Narrative and ethical (in)action: creating spaces of resistance with refugee-storytellers in the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp

This paper explores how a multimodal narrative methodology can open a creative, relational and safe space, in which refugee-storytellers negotiate their positioning within racialised power imbalances. Personal narratives that facilitate storytellers’ agency have a potential to empower and elicit social change. When refugees are denied their right to claim/speak/act, the act of narrating becomes a vehicle for social change. Creative workshops delivered in the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in 2016–17 enabled us to co-construct a relational space with refugee participants, based on the principle of ethical hesitancy. In this paper we argue that the relational space offered possibilities for refugee storytellers to resist and challenge the representation of refugee stories, whilst giving rise to ethically important moments. These moments provide important perspectives on how practitioners and researchers can use narrative processes in creating spaces of resistance and social change with refugee participants

Breaking down dichotomies in the narratives of women’s activism in Morocco

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an extract/chapter published in Women's Emancipation and Civil Society Organisations. Details of the definitive published version and how to purchase it are available online at: https://policypress.co.uk/womens-emancipation-and-civil-society-organisations#book-detail-tabs-stison-block-content-1-0-tab2. Not to be cited

Method for Cooling Nanostructures to Microkelvin Temperatures

We propose a new scheme aimed at cooling nanostructures to microkelvin temperatures, based on the well established technique of adiabatic nuclear demagnetization: we attach each device measurement lead to an individual nuclear refrigerator, allowing efficient thermal contact to a microkelvin bath. On a prototype consisting of a parallel network of nuclear refrigerators, temperatures of $\sim 1\,$mK simultaneously on ten measurement leads have been reached upon demagnetization, thus completing the first steps toward ultracold nanostructures.Comment: 4 pages, 3 (color) figure

Nuclear magnetism in silver at positive and negative absolute temperatures in the low nanokelvin range

We have investigated the susceptibility and entropy in the thermally isolated system of silver nuclei down to 0.8 nK and, at negative temperatures, up to -4.3 nK. Low-frequency SQUID-NMR techniques were employed to measure the dynamic sysceptibility. Curie-Weiss behavior was observed for the static susceptibility both at T>0 and T<0; for FTHETA we deduce -4.4±1.0 nK. Our results show directly that antiferromagnetic nuclear alignment at positive temperatures transforms into ferromagnetic orientation at T<0 in the nuclear-spin system of silver, dominated by exchange interaction.Peer reviewe

Emplacement in hostile spaces: hopeless notes – commentary to van Liempt

In her keynote lecture from the Finnish Geography Days in 2022 Ilse van Liempt offers a hopeful and useful approach to understanding refugees’ processes of belonging and home-making. She focuses on arrival infrastructures, which encompass both the formal and the informal processes and structures that greet migrants as they arrive. Important part of these is emplacement, where the focus can turn into how migrants themselves become part of creating arrival infrastructures and making home in new environments, including the public spaces they inhabit. My commentary draws from my experiences of the United Kingdom (UK) hostile bordering practices, and I am reminded that hostility, policing migration and migrants and bordering practices are not only present, but often framing both the formal and informal infrastructures. Secondly, I reflect on the meaning of home here: the patriarchal and heteronormative home can follow a migrant on their route, as well as become part of the bordering practice for new arrivals. Hence for some, home itself becomes a prison, a site of violence or a place of non-belonging. Finally, the emergence of the techno-borderscape (Godin & Doná 2020) has moved large parts of arrival infrastructures, both the bordering and the support that these represent, and possibilities of home-making online, with many migrants simultaneously having reduced access to the digital spaces

Control of Multi-level Voltage States in a Hysteretic SQUID Ring-Resonator System

In this paper we study numerical solutions to the quasi-classical equations of motion for a SQUID ring-radio frequency (rf) resonator system in the regime where the ring is highly hysteretic. In line with experiment, we show that for a suitable choice of of ring circuit parameters the solutions to these equations of motion comprise sets of levels in the rf voltage-current dynamics of the coupled system. We further demonstrate that transitions, both up and down, between these levels can be controlled by voltage pulses applied to the system, thus opening up the possibility of high order (e.g. 10 state), multi-level logic and memory.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

An automated and versatile ultra-low temperature SQUID magnetometer

We present the design and construction of a SQUID-based magnetometer for operation down to temperatures T = 10 mK, while retaining the compatibility with the sample holders typically used in commercial SQUID magnetometers. The system is based on a dc-SQUID coupled to a second-order gradiometer. The sample is placed inside the plastic mixing chamber of a dilution refrigerator and is thermalized directly by the 3He flow. The movement though the pickup coils is obtained by lifting the whole dilution refrigerator insert. A home-developed software provides full automation and an easy user interface.Comment: RevTex, 10 pages, 10 eps figures. High-resolution figures available upon reques