9,708 research outputs found

    Sponsorship image and value creation in E-sports

    Get PDF
    .E-sports games can drive the sports industry forward and sponsorship is the best way to engage consumers of this new sport. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of sponsorship image and consumer participation in co-creation consumption activities on fans’ sponsorship response (represented by the variables interest, purchase intention and word of mouth) in e-sports. Four antecedent variables build sponsorship image (i.e., ubiquity of sport, sincerity of sponsor, attitude to sponsor and team identification). A quantitative approach is used for the purposes of this study. Some 445 questionnaires were filled in by fans who watch e-sports in Spain; these are analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The outcomes show that sponsor antecedents are crucial factors if a sponsor wants to change their sponsorship image and influence sponsorship response, and that it is also possible to use participation to improve responsesS

    TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH

    Get PDF
    Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on people’s lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)

    Political Islam and grassroots activism in Turkey : a study of the pro-Islamist Virtue Party's grassroots activists and their affects on the electoral outcomes

    Get PDF
    This thesis presents an analysis of the spectacular rise of political Islam in Turkey. It has two aims: first to understand the underlying causes of the rise of the Welfare Party which -later became the Virtue Party- throughout the 1990s, and second to analyse how grassroots activism influenced this process. The thesis reviews the previous literature on the Islamic fundamentalist movements, political parties, political party systems and concentrates on the local party organisations and their effects on the party's electoral performance. It questions the categorisation of Islamic fundamentalism as an appropriate label for this movement. An exploration of such movements is particularly important in light of the event of 11`x' September. After exploring existing theoretical and case studies into political Islam and party activism, I present my qualitative case study. I have used ethnographic methodology and done participatory observations among grassroots activists in Ankara's two sub-districts covering 105 neighbourhoods. I examined the Turkish party system and the reasons for its collapse. It was observed that as a result of party fragmentation, electoral volatility and organisational decline and decline in the party identification among the citizens the Turkish party system has declined. However, the WP/VP profited from this trend enormously and emerged as the main beneficiary of this process. Empirical data is analysed in four chapters, dealing with the different aspects of the Virtue Party's local organisations and grassroots activists. They deal with change and continuity in the party, the patterns of participation, the routes and motives for becoming a party activist, the profile of party activists and the local party organisations. I explore what they do and how they do it. The analysis reveals that the categorisation of Islamic fundamentalism is misplaced and the rise of political Islam in Turkey cannot be explained as religious revivalism or the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It is a political force that drives its strength from the urban poor which has been harshly affected by the IMF directed neoliberal economy policies. In conclusion, it is shown that the WP/VP's electoral chances were significantly improved by its very efficient and effective party organisations and highly committed grassroots activists

    In her own words: exploring the subjectivity of Freud’s ‘teacher’ Anna von Lieben

    Get PDF
    This project is inspired by Roy Porter (1985), who draws attention to the patient-shaped gap in medical history, and Rita Charon (2006), who emphasises the need to bring the patient’s narrative to the fore in the practice of medicine. The principal aim was to devise a means of accessing the lived experience of a patient who is no longer alive in order to gain an understanding of her narrative. Anna von Lieben was identified as a suitable subject as she wrote a substantial quantity of autopathographical poetry suitable for analysis and her status as Freud’s patient makes her a person of significant interest to the history of medicine. The poems were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), an idiographic and inductive method of qualitative research, based on Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology, which explores the lived experience of individuals and is committed to understanding the first-person perspective from the third-person position. The main findings from the IPA study reveal that Anna experienced a prolonged period of malaise, starting in late adolescence which she believed to result, at least partly, from a traumatic experience which occurred at that time. The analysis also indicates that Anna suffered from deep and lasting feelings of guilt and shame. The discovery of additional family documentation enabled me to contextualise and add substance to the findings of the IPA study. Anna’s husband’s diaries in particular reveal that Anna: • had a severe and longstanding gynaecological disorder • suffered from severe morphinism • did not benefit from Freud’s treatment which seemed neither to ease her symptoms nor identify any cause • was treated in Paris, not by Jean-Martin Charcot as previously supposed, but by a French hydrotherapist, Theodore Keller, who appears to have become a person of considerable significance in her life. The above findings led me to investigate Anna’s comorbidities (gynaecological disease and morphinism) and to show how those could be responsible for much of the symptomatology identified by Freud as ‘hysteria’. I then explore the possibility that her psychotic-like experiences could have been iatrogenically induced by her treatment first by Keller and then by Freud. Finally, I propose a fourfold set of hypotheses as an alternative to Freud’s diagnosis of hysteria

    BECOMEBECOME - A TRANSDISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGY BASED ON INFORMATION ABOUT THE OBSERVER

    Get PDF
    ABSTRACT Andrea T. R. Traldi BECOMEBECOME A Transdisciplinary Methodology Based on Information about the Observer The present research dissertation has been developed with the intention to provide practical strategies and discover new intellectual operations which can be used to generate Transdisciplinary insight. For this reason, this thesis creates access to new knowledge at different scales. Firstly, as it pertains to the scale of new knowledge generated by those who attend Becomebecome events. The open-source nature of the Becomebecome methodology makes it possible for participants in Becomebecome workshops, training programmes and residencies to generate new insight about the specific project they are working on, which then reinforce and expand the foundational principles of the theoretical background. Secondly, as it pertains to the scale of the Becomebecome framework, which remains independent of location and moment in time. The method proposed to access Transdisciplinary knowledge constitutes new knowledge in itself because the sequence of activities, described as physical and mental procedures and listed as essential criteria, have never been found organised 6 in such a specific order before. It is indeed the order in time, i.e. the sequence of the ideas and activities proposed, which allows one to transform Disciplinary knowledge via a new Transdisciplinary frame of reference. Lastly, new knowledge about Transdisciplinarity as a field of study is created as a consequence of the heretofore listed two processes. The first part of the thesis is designated ‘Becomebecome Theory’ and focuses on the theoretical background and the intellectual operations necessary to support the creation of new Transdisciplinary knowledge. The second part of the thesis is designated ‘Becomebecome Practice’ and provides practical examples of the application of such operations. Crucially, the theoretical model described as the foundation for the Becomebecome methodology (Becomebecome Theory) is process-based and constantly checked against the insight generated through Becomebecome Practice. To this effect, ‘information about the observer’ is proposed as a key notion which binds together Transdisciplinary resources from several studies in the hard sciences and humanities. It is a concept that enables understanding about why and how information that is generated through Becomebecome Practice is considered of paramount importance for establishing the reference parameters necessary to access Transdisciplinary insight which is meaningful to a specific project, a specific person, or a specific moment in time

    Strung pieces: on the aesthetics of television fiction series

    Get PDF
    As layered and long works, television fiction series have aesthetic properties that are built over time, bit by bit. This thesis develops a group of concepts that enable the study of these properties, It argues that a series is made of strung pieces, a system of related elements. The text begins by considering this sequential form within the fields of film and television. This opening chapter defines the object and methodology of research, arguing for a non-essentialist distinction between cinema and television and against the adequacy of textual and contextual analyses as approaches to the aesthetics of these shows. It proposes instead that these programmes should be described as televisual works that can be scrutinised through aesthetic analysis. The next chapters propose a sequence of interrelated concepts. The second chapter contends that series are composed of building blocks that can be either units into which series are divided or motifs that unify series and are dispersed across their pans. These blocks are patterned according to four kinds of relations or principles of composition. Repetition and variation are treated in tandem in the third chapter because of their close connection, given that variation emerges from established repetition. Exception and progression are also discussed together in the fourth chapter since they both require a long view of these serial works. The former, in order to be recognised as a deviation from the patterns of repetition and variation. The latter, In order to be understood in Its many dimensions as the series advances. Each of these concepts is further detailed with additional distinctions between types of units, motifs, repetitions, variations, and exceptions, using illustrative examples from numerous shows. In contrast, the section on progression uses a single series as case study, Carnivàle (2003-05), because this is the overarching principle that encompasses all the others. The conclusion considers the findings of the research and suggests avenues for their application

    A Cornish palimpsest : Peter Lanyon and the construction of a new landscape, 1938-1964

    Get PDF
    The thesis examines the emergence of Peter Lanyon as one of the few truly innovative British landscape painters this century. In the Introduction I discuss the problematic nature of landscape art and consider the significance of Lanyon's discovery that direct description and linear perspective can be replaced with allusive representational elements by fusing the emotional and imaginative life of the artist with the physical activity of painting. Chapter One concentrates on the period 1936-8 when Lanyon was taught by Borlase Smart, a key figure in the St Ives art colony between the wars. Chapter Two examines the influence of Adrian Stokes and the links between Lanyon's painting and the theories developed in books such as Colour and Form and The Quattro Cento. Chapter Three analyses the period 1940-45 when Lanyon was directly influenced by the constructivism of Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. I look closely at their approaches to abstraction and assess Lanyon's relative position to them. The importance of Neo-Romanticism and the status of St Ives as a perceived avant-garde community is also addressed. In Chapter Four I discuss how Lanyon resolved to achieve a new orientation in his art on his return from wartime service with the RAF by synthesising constructivism, and traditional landscape. The Generation and Surfacing Series demonstrate his preoccupation with a sense of place, a fascination with the relationships between the human body and landscape and his struggle to find a technique and style that was entirely his own. His sense of existential insideness is discussed in Chapter Five through an examination of the work derived from Portreath, St. Just and Porthleven - key places in Lanyon's psychological attachment to the landscape of West Penwith. In Chapter Six I examine Lanyon's attachment to myths and archetypal forms, tracing the influence of Bergson's vitalist philosophy as well as his use of Celtic and classical motifs. Chapter Seven is a discussion of the malaise evident in Lanyon's work by 1955 and the impact of American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate Gallery a year later. In the summer of 1959 Lanyon joined the Cornish Gliding Club and Chapter Eight looks at how this necessitated a dynamic, expanded conception of the landscape and a re-thinking of relations within the picture field. The ability to dissolve boundaries encouraged him to break down distinctions between painting and construction so that abstract sculptural elements were now assembled into independent works of art. Finally, Chapter Nine assesses Lanyon's overall position in relation to his early influences and to St Ives art as a whole, his response to new directions in art coming out of London and NewYork in the early 1960s and the importance of travel as a stimulus for further realignment in his artistic and topographical horizons. His pictorial inventiveness and vitality remained unabated at the time of his death and would undoubtedly have continued to be enriched by travel abroad and contact with new movements in modem art on both sides of the Atlanti

    How can digital technology be used to maximise the social value delivered through major infrastructure projects?

    Get PDF
    The primary aim of this working paper is to inform readers as to what opportunities exist to use digital technology to maximise social value through major infrastructure projects. This research looks through the lenses of social value, infrastructure, and digital business, and addresses the gap around the intersection between social value, digital technology, and the infrastructure sector. This research methodology is a literature research, followed by the collection of qualitative data from 12 interviews, with participants in 12 organisations, during August 2020. The research findings reported in this working paper are structured around 2 questions: 1. What are the opportunities for the use of digital technology in maximising social value? 2. What are the risks and barriers to the use of digital technology to maximise social value? This research makes 12 actionable and practical recommendations as a contribution to the discussion and implementation of policy in the UK

    Identification of new regenerative therapies in reproductive medicine and their application as a future therapeutic approach for endometrial regeneration

    Get PDF
    El útero es uno de los principales órganos internos del sistema reproductor femenino. Está compuesto de tres capas tisulares: perimetrio, miometrio y endometrio. Esta última capa recubre la cavidad intrauterina y es responsable directa de la implantación embrionaria (para la cual necesita un grosor endometrial mínimo). Entre las patologías que afectan al endometrio pueden distinguirse, entre otras, la atrofia endometrial (insuficiente grosor endometrial) y el síndrome de Asherman (presencia de adhesiones intrauterinas y tejido fibrótico), las cuales conforman el hilo conductor de esta tesis, compuesta de 4 artículos científicos. En ambos casos, el tejido endometrial se encuentra degenerado, lo que dificulta la implantación embrionaria, ocasionando problemas de fertilidad. A día de hoy, ninguna de estas patologías cuenta con una cura totalmente efectiva. Hasta el momento, una de las opciones terapéuticas más prometedora es la inyección de células madre. Por ello, el primer objetivo de esta tesis fue evaluar como la inyección de células madre derivadas de la médula ósea (aisladas con la detección del antígeno CD133), que había resultado ser efectiva tanto en un modelo humano como en uno animal, estaba modificando el endometrio molecularmente. Para así, intentar entender cuáles son los mecanismos paracrinos a través de los cuales llevan a cabo su acción terapéutica. Este primer estudio reveló que estas células madre parecían estar promoviendo la regeneración endometrial mediante la creación de un escenario inmunomodulador (sub-expresión del gen CXCL8), que daría paso a la sobreexpresión de genes involucrados en la regeneración tisular, como SERPINE1, IL4, y JUN. Otro tratamiento que ha ido ganando acepción con los años es el plasma rico en plaquetas, eje central del manuscrito 2. Este manuscrito evidencia como este plasma, especialmente si proviene de sangre de cordón umbilical, es capaz de promover procesos celulares, como la migración y la proliferación de las células endometriales, así como eventos regenerativos en un modelo animal con daño endometrial inducido. Sea cual sea la aproximación terapéutica de elección, se ha hipotetizado que esta regeneración tisular podría surgir de la estimulación del nicho de células madre presente en el endometrio. Es por ello que el objetivo 3 supuso el estudio de los trabajos publicados, tanto de modelos murinos como humanos, relativos a esta población de células madre endometriales. Esta búsqueda permitió concluir que aún quedan lagunas de conocimiento, bien sea en la definición de marcadores celulares específicos o en de la contribución de la médula ósea a este nicho de células madre endometriales. Finalmente, dada la mencionada falta actual de una terapia definitiva para las pacientes con atrofia endometrial o síndrome de Asherman, el cuarto y último objetivo de esta tesis supuso el estudio de todas aquellas aproximaciones que se han llevado a cabo en modelos animales que simulan este tipo de patologías humanas. Este trabajo concluyó que si bien están emergiendo nuevas terapias muy prometedoras, como son aquellas derivadas de la bioingeniería (por ejemplo, uso de hidrogeles o biomoldes), todavía falta perfeccionar y estandarizar los modelos tanto animales como in vitro que permitan una mejor traslación clínica de las mismas.The uterus is one of the main internal organs of the female reproductive system. It is composed of three different tissue layers: perimetrium, myometrium, and endometrium. This last layer covers the intrauterine cavity and is directly responsible for embryo implantation (for which it needs a certain minimum endometrial thickness). Among the pathologies affecting the endometrium, we can distinguish, among others, endometrial atrophy (characterized by an insufficient endometrial thickness) and Asherman's syndrome (a rare disease characterized by the presence of intrauterine adhesions and fibrotic tissue), which form the common thread of this thesis, composed of four original manuscripts. In both cases, the endometrial tissue is degenerated, which hinders the correct embryo implantation, causing then fertility problems. To date, none of these pathologies has a totally effective cure. So far, one of the most promising therapeutic options is the injection of stem cells. Therefore, the first objective was to evaluate how the infusion of bone marrow-derived stem cells (isolated with the antigen CD133), which had proven effective in both a human and an animal model, was modifying the endometrium at the molecular level. Then, this work aimed to understand the paracrine mechanisms through which these cells were carrying out their therapeutic and regenerative action over the endometrial tissue. This first study revealed that these stem cells appeared to be promoting endometrial regeneration by creating an immunomodulatory scenario (down-regulation of the CXCL8 gene), which would give way to the over-expression of genes (SERPINE1, IL4, and JUN) involved in tissue regeneration. Another treatment gaining acceptance over the years is a blood derivate, platelet-rich plasma, which was the focus of the second manuscript. This work shows how this plasma, mainly derived from umbilical cord blood rather than adult peripheral blood, can promote cellular processes, such as cell migration and proliferation of different types of endometrial cells (from primary culture and from stem cell lines). These plasmas also revealed how they triggered the over-expression of certain proteins involved in regenerative events in a mouse model with induced endometrial damage. Whatever the therapeutic approach of choice, it has been hypothesized that regeneration could arise from stimulation of the stem cell niche present in the endometrium. That is why objective three involved studying those works, both murine and human models, concerning this population of endometrial stem cells. This search concluded that there are still gaps in knowledge, either in the definition of specific endometrial stem cell markers or in the contribution of the bone marrow to this endogenous endometrial stem cell niche. Finally, given the aforementioned current lack of definitive therapy for patients with endometrial atrophy or Asherman's syndrome, the last objective involved studying all those approaches that have been carried out in animal models that simulate this type of human pathology. This work concluded that although new therapies are emerging, such as those derived from bioengineering (e.g. use of decellularized scaffolds or hydrogels), there is still a need to perfect and standardize both animal and in vitro models to allow a better clinical translation of these therapies

    Towards thinking classrooms: foundation stage possibilities in Northern Ireland

    Get PDF
    The integration of thinking skills programmes into primary and secondary school curricula has gained increasing prominence in global educational policy over the past two decades. This research investigated the factors that influence how a particular approach to the development of thinking skills adopted in the Northern Ireland (NI) context is interpreted and implemented by teachers in early years classrooms. The Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities Framework (TSPC) was introduced as a statutory component of the revised NI curriculum in 2007 and this study explores its enactment through the perceptions of key groups that interface with the policy from a range of different contexts: teachers and Head Teachers, Curriculum Advisory and Support staff, university academics and Initial Teacher Education staff. The study adopted an interpretive approach, utilising interviews with members of these key groups to explore their perceptions of the factors that influence the effective and consistent implementation of the TSPC and to explain possible reasons why it has embedded effectively in some NI primary schools and not in others. In addition to interviews, policy analysis of key texts that shape teachers’ approaches to the TSPC was undertaken using a framework based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional approach to critical discourse analysis. The purpose of this analysis was to explore the connection between the discourses used in these texts, and the extent to which the ideological cues that underpin them exert an influence on how teachers interpret and implement thinking skills in their practice. The study also explored how human capital theory, and an ecological approach to the enactment of the TSPC based on Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Model (1979), provide different frameworks for understanding how the TSPC is interpreted and implemented in practice, with particular reference to Northern Ireland. The findings suggest that there are a number of significant factors that both enable and constrain the effective implementation of the TSPC across schools. The region’s political, social and historical context was viewed by participants as playing a key role in how policy reforms are interpreted and implemented. School leaders can play a central role in mediating the impact of these reforms to ensure that they are implemented in ways that take account of diverse and specific school contexts. From the perspective of participants, Head Teachers and school leaders also play a pivotal role in nurturing teachers’ professional learning, skill, and motivation in the teaching of thinking skills. Consistent opportunities for professional development, including collaborative working, and sharing of practice, both in and beyond the school, was viewed as the primary means of ensuring the development of a shared vision and language about thinking skills, and participants agreed that this is central to its consistent implementation across all schools. Analysis of the participants’ understandings of the purpose of teaching thinking skills, and the aims of education more broadly, highlighted a tension between approaches to education that focus on children’s holistic development, and policy discourses, especially those related to Human Capital Theory that view education as a mechanism for achieving economic goals. The influence of these discourses across a range of public policy areas, as well as the disconnect between what participants and policy-makers viewed as the purpose of thinking, was highlighted in the analysis. For participants, the integration of thinking skills into the curriculum was about developing autonomy, criticality, and independence in children’s thinking, whereas policy-makers viewed it from a human capital perspective and strongly linked it to discourses of ‘lifelong learning’, ‘employability’ and ‘skill’. From the perspective of participants, the findings indicate that for policy makers in Northern Ireland to better understand how to embed the TSPC as a core component of the curriculum in all schools a number of cross-system actions need to be undertaken. These include a baseline review of the impact of the TSPC in the ten years since its inception as part of the comprehensive review of education announced by the Minister for Education in January 2021. The data suggests that this review should ensure that teachers and school leaders are central to its design and approach and that it is fully inclusive of all schools in Northern Ireland that sit within its scope. A return to more localised support and advice services with a coordinated approach to the development of the TSPC in all schools was also viewed by participants as essential to its development and embedding in all schools. A more coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach to implementation would, it was argued, ensure that ongoing professional learning in thinking skills was accessible, including the establishment of more strategic, collaborative partnerships with higher education, ITE and Inspection Services. This changed focus, I conclude, requires a move away from human capital and sector specific approaches to the consistent development of thinking skills programmes in all Northern Ireland schools. Recommendations also centre on future policy reforms that are inclusive and that give teachers their professional place as the primary implementers for the development of thinking skills programmes in schools
    • …
    corecore