpetuity in the
face of diminishing archaeological and contemporary natural resources.
To realise these opportunities, particular challenges must be overcome. The most prominent of these include
inconsistent collection policies resulting from pressures associated with shortages in storage capacity and
declining specialist knowledge in museums and repositories combined with variable curation practices. Many of
these challenges can be resolved by developing a dedicated storage facility that can focus on the ongoing
conservation and curation of palaeoenvironmental remains. Combined with an OASIS + module designed to
handle and disseminate data pertaining to palaeoenvironmental archives, remains would be findable,
accessible, and interoperable with biological archives and collections worldwide. Providing a national centre for
curating palaeoenvironmental remains and a dedicated digital repository will require significant funding.
Funding sources could be identified through collaboration with other disciplines. If sufficient funding cannot be
identified, options that would require less financial investment, such as high-level archive audits and the
production of guidance documents, will be able to assist all stakeholders with the improved curation,
management, and promotion of the archived resource
The Globalization of Artificial Intelligence: African Imaginaries of Technoscientific Futures
Imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) have transcended geographies of the Global North and become increasingly entangled with narratives of economic growth, progress, and modernity in Africa. This raises several issues such as the entanglement of AI with global technoscientific capitalism and its impact on the dissemination of AI in Africa. The lack of African perspectives on the development of AI exacerbates concerns of raciality and inclusion in the scientific research, circulation, and adoption of AI. My argument in this dissertation is that innovation in AI, in both its sociotechnical imaginaries and political economies, excludes marginalized countries, nations and communities in ways that not only bar their participation in the reception of AI, but also as being part and parcel of its creation.
Underpinned by decolonial thinking, and perspectives from science and technology studies and African studies, this dissertation looks at how AI is reconfiguring the debate about development and modernization in Africa and the implications for local sociotechnical practices of AI innovation and governance. I examined AI in international development and industry across Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, by tracing Canadaâs AI4D Africa program and following AI start-ups at AfriLabs. I used multi-sited case studies and discourse analysis to examine the data collected from interviews, participant observations, and documents.
In the empirical chapters, I first examine how local actors understand the notion of decolonizing AI and show that it has become a sociotechnical imaginary. I then investigate the political economy of AI in Africa and argue that despite Western efforts to integrate the African AI ecosystem globally, the AI epistemic communities in the continent continue to be excluded from dominant AI innovation spaces. Finally, I examine the emergence of a Pan-African AI imaginary and argue that AI governance can be understood as a state-building experiment in post-colonial Africa. The main issue at stake is that the lack of African perspectives in AI leads to negative impacts on innovation and limits the fair distribution of the benefits of AI across nations, countries, and communities, while at the same time excludes globally marginalized epistemic communities from the imagination and creation of AI
An empirical investigation of the relationship between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in supply chains
This research aimed to develop an empirical understanding of the relationships between integration,
dynamic capabilities and performance in the supply chain domain, based on which, two conceptual
frameworks were constructed to advance the field. The core motivation for the research was that, at
the stage of writing the thesis, the combined relationship between the three concepts had not yet
been examined, although their interrelationships have been studied individually.
To achieve this aim, deductive and inductive reasoning logics were utilised to guide the qualitative
study, which was undertaken via multiple case studies to investigate lines of enquiry that would
address the research questions formulated. This is consistent with the authorâs philosophical
adoption of the ontology of relativism and the epistemology of constructionism, which was considered
appropriate to address the research questions. Empirical data and evidence were collected, and
various triangulation techniques were employed to ensure their credibility. Some key features of
grounded theory coding techniques were drawn upon for data coding and analysis, generating two
levels of findings. These revealed that whilst integration and dynamic capabilities were crucial in
improving performance, the performance also informed the former. This reflects a cyclical and
iterative approach rather than one purely based on linearity. Adopting a holistic approach towards
the relationship was key in producing complementary strategies that can deliver sustainable supply
chain performance.
The research makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions to the field of supply
chain management. The theoretical contribution includes the development of two emerging
conceptual frameworks at the micro and macro levels. The former provides greater specificity, as it
allows meta-analytic evaluation of the three concepts and their dimensions, providing a detailed
insight into their correlations. The latter gives a holistic view of their relationships and how they are
connected, reflecting a middle-range theory that bridges theory and practice. The methodological
contribution lies in presenting models that address gaps associated with the inconsistent use of
terminologies in philosophical assumptions, and lack of rigor in deploying case study research
methods. In terms of its practical contribution, this research offers insights that practitioners could
adopt to enhance their performance. They can do so without necessarily having to forgo certain
desired outcomes using targeted integrative strategies and drawing on their dynamic capabilities
A Constraint-based Recommender System via RDF Knowledge Graphs
Knowledge graphs, represented in RDF, are able to model entities and their
relations by means of ontologies. The use of knowledge graphs for information
modeling has attracted interest in recent years. In recommender systems, items
and users can be mapped and integrated into the knowledge graph, which can
represent more links and relationships between users and items.
Constraint-based recommender systems are based on the idea of explicitly
exploiting deep recommendation knowledge through constraints to identify
relevant recommendations. When combined with knowledge graphs, a
constraint-based recommender system gains several benefits in terms of
constraint sets. In this paper, we investigate and propose the construction of
a constraint-based recommender system via RDF knowledge graphs applied to the
vehicle purchase/sale domain. The results of our experiments show that the
proposed approach is able to efficiently identify recommendations in accordance
with user preferences
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