7,310 research outputs found
Proceedings of the 10th International congress on architectural technology (ICAT 2024): architectural technology transformation.
The profession of architectural technology is influential in the transformation of the built environment regionally, nationally, and internationally. The congress provides a platform for industry, educators, researchers, and the next generation of built environment students and professionals to showcase where their influence is transforming the built environment through novel ideas, businesses, leadership, innovation, digital transformation, research and development, and sustainable forward-thinking technological and construction assembly design
Systemic Circular Economy Solutions for Fiber Reinforced Composites
This open access book provides an overview of the work undertaken within the FiberEUse project, which developed solutions enhancing the profitability of composite recycling and reuse in value-added products, with a cross-sectorial approach. Glass and carbon fiber reinforced polymers, or composites, are increasingly used as structural materials in many manufacturing sectors like transport, constructions and energy due to their better lightweight and corrosion resistance compared to metals. However, composite recycling is still a challenge since no significant added value in the recycling and reprocessing of composites is demonstrated. FiberEUse developed innovative solutions and business models towards sustainable Circular Economy solutions for post-use composite-made products. Three strategies are presented, namely mechanical recycling of short fibers, thermal recycling of long fibers and modular car parts design for sustainable disassembly and remanufacturing. The validation of the FiberEUse approach within eight industrial demonstrators shows the potentials towards new Circular Economy value-chains for composite materials
International Student Orientations: Indian Students at American Universities Around the Turn of the Twentieth Century
This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical materials show us how Indian international students oriented themselves amidst the shifting power relations between British colonialism, Indian anticolonial nationalism, and American higher education. I explore how the American university became a site that both encouraged Indian international students’ anticolonial political work, while simultaneously managing and curtailing their sense of political possibility. I discuss how some Indian international students were drawn to the emancipatory tendencies of liberalism that they encountered on campus, but they never pushed their analysis to probe the ways in which racism and colonialism created the material conditions that guaranteed rights, liberties, and economic prosperity only for some sections of society. Conducting a historical analysis of the Indian international student therefore reveals the American university to be a paradoxical space. On the one hand, we find ample evidence that suggests that international students were welcomed into the campus community and supported in their educational and political endeavors by their alma mater. On the other hand, the international student’s experiences also reveal how racism operated both within and outside the university. Furthermore, the international student draws attention towards how the larger context of British colonialism in India pushed students to attend American universities, and correspondingly, how the American exceptionalist nationalist ideology functioning on campuses pulled Indian students into their orbit of influence
Psychosocial aspects of living with a visible neurological condition
This thesis examines the psychosocial aspects of experience for people living with visible neurological conditions. Section one reports on a systematic literature review of qualitative studies exploring how individuals and families cope with Tourette’s syndrome. A systematic search using keywords related to coping and Tourette’s syndrome was conducted on four academic databases. A meta-ethnographic approach led to the construction of three themes: redefining the self and social identity; controlling the body; and challenging the narrative. The findings support a biopsychosocial approach to understanding the condition. This has clinical implications for the treatment of Tourette’s syndrome and future research should seek to expand on this knowledge. Section two reports on an empirical study exploring how people with neck dystonia navigate the social world. Ten participants were interviewed using a semi-structured, qualitative approach. Three themes were constructed from the data: dismissed by others for having an unfamiliar condition; negotiating a new social identity; and managing the stigma of a visible condition. The findings highlight the importance of social identity and the impact of stigma on people with visible health conditions. Further research should seek to explore the nature of distress arising from these psychosocial difficulties with the aim of tailoring clinical interventions for people with neck dystonia. Section three includes a critical appraisal with reflections on the process of conducting this project. Consideration is also given to the role of psychology in addressing systematic societal concerns such as stigma
Decolonising Higher Education in the Era of Globalisation and Internationalisation
Conceived within a context of transdisciplinarity and pluriversalism, and in rigorous response to the Eurocentric, globalising and nationalising structures of power that undergird and inhabit contemporary praxis in higher education – especially in African higher education – this collection of essays brings to the on-going discourse on decolonisation fresh, rich, probing and multilayered perspectives that should accelerate the process of decolonisation, not only in higher education in Africa, but also in the global imaginary. A remarkable, courageous and potentially revolutionary achievement, this book deserves a special place on curricula throughout the world of higher education
Constitutions of Value
Gathering an interdisciplinary range of cutting-edge scholars, this book addresses legal constitutions of value.
Global value production and transnational value practices that rely on exploitation and extraction have left us with toxic commons and a damaged planet. Against this situation, the book examines law’s fundamental role in institutions of value production and valuation. Utilising pathbreaking theoretical approaches, it problematizes mainstream efforts to redeem institutions of value production by recoupling them with progressive values. Aiming beyond radical critique, the book opens up the possibility of imagining and enacting new and different value practices.
This wide-ranging and accessible book will appeal to international lawyers, socio-legal scholars, those working at the intersections of law and economy and others, in politics, economics, environmental studies and elsewhere, who are concerned with rethinking our current ideas of what has value, what does not, and whether and how value may be revalued
Interdisciplinarity in the Scholarly Life Cycle
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
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Relationships, Assets and Social Capital: A Case Study Review of Youth Mentoring
Youth mentoring, where young people (mentees) work with adult mentors to achieve change, is a popular government and third sector intervention. Past research, concentrating on quantitative analysis of US programmes, concludes that mentoring achieves significant but modest change. Such research assumes that changes from mentoring can be externally identified and measured, often without hearing the views of those involved.
This study investigates the experiences and expectations of mentoring from the perspective of mentees, mentors, referring agencies and programme coordinators. Using social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2000), the study explores how mentoring relationships are built and their role in bringing about change.
A local authority youth mentoring programme in the UK formed the case study for investigating experiences of mentoring and perceptions of change. To allow nuanced exploration of views, an interpretive, qualitative approach was taken. Data were collected from mentors, mentees, referring agencies and coordinators via semi-structured interviews, survey, diaries, focus groups and programme feedback. Data collection and thematic analysis were informed by social capital theory.
Findings indicated that mentees actively participating in the mentoring process benefitted most. Mentees experienced unusual levels of equality in the purposeful and trusting mentoring relationship. Drawing on the relationship’s social capital, mentees enhanced their assets and enjoyed emotional support, learning and challenge. Collaborating with mentors, mentees achieved previously inaccessible outcomes. Assets developed could be used in other relationships.
The study also concludes that social capital and asset acquisition provide a theoretical basis for understanding the mentoring process. By encouraging asset and social capital exchange, mentoring develops mentees’ self-awareness, agency, and confidence, increasing the likelihood of resilience. This knowledge may be transferable to other programmes and relationships. Supporting young people’s knowledge of their needs and strengths through mentoring may contribute to their wellbeing post 2019 Covid pandemic
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Sonic heritage: listening to the past
History is so often told through objects, images and photographs, but the potential of sounds to reveal place and space is often neglected. Our research project ‘Sonic Palimpsest’1 explores the potential of sound to evoke impressions and new understandings of the past, to embrace the sonic as a tool to understand what was, in a way that can complement and add to our predominant visual understandings. Our work includes the expansion of the Oral History archives held at Chatham Dockyard to include women’s voices and experiences, and the creation of sonic works to engage the public with their heritage. Our research highlights the social and cultural value of oral history and field recordings in the transmission of knowledge to both researchers and the public. Together these recordings document how buildings and spaces within the dockyard were used and experienced by those who worked there. We can begin to understand the social and cultural roles of these buildings within the community, both past and present
Male Clients' Perspective Of Their Experience Of Counselling In Prisons Stephen Brian Fauguel
The use of psycho-therapeutic interventions within prisons in recent years has been widespread. In order to improve the results of therapy, it is necessary to measure the effectiveness of the outcome (Castonguay, 2013). However, the measurement of outcomes is difficult to gauge, in particular because of the hostile environment within prison, which encourages the client to enter a state in which life is stripped of purpose and responsibility. Heidegger (1927) explains his philosophical view of the awareness of existence with his statement of ‘Dasein’ (being there) (Heidegger, 1927). Incarceration in a prison excludes the possibility that individuals experience and express themselves in an open manner without fear, as Sartre explained as ‘existential anxiety’ (Sartre, 1945), the feeling of anxiety emerging within a prisoner creating a feeling of loss of freedom of choice.Considering the prisoner’s choices within prison, for example,the counsellor of their own choice, accessto counselling appointments, unrestrictivecounselling facilities, and counselling venues are issues that arise more frequently in prison than in any other therapeutic contexts. The focus of this research is on the male client’s perspective of counselling in prison.The purpose of the study is three-fold:to gainanunderstanding of how the male prisoners’experience counselling; to explore what is useful and what is notusefulabout counselling;and to further improve knowledge of counselling therapy,so thatcounselling may be enhancedfor the benefit of prison clients.Thisstudyis qualitative,adopting the theoretical framework of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Male prisoners who have had counselling in prison have spoken of their experience of being counselled in prison and this has filled the gap in the literature.Thisstudy makes a unique contribution to the existing knowledge base regardinghow male clients perceive counselling and may improvethe effectiveness of counselling in prisonsbyensuringthat future counselling of men in prison will become more effective and appropriate to their need
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