Thermal performance of external renders applied to concrete blockwork

The aim of this study was to investigate and analyse different external renders, available locally, and to study how their use may enhance the overall thermal performance of local concrete blockwork. This study provides an insight into how the various types of renders available improve the U-value of a concrete block wall. Three main types of external renders were used as the basis of this study. Results demonstrate that the ‘glass fibre additive’ type of render helped to greatly improve the U-value of a bare concrete block wall. This enhanced U-value, however, is achieved using more expensive render systems. Thus, from this study, the energy conscious designer can assess how, with the help of specific external renders, a more energy efficient building could be achieved, or how an existing building’s thermal efficiency could be improved. There are three aspects of performance that inform the selection of an external finish, namely: Aesthetic quality (colour & texture); Cost effectiveness, as compared to other types of finishes; Resilience to adverse weather conditions, particularly thermal performance. This paper investigates the issues relating to thermal performance, but also highlights the cost associated with choosing alternative but similar renders.peer-reviewe

Narrative and Normative Disjuncture: A Queer World-Literary Reading of May-Lan Tan’s ‘Date Night’

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Wasafiri on 29 May 2019, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690055.2019.158003

Muse and Power : African Women Writers and Digital Infrastructure in World Literature

This article explores how women writers in Nigeria and Tanzania use digital media, drawing parallels between infrastructural enablement and literary worldmaking. It argues that female African writers offer insights into the embodied practices and cultural imaginaries of digitally mediated creativity, which can shed light on the paradoxical entanglements of infrastructure

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Networks, Literary Activism and the Production of World Literature

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the link in this recordThis chapter explores Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s significance in world literature through the frame of publishers’ networks and literary activism, and argues for the ways in which his work has redefined ideas of ‘world literary space’ (Casanova 2004). The chapter opens by reading the networks and structures of value made visible through the Nairobi launch of Petals of Blood ̶ Ngũgĩ’s fourth novel published in Heinemann’s African Writers Series and his last written in English. Leading on from this, it places Ngũgĩ’s critical interventions on world literature in essay collections Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (1993) and Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (2014) into dialogue with his own Africa-centred publishing relationships and trajectories. Ultimately, the chapter draws attention to Ngũgĩ’s crucial work ̶ visible through his literary production, critical interventions and publishing decisions ̶ in ‘moving the centre’ of world literature away from the West