9,708 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

    Testimonium de Auditu Witness: Comparison of Maṣlāhah in the Settlement of Syiqāq in the Religious Court of the Border Regions

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    Witness examination is one of the trial procedures required to resolve cases before the Religious Courts. According to the regulations, witnesses must provide information directly related to their testimony that they actually have seen, heard, or experienced the case. The issue is that some of the witnesses introduced were unaware of the testimony they provided and only learned about it from the litigants. How can the Religious Courts in the border area, which is the Minang region, resolve the syiqāq case from a maṣlāhah perspective, and what are the solutions that can be implemented to bring about a positive outcome in the syiqāq case when the witness's closest family does not have knowledge about the case in person? Comparing these two court products in terms of maṣlāhah is an intriguing analysis. Using a comparative approach to the two cases, this study conducted a fundamental analysis of the literature. The results demonstrated that distinct assemblies evaluated the presence of these witnesses in relation to the issued decisions. Some of the panels regarded the testimony in this case as insufficient evidence, so they denied the requested divorce despite the family's ongoing disputes (syiqāq). In petition cases with the same witness issue, however, the tribunal deemed the evidence to be sufficient to grant the requests

    Attaining climate justice through the adaptation of urban form to climate change: flood risks in Toronto

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    Empirical evidence points out that entrenched cost-benefit rationales behind urban form adaptations to climate change unequally exacerbate vulnerabilities and hazard exposures, engendering risk inequalities and triggering climate injustice. Specifically, adaptive interventions for managing climate change-induced floods, whether through green and blue infrastructure (GBI), land use planning, or urban design, prioritize the protection of high-value urban assets while excluding vulnerable groups. To redress climate injustice, some have called for the consideration of the three pillars of justice: distributive justice, i.e., the just spatial distribution of adaptation responses; procedural justice, i.e., the equality of decision-making processes; and recognitional justice, i.e., the legitimization of marginalized groups. To assess the extent of these pillars’ integration in the scholarship (theoretically and empirically), this dissertation conducted a systematic review of 136 peer-reviewed papers on urban climate justice vis-à-vis adaptation. The findings reveal a lack of theoretical and empirical connections between the three-pillared justice framework and climate adaptive interventions in urban form. The dissertation’s theoretical framework overcomes these omissions by using different theories/concepts in the literature as nexuses connecting climate justice pillars with urban form. It capitalizes on interconnections distributive justice has with differential vulnerabilities, flood exposures, and the adaptive capacity of urban form to identify areas that unequally experience flood risks and need to be prioritized in adaptation. It, furthermore, combined the three-pillared justice framework with epistemic justice and local experiential knowledge concept to explore how flood-adaptive GBI planning can address the root causes of vulnerabilities, hence facilitating justice-oriented transformative adaptation. Accordingly, the research developed a multi-criteria model including indicators and variables for measuring the spatial distribution of social vulnerabilities, exposure, and the adaptive capacity of urban form, whereby it proposes pathways for justice-oriented transformative adaptation of high-risk priority areas through GBI planning. The dissertation focuses on Toronto in Ontario, Canada, to test the theoretical framework, which can be applied in any city. The study in Toronto asks: “who” is unequally at-risk of flooding events, “where” are they located, “why” they are unequally vulnerable, and “how” we can engage the high-risk community in adaptive GBI planning to promote justice-oriented transformative adaptation. The methodology started with operationalizing the spatial multi-criteria model through weighted overlay analysis using ArcGIS and an online survey of 120 Toronto-based flooding experts, which yielded the identification of four priority neighborhoods at a disproportionate risk of floods. Focusing on one of the high-risk priority neighborhoods, Thorncliffe Park, I conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with flooding experts and local leaders and an online survey of residents to investigate whether the local experiential knowledge of residents has been recognized in adaptive GBI planning decisions. I furthermore performed an online participatory-mapping activity in this neighborhood during which participants marked, on the neighborhood map, locations that require GBI for socio-cultural benefits. I overlaid the resulting participatory maps with land uses’ run-off coefficients to propose sites for allocating GBI for both socio-cultural benefits and run-off management. The findings show the effectiveness of the theoretical framework in identifying priority neighborhoods and developing place-based adaptation solutions inside and outside Canada. All four high-risk neighborhoods are inner-city tower communities with old infrastructure and dense low-income, racialized, and migrant populations, typical tower blocks built after the second World War in several cities across North America and Europe. The findings in Thorncliffe Park, as the priority neighborhood, unveil the exclusion of residents from flood-adaptive GBI planning despite their vulnerabilities and exposure. This exclusion, as results indicate, is rooted in technocratic processes based on technical knowledge and cost-benefit rationales. The findings show four epistemic barriers that need to be addressed to facilitate climate justice in adaptation interventions within Thorncliffe Park: lack of social networks, citizenship rights, climate awareness opportunities, and communicational tools. The results also show that the industrial uses around the railway and residential-commercial sites around Overlea Boulevard in this neighborhood are in dire need of GBI for managing run-offs and socio-cultural benefits. I propose adopting inclusive processes to allocate small-scale adaptive GBI in these locations. Building on the findings, the dissertation proposes future theoretical and empirical studies to complement this study by proposing how to design GBI and other urban form adaptive interventions by changing the layout patterns, orientation, and geometry of streets, buildings, and blocks in the high-risk disenfranchised communities to advance climate justice. At the center of this proposition are developing new theories to expand the climate justice triad and devising new forms of inclusive and collaborative design

    The community language learning approach to improve speaking skills on senior year students at Cahuasqui High School

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    To incorporate strategies using the Community Language Learning approach in the improvement of speaking skills of senior-year students at “Cahuasqui” high school, during the school year 2021-2022.El estudio de investigación actual sobre estrategias para mejorar las habilidades del habla utilizando el enfoque de aprendizaje comunitario de idiomas se realizó porque este enfoque no se había utilizado en esta área rural en particular. El inglés es una de las materias que no ha tenido tanta fuerza en la zona rural en cuanto a tener un nivel similar o cercano al de un estudiante de una institución urbana. La investigación es significativa porque muestra que la adquisición del idioma inglés merece el uso de enfoques creativos. Para inscribirse en la universidad, los estudiantes deben alcanzar un nivel aceptable y tener habilidades lingüísticas rudimentarias. El objetivo principal de la investigación fue utilizar estrategias de aprendizaje comunitario de idiomas para mejorar las habilidades del habla teniendo en cuenta tres factores importantes: las dificultades físicas en la educación rural, las complicaciones del bajo dominio del inglés en la educación rural y la falta de motivación de los estudiantes para aprender inglés cuando comparando la educación urbana y rural. Este estudio es un estudio de caso cuantitativo y cualitativo que considera como herramientas de investigación un grupo focal, una encuesta a estudiantes y una entrevista a docentes. Todo esto para lograr el objetivo planteado que es establecer cuáles son las estrategias del enfoque (CLL) más adecuadas para desarrollar la expresión oral en los estudiantes de último año del liceo “Cahuasqui”. Los resultados se analizaron de acuerdo con la respuesta total de los participantes. Los resultados de las percepciones de los participantes fueron altamente significativos. Todos los entrevistados coincidieron en que la población de estudio carecía de recursos para mejorar sus habilidades orales. Por lo general, los docentes fueron los que buscaron nuevas formas de enseñar a sus alumnos con recursos limitados, y los docentes también sufren una falta de preparación para tratar con las zonas rurales. En conclusión, los hallazgos indican que es factible trabajar con un nuevo enfoque en el lugar. Se decidió crear una guía didáctica que contenga las tácticas más adecuadas para su aplicación y aporte en esta zona rural.Maestrí

    Mothers who listen with more than ears: The phenomenological experience of the non-verbal communication between mothers and their child with complex cerebral palsy

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    In England, every 1000 babies born 1 will be left with complex cerebral palsy affecting all limbs and internal organs. Of those children by age 12, 43% will have no consistent way to communicate with the world. Empirically, many mothers of these children self-report that they can communicate effectively with their children in these cases in a way that possibly only the mother understands. Understanding the mother’s experience of living with a complex cerebral palsy non-verbal child is important for professionals and the society that supports them. The aim of this research is not to prove or disprove this phenomenon but rather to explore the lived experience of mothers with disabled non-verbal cerebral palsy children, validating and giving a voice to an otherwise isolated abnormal form of mothering. A homogenous sample was collected made up of 8 mothers who had non-verbal complex cerebral palsy as a result of Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy at birth. The age range of the children was not > 3 and not <16. Interviews took place on a video link, semi-structured interviews were done and the six stages of a Heuristic Inquiry were used to analyse the transcribed data. The results produced 7 universal themes: ‘The Choice to Communicate,’ ‘Communication Over Time’, Impediments to communication’, ‘Certainty and Uncertainty’, ‘Embodied Communication’, ‘Being Towards Communication’, and ‘Being in the World with Others’. These themes capture the essence of the experience that mothers have when confronted by a baby that is diagnosed with multiple disabilities and unable to verbalise. The findings that emerged are fundamentally existential and they are examined through an existential lens

    Henry David Thoreau e as Linguagens da Natureza

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    This dissertation aims to present a hermeneutic reading of some of the religious symbols brought to light by the literature of the poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). The background of our argument is the romantic motto of the symbolic correspondence between Nature and spirit, inherited by the author from his contact with the movement that became known as “Transcendentalism,” a religious, literary, philosophical, and political circle gestated in the Nineteenth-century United States. From this panorama, we draw a poetic appreciation of the thinker’s interpretation of the linguistic correlation between Nature and spirit that points to the unity between the immanence of natural kingdoms (the earth) and the transcendence of the spiritual spheres (the sky). Emphasizing the sacred character of the symbols hinted by Thoreau’s texts, those emblems we call “mythopoetic hieroglyphs” and “musical hieroglyphs.” Beyond the tonalities of romanticism, the work proposed here, evoking distinct religious paths, seeks to highlight the multiple reflective possibilities that the North American thinker offers to comparative studies of religions, given the mark of dialogicity between different wisdom traditions in his composition. Highlighting seeing and hearing (i.e., reading and listening to the “book” and the “orchestra” of Nature), our exposition aims to unravel the intimate relationship between spirituality and bodily sensibility in the intellectual’s approach to those we call “Languages of Nature.”A presente dissertação tem por objetivo apresentar uma leitura hermenêutica de alguns dos símbolos religiosos trazidos à baila pela literatura do poeta e naturalista Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). O pano de fundo de nossa argumentação é o mote romântico da correspondência simbólica entre Natureza e espírito, herdado pelo autor a partir de seu contato com o movimento que se tornou conhecido como “Transcendentalismo”, círculo religioso, literário, filosófico e político gestado nos Estados Unidos do século XIX. A partir desse panorama, traçamos uma apreciação poética da interpretação de Thoreau acerca da correlação linguística entre Natureza e espírito que aponta para a unidade entre a imanência dos reinos naturais (a terra) e a transcendência das esferas espirituais (o céu). Ressaltando o caráter sagrado dos símbolos aventados pelos textos thoreauvianos, tais emblemas são aqui denominados “hieróglifos mitopoéticos” e “hieróglifos musicais”. Para além das tonalidades do romantismo, o trabalho aqui proposto, evocando distintos sendeiros religiosos, busca realçar as múltiplas possibilidades reflexivas que o pensador norte-americano oferece aos estudos comparativos das religiões, haja vista a marca da dialogicidade entre diversas tradições sapienciais em sua obra. Destacando o ver e o ouvir (i.e., a leitura e a audição do “livro” e da “orquestra” da Natureza), nossa exposição tem por intuito deslindar a íntima relação entre espiritualidade e sensibilidade corpórea na abordagem do intelectual daquelas que intitulamos “Linguagens da Natureza”.CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superio

    Dialogue without barriers. A comprehensive approach to dealing with stuttering

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    The Forgetting of Fire: An Archaeology of Technics

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    This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucault’s concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins as a substance for early alchemical knowledge and ends up as a quantifiable branch of functions in technics. We call the attitude of Paracelsus, an alchemist of the sixteenth century, “participation,” which sheds light on the intimate goal of his alchemical practice. In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle inaugurates the evolution of technics with the attitude of instrumentalization. Building off this, Lavoisier participates in the development of technics through his effort to construct the countable, using measuring instruments and chemical techniques. This attitude of accounting, and neither his theory of oxygen nor his basic observations in the laboratory, determines his decisive role in the development of chemistry. Finally, we discuss the attitude of employment as we find it in Sadi Carnot and the engineers of the steam engine, watching as fire for these epistemic agents becomes nothing but an employed instant of combustion

    Towards Decolonization: Migrated Kenyan Archives and the Politics of Knowledge Production

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    “Towards Decolonization: Migrated Kenyan Archives and the Politics of Knowledge Production” examines ethical questions of archival removal in relation to access to knowledge and the politicization of access. Utilizing a theoretical framework of postcolonial theory, decolonial theory, and epistemic decolonization, this study investigates Kenyan archival holdings within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office files at The National Archives in London and the East African Archives at Syracuse University. Analysis of these archives is conducted using qualitative methods of archival research and interviews. This research reveals British colonial efforts to protect its reputation by migrating, concealing, and destroying archives and to preserve its imperial legacy by initiating microfilming projects overseas. This thesis argues that archival removal from Africa has resulted in epistemic violence, reproducing coloniality of knowledge production in academia and further marginalizing scholars of African studies in the Global South. This thesis suggests rethinking access to knowledge through the return of migrated archives and structural decolonization of institutions with migrated archival holdings

    Obstetric Violence as a Civil Battery: Exploring the Limitations of Tort Law in the Context of Unauthorised Vaginal Examinations

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    This thesis considers the use of the civil tort of battery to address one form of obstetric violence: unauthorised vaginal examinations. The work critically engages with the benefits and limitations of applying tortious battery to this manifestation of obstetric violence, and determines the extent to which the action could address the wrongs and harms of UVEs
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