For Whom Was Built This Special Shell?’ Exploring the adaptive use of religious buildings as museums, galleries and cultural centres

Religious buildings have, for centuries, occupied a crucial position at the heart of our civic centres; anchoring communities through an emphasis on ritual, tradition and continuity. In recent years as urban neighbourhood perimeters shift in response to waves of immigration, and the cohesive congregations that supported them disperse, many buildings face abandonment or closure. In the last twenty‐five years a number of houses of worship have been adapted into museums and venues for cultural exchange, aiming to honour and interpret the religious history of the building while promoting dialogue with a diverse local community. This thesis explores the trend for adapting and converting houses of worship into museums and cultural centres. It assesses three unique sites as case studies: a former synagogue in London’s East End, a functioning synagogue on the Lower East Side of New York, and a former Methodist church in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as emerging sites located in active Anglican churches in London and the south east. My thesis postulates that former sacred places can be re‐animated by an arts group responding to the building’s spiritual legacy; utilising it to demonstrate a powerful link between the existing community and its early congregants. I argue that multiuse buildings which promote secular cultural programming while continuing to house a congregation may appeal to members of the public who do not necessarily identify with mainstream museum culture. This presents the field of museum studies with a new model for the ‘participatory’ museum: a landmark building which can respond to the distinct needs of a multi‐faith, ‘multicentred’ society. The analysis my thesis provides locates my work within at the intersection of theory and practice, and within broader developments in the disciplines of cultural, urban and museum studies, providing a socio‐historical perspective on a new kind of museum. It is intended to be used as a modus operandi for adaptive use by religious buildings

Imagining New Politics: Geography and Sexuality in Wedding in Galilee and Season of Migration to the North

Wedding in Galilee (1987) and Season of Migration to the North (1966) exemplify the use of geography and sexuality as aesthetic expressions of political conditions. In order to imagine new politics—in this case, in Sudan and Palestine—one must be in between the remembered past and the imagined future. In this film and novel, geography and sexuality are used to explore what it is like to be-in-between, and thereby they help show the process of imagining new politics. In other words, geography and sexuality comment on the process of political remembering and imagining in each work through the theme of liminality

Mutiny in Côte d'Ivoire

Since 1990, Côte d’Ivoire has experienced over a dozen army mutinies, with three major events occurring in the first half of 2017. This paper explores the underlying causes of these events, considering both this year’s mutinies and the state’s prior experiences with military insubordination. A review of the events of Côte d’Ivoire’s tumultuous 2017 indicates a number of parallels with some of its earlier mutinies, though these more recent events are perhaps unique due to the presence of a larger range of dynamics and the scale of the mutineers’ demands. Beyond requests for better pay, which are nearly ubiquitous, these events also illustrate the general hazards of post-conflict civil–military relations, including challenges related to demobilisation, integration of rebel forces, the consequences of soldiers having contributed to a leader’s ascendance, and the perils of soldier loyalties lying with personalities instead of the state.Seit 1990 kam es in Côte d’Ivoire zu mehr als einem Dutzend Fällen von Aufruhr in der Armee; drei bedeutendere Einzelereignisse waren in der ersten Hälfte des Jahres 2017 zu verzeichnen. Die Autoren des Beitrags untersuchen die Hintergründe, indem sie sowohl das Geschehen im ersten Halbjahr 2017 betrachten als auch frühere Erfahrungen des Staates mit Gehorsamsverweigerung von Militärs. Die Analyse der Ereignisse in Côte d’Ivoire im bislang turbulenten Jahr 2017 offenbart Parallelen zu früheren Meutereien, auch wenn die jüngsten Fälle wohl einzigartig sind, was die Breite der Dynamik und die Größenordnung der Forderungen angeht. Abgesehen von den fast immer vorgetragenen Forderungen nach besserer Bezahlung offenbaren die jüngsten Meutereien auch die generellen Gefahren für die zivil-militärischen Beziehungen in Nachkonfliktgesellschaften, wie die Herausforderungen der Demobilisierung und der Integration bewaffneter Rebellen und die Risiken, die sich ergeben, wenn Soldaten zum Aufstieg von Führungspersönlichkeiten beigetragen haben beziehungsweise wenn die Loyalität von Soldaten Einzelpersonen gilt und nicht dem Staat

Pre-teens' informal learning with ICT and Web 2.0

ICT and Web 2.0 have the potential to impact on learning by supporting enquiry, new literacies, collaboration and publication. Restrictions on the use of these tools within schools, primarily due to concerns about discipline and child safety, make it difficult to make full use of this potential in formal educational settings. Studies of children at different stages of schooling have highlighted a wider range of ICT use outside school, where it can be used to support informal learning. The study reported here looks beyond the broad categories of primary and secondary education and investigates the distinctive elements of pre-teens’ use of ICT to support informal learning. Nineteen children aged 10 and 11 participated in focus groups and produced visual representations of ICT and Web 2.0 resources they used to support their informal learning. Thematic analysis of this data showed that pre-teens respond to a range of age-related constraints on their use of ICT. Inside formal education, these constraints appear similar at primary and secondary levels. Out of school, regulation is more age specific, contributing to the development of tensions around use of ICT as children approach their teenage years. These tensions and constraints shape the ways in which children aged 10 to 11 engage in formal and informal learning, particularly their methods of communication and their pressing need to develop evaluation skills

For Whom Was Built This Special Shell?’ Exploring the adaptive use of religious buildings as museums, galleries and cultural centres

Religious buildings have, for centuries, occupied a crucial position at the heart of our civic centres; anchoring communities through an emphasis on ritual, tradition and continuity. In recent years as urban neighbourhood perimeters shift in response to waves of immigration, and the cohesive congregations that supported them disperse, many buildings face abandonment or closure. In the last twenty‐five years a number of houses of worship have been adapted into museums and venues for cultural exchange, aiming to honour and interpret the religious history of the building while promoting dialogue with a diverse local community. This thesis explores the trend for adapting and converting houses of worship into museums and cultural centres. It assesses three unique sites as case studies: a former synagogue in London’s East End, a functioning synagogue on the Lower East Side of New York, and a former Methodist church in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as emerging sites located in active Anglican churches in London and the south east. My thesis postulates that former sacred places can be re‐animated by an arts group responding to the building’s spiritual legacy; utilising it to demonstrate a powerful link between the existing community and its early congregants. I argue that multiuse buildings which promote secular cultural programming while continuing to house a congregation may appeal to members of the public who do not necessarily identify with mainstream museum culture. This presents the field of museum studies with a new model for the ‘participatory’ museum: a landmark building which can respond to the distinct needs of a multi‐faith, ‘multicentred’ society. The analysis my thesis provides locates my work within at the intersection of theory and practice, and within broader developments in the disciplines of cultural, urban and museum studies, providing a socio‐historical perspective on a new kind of museum. It is intended to be used as a modus operandi for adaptive use by religious buildings

The Muslim Community through the Muslim Individual

The philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal offers a new way of thinking about what it means to be an individual and suggests a course of action which celebrates the individual and by doing so describes what he thinks a Muslim individual (and therefore community) should be. My previous paper was an investigation into the question of individuality and the evolution of that question over time worked around a concept of individual in terms of inner unity of consciousness, self-recognition and identification, and awareness of personal agency. By framing the individual with these subcategories, I have prepared this paper to suit a discussion of what it means to be one amongst many and what collective identity is and does, and to include an explanation of how Iqbal's philosophy serves to structure a community (collective identity) through individuals (personal identity)

Approaching the Individual: Survey of Descartes, Locke, Husserl, and Nagel

The modern Western concept of the individual begins first with the question of oneness. What does it means to be one? Herein I will briefly discuss how Descartes, Locke, Husserl, and Nagel, as important and interesting philosophers on this idea, treat the concept of the individual. Though this paper deals with a modern Western concept, it does so in the interest of providing philosophical background to my larger research interest in Muhammad Iqbal's ideas of the individual and the individual's relationship to the community; Iqbal's philosophy asks next, 'what does it mean to be one in a community?' and thereby necessitates this background inquiry

Optically pure heterobimetallic helicates from self-assembly and click strategies

Single diastereomer, diamagnetic, octahedral Fe(II) tris chelate complexes are synthesised that contain three pendant pyridine proligands pre-organised for coordination to a second metal. They bind Cu(I) and Ag(I) with coordination geometry depending on the identity of the metal and the detail of the ligand structure, but for example homohelical (ΔFe,ΔCu) configured systems with unusual trigonal planar Cu cations are formed exclusively in solution as shown by VT-NMR and supported by DFT calculations. Similar heterobimetallic tris(triazole) complexes are synthesised via clean CuAAC reactions at a tris(alkynyl) complex, although here the configurations of the two metals differ (ΔFe,ΛCu), leading to the first optically pure heterohelicates. A second series of Fe complexes perform less well in either strategy as a result of lack of preorganisation