421 research outputs found

    Hirsute bodies: the reclamation of the feminine in contemporary South African art

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    This dissertation investigates the presence and the significance of hair in the work of contemporary South African artists Penny Siopis, Tracey Rose and Nandipha Mntambo. The use of this material, a substance embedded in the body and characterizing its appearance, is indicative of a desire to validate the material body and reclaim its connection with the feminine. The author argues for a return to the theories of the French Feminists, Helene Cixous, Luce lrigaray and Julia Kristeva, who were the initial proponents of the idea of l 'ecriture feminine (feminine writing). The feminine text, which enjoyed currency in the seventies, is again relevant for the analysis of these artists' work in light of their calculated use of hair to both explore and exploit the position of the feminine. The author contrasts the French Feminists' use of strategic essentialism with Judit

    A mixed methods exploration of the use of therapeutic approaches within EP practice with a focus on the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy model

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    In the UK, increasing numbers of children and young people (CYP) with mental health problems are waiting for support from overextended Mental Health Services (Children’s Commissioner, 2022). Despite Government initiatives in schools (DfE, 2023b), there is a shortage of available therapeutic support. Some practitioners suggest the focus on mental health in schools may be detrimental to CYP (Billington et al., 2022), and a more holistic approach such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may be preferable (Petersen, et al., 2022). Previous literature (Mackay, 2007) suggests that EPs are the ideal “therapeutic resource” for schools because of their knowledge, skills, and proximity. Incorporating ACT into EP therapeutic practice could open up new ways of supporting CYP. This research applied mixed methods to explore how EPs currently use therapeutic approaches, with a focus on ACT and its application. A survey was distributed to EPs across the UK (n=64) to identify patterns and trends in their use of therapeutic approaches. An additional section of the survey focused on the use of ACT (n=18). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three qualified EPs to gain a richer understanding of the utility of ACT in the EP context. Implications of this research indicate that EPs see value in therapeutic approaches and use them flexibly and responsively within their practice. However, there are discrepancies between the therapeutic potential in the EP workforce and the current working context which offers little time for development of therapeutic practice. Identified benefits of ACT include its versatility and range of techniques. Values and acceptance processes were highlighted as most useful in EP practice. Implementation of ACT needs to be carefully considered as it may not be universally appropriate. This research contributes to EP literature on the use of therapeutic approaches and illuminates the use of ACT in the EP context

    Toward a Pentecostal theology of prophetic legitimacy

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    Within the framework of contemporary Pentecostalism, this thesis considers prophetic legitimacy and its elements. Since the 1948 inception of the Latter Rain Movement, prophetic expression and function have proliferated, with the movement’s tributaries carrying its most welcomed and most-questioned aspects into the larger Pentecostal tradition. With prophetic activity gaining prominence, the Third Wave/Independent tribes’ diverse prophetic expressions raise important questions, which are illustrated in presented examples of current prophetic praxis. This thesis borrows the terms prophetic consciousness and prophetic perception from Walter Brueggemann and explores them from theological, psychological, and phenomenological perspectives. In approaching the Scripture, two methodologies are employed: the literary-critical approach and a canonical approach, which are used to consider OT and NT prophetic figures in regard to their prophetic function and legitimacy. Given the Pentecostal tradition of Luke-Acts as entrance into the prophetic conversation, the NT work is based in a Lukan perspective, as is the argument for a Pentecostal theology of prophetic legitimacy. A more contemporary exemplar of prophetic legitimacy is also presented: Violet Kiteley, a Latter Rain adherent and participant from the movement’s inception. A narrative of her prophetic journey, spiritual formation, focus on Latter Rain Restorationism, understanding of the prophetic presbytery, and Latter Rain Pentecostal hermeneutic are detailed. A critique of the Latter Rain Restorationism schema explores its inherent challenges while affirming Kiteley’s place as an exemplar of prophetic legitimacy. This research concludes with a proposed construct for prophetic legitimacy, along with three proposed elements that commend a healthy Pentecostal theology of the same: they are prophetica discretio, prophetica conscientia, and prophetica praxis. These are examined in relation to prophetic orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy and are considered in regard to a prophetic ethic that grounds all prophetic function and legitimacy

    Supporting requirement elicitation and ontology testing in knowledge graph engineering

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    Knowledge graphs and ontologies are closely related concepts in the field of knowledge representation. In recent years, knowledge graphs have gained increasing popularity and are serving as essential components in many knowledge engineering projects that view them as crucial to their success. The conceptual foundation of the knowledge graph is provided by ontologies. Ontology modeling is an iterative engineering process that consists of steps such as the elicitation and formalization of requirements, the development, testing, refactoring, and release of the ontology. The testing of the ontology is a crucial and occasionally overlooked step of the process due to the lack of integrated tools to support it. As a result of this gap in the state-of-the-art, the testing of the ontology is completed manually, which requires a considerable amount of time and effort from the ontology engineers. The lack of tool support is noticed in the requirement elicitation process as well. In this aspect, the rise in the adoption and accessibility of knowledge graphs allows for the development and use of automated tools to assist with the elicitation of requirements from such a complementary source of data. Therefore, this doctoral research is focused on developing methods and tools that support the requirement elicitation and testing steps of an ontology engineering process. To support the testing of the ontology, we have developed XDTesting, a web application that is integrated with the GitHub platform that serves as an ontology testing manager. Concurrently, to support the elicitation and documentation of competency questions, we have defined and implemented RevOnt, a method to extract competency questions from knowledge graphs. Both methods are evaluated through their implementation and the results are promising

    Focused categorization power of ontologies: General framework and study on simple existential concept expressions

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    When reusing existing ontologies for publishing a dataset in RDF (or developing a new ontology), preference may be given to those providing extensive subcategorization for important classes (denoted as focus classes). The subcategories may consist not only of named classes but also of compound class expressions. We define the notion of focused categorization power of a given ontology, with respect to a focus class and a concept expression language, as the (estimated) weighted count of the categories that can be built from the ontology’s signature, conform to the language, and are subsumed by the focus class. For the sake of tractable initial experiments we then formulate a restricted concept expression language based on existential restrictions, and heuristically map it to syntactic patterns over ontology axioms (so-called FCE patterns). The characteristics of the chosen concept expression language and associated FCE patterns are investigated using three different empirical sources derived from ontology collections: first, the concept expression pattern frequency in class definitions; second, the occurrence of FCE patterns in the Tbox of ontologies; and last, for class expressions generated from the Tbox of ontologies (through the FCE patterns); their ‘meaningfulness’ was assessed by different groups of users, yielding a ‘quality ordering’ of the concept expression patterns. The complementary analyses are then compared and summarized. To allow for further experimentation, a web-based prototype was also implemented, which covers the whole process of ontology reuse from keyword-based ontology search through the FCP computation to the selection of ontologies and their enrichment with new concepts built from compound expressions

    Towards a Neuronally Consistent Ontology for Robotic Agents

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    The Collaborative Research Center for Everyday Activity Science & Engineering (CRC EASE) aims to enable robots to perform environmental interaction tasks with close to human capacity. It therefore employs a shared ontology to model the activity of both kinds of agents, empowering robots to learn from human experiences. To properly describe these human experiences, the ontology will strongly benefit from incorporating characteristics of neuronal information processing which are not accessible from a behavioral perspective alone. We, therefore, propose the analysis of human neuroimaging data for evaluation and validation of concepts and events defined in the ontology model underlying most of the CRC projects. In an exploratory analysis, we employed an Independent Component Analysis (ICA) on functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data from participants who were presented with the same complex video stimuli of activities as robotic and human agents in different environments and contexts. We then correlated the activity patterns of brain networks represented by derived components with timings of annotated event categories as defined by the ontology model. The present results demonstrate a subset of common networks with stable correlations and specificity towards particular event classes and groups, associated with environmental and contextual factors. These neuronal characteristics will open up avenues for adapting the ontology model to be more consistent with human information processing.Comment: Preprint of paper accepted for the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2023 (minor typo corrections

    The Tragedy of the Self:Lectures on Global Hermeneutics

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    Why do human beings interpret their overall experience in terms of selfhood? How was the notion and sense of self shaped at different times and in different cultures? What sort of problems or paradoxes did these constructions face? These lectures address these and related questions by sketching a roadmap of possible theoretical avenues for conceiving of the self, bringing to the foreground its soteriological implications, while also testing this theoretical outlook against insights offered by various disciplines. Exploring the crosscultural spectrum of possible ways of conceiving of the self invites the more existential question of whether any of these possibilities might offer resources for dealing with the tragedies of today’s world, or maybe even saving it from some of them
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