Business and Management

(University of Surrey)

PhD Awarded 2022

Main supervisor: Professor Caroline Scarles

Second supervisor: Dr Joseph Kantenbacher

Research project: Beyond Good Intentions: Tourism as a Driver of Emotion and Philanthropic Behaviour Change

Research description: Climate change for some provides a rationale to visit areas, like Polar Regions, before they disappear (Dawson et al., 2011), but the act of travelling to threatened areas raises the spectre of tourists loving an already dying destination to an early death. Partnering with leading tour operators and international wildlife charities, this research uses an innovative combination of biometrics, interviews and surveys to understand whether travelling leads to increases in conservation-oriented philanthropy. Outcomes of knowing how people’s relationships with nature form, and what behavioural implications they may have, could provide critical insight into how destinations can effectively meet conservation goals and facilitate greater collaboration between the tour operator and non-profit sectors

Business and Management

(University of Kent)

PhD Awarded 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Nikolaos Voukelatos

Second supervisor: Dr Vasileios Pappas, Prof Ekaterini Panopoulou

Research project: Volatility forecasting and asset allocation in a portfolio management

Research description: My area of study is volatility and the main aim is to explore and compare various models and methods of volatility forecasting. On my first chapter I aim at comparing various univariate volatility models and forecast combinations by evaluating their forecasting accuracy using standard measures of accuracy. Then, I am exploring whether forecast combinations of volatility models can help improve the directional accuracy. Further, I am focusing in an application of multivariate volatility models. Since classical portfolio allocation has received a lot of criticism, thus this study focuses on the risk-based approach, called Risk Parity (RP). This study aims at constructing a RP portfolio consisting of hedge funds which will compete against the Hedge Funds Research (HFR) RP Indices in an attempt to outperform them. Finally, risk-transformation of risk-neutral densities are compared to real-world density forecasts.

LinkedIn: Eirini Bersimi

Business and Management

(Royal Holloway, University of London)

PhD Awarded 2022

Main supervisor: Professor Laura Spence

Second supervisor: Professor Paul du Gay

Research project: A Pragmatic Stance on Small Firm Values

Research description: My research looks to examine the practice of organisational values within small firms. Specifically, through drawing on Pragmatist theory, I am looking to understand how small firms engage with their values to deal with and manage the moral issues they face.

Business and Management

(University of Essex)

PhD Awarded 2022

Main supervisor: Prof Michael Lamla

Second supervisor: Jason Cen

Research project: The impact of monetary policies and the risks of carry trade speculation

Research description: I conduct an analysis of the effects of non-FDI capital flows to China that spillovered from prolonged unconventional monetary policies held by advanced economies. In particular, I analyse to what extent these capital flows can be associated to global carry trade speculations, associated to positive interest rate spreads arising between advanced economies and emerging markets, and to the so-called global financial cycle. Finally, I will perform a firm-level analysis of the way in which capital flows influence firms' financing and the implications of this for their profitability and risk exposure.

Business and Management

(University of Surrey)

PhD Awarded 2021

Main supervisor: Prof Allan Williams

Second supervisor: Jason Chen

Research project: The impact of spatial clustering on the labour productivity of hotels in the UK

Research description: With the recent Brexit, awareness of the persistent issue of the labour productivity gap has intensified in the UK service sector, especially in the tourism and hospitality industry. Given its strong reliance on migrant and transient labour, and high turnover rates, both academics and the industry have long been aware of the gap, but new ways are required to address this. The productivity problem has both internal and external dimensions, and there has been relatively less focus on the external, especially on the role of spatial clustering in relation to productivity, which this research will investigate. The implications of spatial clustering are especially important in the context of tourism and hospitality due to its inter-sectoral nature, which leads hotels, restaurants and bars, tourist attractions, etc. to cluster in tourist destinations. This generates externalities, in the form of agglomeration economies, that can influence labour productivity. However, these are often taken for granted; the actual effects of spatial clustering on labour productivity remain uncertain. Thus, this research will contribute to the operationalisation of agglomeration economies in the tourism and hospitality labour market. The research aims to investigate the impact of spatial clustering on the labour productivity in the UK hotel sector. The research objectives are:

• To examine the impact of the degree of clustering of tourism and hospitality firms within a spatial unit on hotel labour productivity.

• To examine the impact of agglomeration economies – labour pooling and knowledge spillovers – of a spatial unit on hotel labour productivity.

• To examine the non-economic locational characteristics within a spatial cluster and their impact on hotel labour productivity. here

Development Studies

(University of East Anglia)

PhD Awarded 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Edward Anderson

Second supervisor: Dr Vasudha Chhotray

Research project: Essays on the societal effects of natural resource extraction and governance

Research description: For more than half a century the development studies discourse has emphasized that the extraction of non-renewable resources can severely impede social and economic progress. In the 1990's, these problems were epitomized by the well-known phenomenon coined the 'resource curse'. However, today, a rising policy-political trend known as the extractives-led development agenda offers an alternative understanding concerning these issues. Here arguments suggest that, with appropriately implemented governance and fiscal frameworks, governments can mitigate the negative externalities (such as corruption, conflict, and economic volatility) associated with the extractive sector. In practice, strategies commonly advocated and used to address the negative externalities of natural resource extraction are poorly understood. This research intends to further examine the effects of fiscal and governance frameworks supported by the extractives-led development agenda.

Development Studies

(University of Sussex)

Main supervisor: Nick Nisbett

Second supervisor: Dinah Rajak

Research project: Consuming nutrition: lived experiences of branded foods and the marketization of health in East Brighton

Research description: My research investigates the marketization of public health nutrition agendas by food and drink brands in the UK, and its impact on food and nutrition ideologies and practices. I am undertaking a critical examination of branded, processed foods making nutrition claims (BFNCs) that target children under ten, exploring how these products shape and mobilise aspirations and broader subjectivities including gender and class, and the ways in which they enable and constrain positive nutrition choices. I draw on insights from critical social sciences of nutrition, critiques of market-based development approaches, and Foucauldian understandings of the construction of consumer subjectivities. I am currently engaged in 12 months of ethnographic research with families from a range of backgrounds in East Brighton. This is focused on participant observation with families, learning about people’s food practices and beliefs through participation in food shopping, preparation and meal times. Participant observation is supported by semi-structured interviews, focus groups, key informant interviews, and analysis of marketing materials. The research aims to provide a grounded analysis of the “win-win” claims of BFNCs as social products, and their intended and unintended impacts. It seeks to inform the debate on regulatory approaches and the relative role of food brands in delivering nutrition outcomes in the UK, as well as contributing to wider, critical debates.

Economics

(University of Surrey)

PhD Awarded 2022

Main supervisor: Professor Valentina Corradi

Second supervisor: Dr Vasco Gabriel

Research project: Forecasting With Factor-Augmented Quantile Autoregressions: A Model Averaging Approach

Research description: This paper considers forecasts of the growth and inflation distributions of the United King- dom with factor-augmented quantile autoregressions under a model averaging framework. We investigate model combinations across models using weights that minimise the Akaike Infor- mation Criterion (AIC), the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), the Quantile Regression Information Criterion (QRIC) as well as the leave-one-out cross validation criterion. The un- observed factors are estimated by principal components of a large panel with N predictors over T periods under a recursive estimation scheme. We apply the aforementioned methods to the UK GDP growth and CPI inflation rate. We find that, on average, for GDP growth, in terms of coverage and final prediction error, the equal weights or the weights obtained by the AIC and BIC perform equally well but are outperformed by the QRIC and the Jackknife approach on the majority of the quantiles of interest. In contrast, the naive QAR(1) model of inflation outperforms all model averaging methodologies.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthoulla-phella-a4a9aba2/

Economics

(University of Essex)

Awarded PhD 2021

Main supervisor: Dr Jayant V Ganguli

Second supervisor: Prof. Christian Ghiglino

Research project: Information design for global tax competition in a post-BEPS world

Research description: The aim of my project is to develop policy relevant analysis of information exchange in the context of recent activity of global organizations against tax avoidance practices of multinational enterprises. Existing information asymmetry among countries is of key importance since national governments have incentive and opportunity to exploit it for financial gain. A government can increase its tax revenues by attracting foreign taxpayers to become resident taxpayers. It can do so through actions such as secret tax rulings and cooperation with tax havens, while at the same time use its private information on the taxpayer’s income to increase its own tax receipts. Moreover, such scenarios provide clear incentives to national government to manipulate any information sharing with other countries. Existing information exchange agreements bear the same problem. The most efficient of them are closed with limited participant numbers. The private nature of the cooperation vehicles further proves the prevalence of information asymmetry among countries. Only a couple years ago the World Bank and OECD created the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes opened to all countries. However, the question is still the same, whether such global agreement can be really working mechanism to achieve transparency. The existing literature does not provide analysis of such scenarios as it developed almost entirely in settings with complete information and where government actions are restricted to the setting of publicly observable tax rates and basic interactions. This gap is what my proposed research aims to fill. The result of the research will be the model, which will reveal conditions and limitations of global collaboration against tax avoidance.

Economics

(University of Surrey)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Esteban Jaimovich

Second supervisor: Martin K. Jensen

Research project: On the Effects of Automation and International Trade to the Economy

Research description: This PhD thesis will aim to answer the following questions:

• Can I capture the impact of automation on output growth and public finances? Should we introduce a tax on robots?

• Can we disentangle the effects of automation and international trade on growing regional inequality through studying their impact on labour markets?

Economics

(University of East Anglia)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Kai-Uwe Kuhn

Second supervisor: Bruce Lyons

Research project: Thirty Years After Privatising Water: What Have We Learned?

Research description: This paper analyses the relation between capital structure, regulated prices, and investment using a panel of the England and Wales private water companies for the period 1998-2010. The England and Wales water sector was privatized in 1989 by means of an initial public offering. Right before privatization, the British government had written off all existing debts of the public companies. Today, almost thirty years later, water companies have radically changed their capital structures from an equity-based to a debt-based model. The average gearing ratio of the sector in the early 1990s was slightly above 40%. By the late 2000s, it had reached a 70% average, with some companies presenting ratios above 90%. These high levels of debt, which are also present in other regulated utilities companies across the UK, has been raising some alarm. Some water companies have been accused of issuing debt with the sole purpose of distributing dividends to the shareholders at the expense of the consumers. Moreover, future infrastructure investment -which is crucial in a capital-intensive sector such as water- might face underinvestment problems in the future as companies' balance sheets become exhausted. Several theoretical models in industrial organisation have highlighted that regulated firms might have an incentive to issue debt in order to increase its probability of financial distress, because that forces the regulator to set higher prices. Furthermore, debt can work as a useful instrument to limit regulatory opportunism: because of the risk of financial distress, the regulator will not lower the regulated prices ex-post, thus reducing the under-investment problem that regulatory opportunism is usually thought to present. Therefore, two testable hypotheses can be drawn from this literature, that (1) higher debt leads to higher regulated prices, and that (2) higher debt results in higher investment rates. We test these hypotheses using the case of the England and Wales water sector both theoretically and empirically. We build a simple theoretical based on the existing ones, incorporating a non-Modigliani-Miller cost of capital effect. This allows us to incorporate the cost of capital in the regulatory optimal price -which in the England and Wales represents around 40% of the average bill- so that the price could be decreasing on the leverage ratio. We then test these hypotheses empirically. Our results suggest that (1) increasing leverage in the sector has allowed the regulator to set lower prices due to the cost of capital reduction effect and (2) that this increase in leverage has not resulted in increased investment as investment in the sector already suffers from a classic Averch-Johnson effect of over-investment.

Education

(University of Roehampton)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Professor Adam Ockelford

Second supervisor: Dr Arielle Bonneville-Roussy

Research project: Music, autism and learning: a transdisciplinary approach to autism interventions using theories and practices of interaction, pedagogy and perception

Research description: For those with autism, music is widely regarded as an effective means of engagement, and there are numerous examples of the unique relationship between autism and musical talent. Music provides a unique platform for interaction as it encourages reciprocity within an environment separate from the social and environmental cacophony autistic individuals often encounter in everyday life. Within such a setting, a mutual musical relationship can be developed, where imitation and turn-taking can encourage musical dialogues and interaction in a situated musical space. As these behaviours are often linked to social development in early childhood (Meltzoff and Prinz 2002), they could have positive implications for behaviour outside musical environments. Therefore my current project proposes to investigate how through the observation of existing educational and therapeutic practices of music with autistic children in conjunction with practice-based research of musically interactive games, it may be possible to identify which specific aspects of music can promote social engagement, and how these may be utilized to develop social skills more widely.

Education

(University of Reading)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Suzanne Graham

Second supervisor: Dr Holly Joseph

Research project: Processing cohesive devices as a second language reader: A mixed method study

Research description: My research aims to investigate the ways in which second language (L2) users of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) process cohesive devices in written academic texts. Specifically, it will firstly use eye-tracking technology to identify to what extent L2 readers engage with grammatical and lexical cohesive markers during reading, as well as areas where comprehension difficulties may occur. Secondly, it will use stimulated recall interviews to investigate potential causes for any processing difficulties identified through analysis of the eye-tracking data. This research seeks to make contributions to both practical pedagogy as well as theoretical understandings of L2 reading processes. In terms of pedagogy, it aims to investigate whether there are differences in the ways that successful and less successful readers process cohesive devices in academic texts, in the hope that such insights may be used to inform the development of materials and class room approaches used to help struggling readers achieve their academic goals. In terms of its theoretical aims, this research intends to build on the work of linguists and written discourse analysts, such as Michael Halliday, Eugene Winter and Michael Hoey, to investigate the extent to which their findings regarding grammatical clause construction, inter-clausal grammatical relationships, as well as extended discourse patterns and their grammatical or lexical signaling, appear to have psychological reality to second language readers. As a corollary, this research further intends to shed light on the ways in which L2 readers use lexical and grammatical cohesive markers to establish relationships of coherence between ideas in adjacent sentences, paragraphs and extended passages of text as they attempt to develop an extended cognitive model of the text being read.

Education

(University of Sussex)

Main supervisor: Mario Novelli

Second supervisor: Yusuf Sayed

Research project: Mapping the Politics of Education Policy in North Macedonia: Integration, Segregation, and Conflict

Research description: With the increasingly complex nature of violent conflict today, there is renewed interest within the international community in the ameliorative role of education. Hence, Western organisations export education and development projects to non-Western countries, which have significantly different socio-historical contexts, but share in common a struggle to balance diversity and unity in efforts to counter the danger of ethnoreligious conflict engulfing the nation. A case in point is the post-communist and post-conflict states of the former Yugoslavia, and primarily the small and troubled state of the Republic of North Macedonia, the site of this study. Following the armed insurgence in 2001 involving the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the state’s education programme was significantly altered. Driven by Western intervention a number of liberal multicultural policies were adopted to actively encourage Macedonia to employ education as a tool to manage its diverse populaces in constructing a secure form of national unity. Nevertheless, this appears to have faltered and has only reinforced existing ethnic divides and contributed to the escalation of tensions and political controversy in recent years. As a result Macedonia's education system has become increasingly segregated. Underscoring the importance of this research is the lack of empirical research concerning supranational education agenda setting, its legitimacy, and its ability to address the needs of conflict-affected societies. A greater analysis is now needed regarding policy disjuncture between the powerful multilateral institutions involved in these interventions in Macedonia with regards sustainable ‘peacebuilding’. Whilst education interventions may represent Western modernity, under closer scrutiny, they not only hold conflicting education agendas but also often overlook the contextual indicators concerning ‘difference’ in the way they handle ‘the Other’. This has a significant impact on the success of such initiatives being realised, particularly in contexts affected by armed conflict and its legacies. As Macedonia well illustrates, such disconnect and oversight can actually contribute to creating a more ethnically entrenched and segregated education system. Therefore, this research will be built around the questions of what has been the logic behind Western intervention in the reform of curricula in the compulsory education system of the Republic of Macedonia since 2008 and in what ways has this contributed to sustainable peacebuilding? But also what can this tell us of the role of Western interventions in the education systems of ethnically divided conflict-affected contexts? At the core of this project rests a prism fashioned from three education interventions, to provide ‘tangible’ access to micro to macro-level understanding of the factors constraining the design and implementation of cohesive reforms in facilitating long-term conflict resolution within a consociational context.

Education

(University of Sussex)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Tamsin Hinton-Smith

Second supervisor: Dr Louise Gazeley

Research project: Exploring postgraduate taught (PGT) trajectories through the narratives of first-generation students enrolled on Master's Programmes in England

Research description: This doctoral research is a narrative interrogation of the intersections between trajectories towards postgraduate taught (PGT) study and social inequalities. Whilst significant attention has been dedicated to understanding the barriers to entering undergraduate provision, the same focus has not been forthcoming when it comes to understanding how people access PGT study, how their life experiences inform this and what may help and hinder their navigations. This research therefore occupies an important vantage point to extend the knowledge base about Higher Education equity, widening participation and educational inequalities by thinking through these critical issues from a new perspective.

Human Geography

(University of Sussex)

Awarded PhD 2021

Main supervisor: Prof Russell King

Second supervisor: Ben Rogaly

Research project: Black Labour: African Migrant Networks and Agricultural Work in the South of Italy

Research description: My current Ph.D. research project is an analysis of the cultural and socio-economic impacts of undocumented labour migration from Africa to Europe. The aim of the research topic is to investigate and analyze the political and economic issues that the illegal entry and stay of migrants produces on European local economies and labour standards. The case study takes into consideration the labour migration flows from Sub-Saharan African countries to Europe with Italy as the first step in the migration project towards Northern European countries. The research topic focuses, more precisely, on seasonal Sub-Saharan African migrant labour in the agricultural sector in the South of Italy. The research project analyzes the “caporalato”, the migrant labour contracting system based on ethnic and kinship ties. The “caporalato” labour contracting system originated in the 1950s and spread throughout the Southern part of Italy among local Italian workers until it was fought back by trade unionist and slowly disappeared. Since the 1970s however there has been an increase in migrant flows from Sub-Saharan Africa toward Italy, changing Italy’s role in the migration patterns from solely a departure country to a destination country. The increase in Italy of low-skilled African migrant labour has coincided with the re-emergence of the phenomenon of the “caporalato”, which has taken resurfaced since the 1980s, with undocumented migrants as its main target labour force, and rendering the agricultural sector in the South of Italy completely reliant on the migrant labour contracting system. The function of the “caporalato” is to offer high numbers of temporary seasonal workers in a very short time, sometimes even just overnight. In fact, most of the migrant workers are contracted on a daily basis and will offer their labour in the early hours of the day. I will be conducting ethnographic field research in the province of Foggia in the “pista” shantytown in the outskirts of Borgo Mezzanone, in the Puglia Region, where there is a high density of migrant work force contracted in the agricultural sector. While undergoing field research I will be investigating the legal and economic system that allows for the exploitation of the migrants’ “illegal entry and stay” status in Italy and their reasons and willingness to leave Italy and its exploitative conditions and proceed “North” in order to better their lives. I will investigate the modes of action of systemic structural undocumented migrant exploitation in Italy and the reasons behind a South-North internal European migrant flow trajectory. In fact, throughout ethnographic participant observation and interviewing processes, I will address the rhetorical construction of migrant utopias and destination countries, such as England and in particular the London area. I believe that understanding the dynamics and limits of this system of structural illegality represents the first step in bringing about a change in the ways in which migrants enter Europe, are subsequently “allowed” to remain, and are forced to contend with myriads of constraints and impediments along the way. This type of research is fundamental for the management of migration throughout Europe.

Human Geography

(University of Sussex)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Fae Dussart

Second supervisor: Ben Rogaly

Research project: 'A stick to beat the present'?: Sovereignty and folk custom in the post-Brexit English countryside

Research description: Ceremonial walking has a place in many cultures: within the practices of konti (literally ‘circular processioning’) by the indigenous community of Mexico, the Yoemem (Delgado Shorter, 2009: 279); within the Japanese Buddhist sect of monks, the Yambushi, who tread a circular route around their holy mountain home (Wittig Albert, 2009: 166); and, perhaps most famously, in the Aboriginal tradition of walkabout (Russell, 2010). These examples share an understanding of identity as not only being reliant on an intimate relationship with the landscape, but also of the importance of the body in maintaining and respecting certain geographical and sociopolitical boundaries. The embodied nature of the land-based customs in certain indigenous and East Asian cultures is something many geographers and anthropologists may be well aware of. However, they would perhaps be surprised to discover that a similar practice in fact exists in English tradition too: the custom of beating the bounds. Dating back to the late Anglo-Saxon period, the very purpose of beating the bounds is the declaration by its participants of geographical and sociopolitical sovereignty over the land being walked. Once a year, close to the Christian ‘Ascension Day’ in April or May, an entire parish community would ceremonially march around its own perimeter, marking notable boundary points, often beating them with sticks or even individual marchers’ bodies. An ancient medium of mapping, or as it is often termed here, marking, perambulating or processioning, the custom had several practical uses: warding off encroachment of boundaries by neighbouring communities or estates; ensuring all citizens born within the boundary paid their tithes to the correct church and so would be buried in the correct churchyard; passing down knowledge of boundary markers to the next generation in order that they might settle land-based disputes. Despite the traditional purposes being made somewhat obsolete by modern surveying and record-keeping, beating the bounds has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity during the 20th and 21st century not only in England, but also Wales, Germany and even parts of North America. It has, however, had a particularly marked resurgence in interest and participation across southern England during the last 30 years. It is this precise resurgence that this thesis is dedicated to exploring. This thesis claims that the revival of beating the bounds in southern England during this period demonstrates the emergence of a new kind of primarily space-based approach to national sovereignty amongst modern rural England’s native-born white population. Furthermore, it proposes that this intrinsically landed perception of political independence within the southern English community during this period, of which beating the bounds is perhaps the most literal possible expression, became one of the most significant driving forces behind the Leave victory at the 2016 European Union Referendum and, eventually, Britain’s exit from the EU entirely in 2021.

Human Geography

(Royal Holloway, University of London)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Prof Phil Crang

Second supervisor: Prof Ben Rogaly

Research project: Northerners in London: Englishness, place and mobility

Research description: My PhD is an oral history project with people from the North of England who live in London. I am interested in the contemporary North-South divide, and its entanglement with histories of empire and colonialism.

Politics and International Relations

(Royal Holloway, University of London)

Awarded PhD 2023

Main supervisor: Dr Jonathan Seglow

Second supervisor: Dr Michael Bacon

Research project: Are Islamic doctrines compatible with Political Liberalism?

Research description: The rapidly growing Muslim presence in Europe makes more urgent the longstanding conflict between Islamic and Western understandings of the political world. Islamic scholarship advocates a political order grounded in faith, which is in tension with liberal democratic ideas that reject the legitimacy of political systems established on the basis of religious principles. This research seeks to address the question of the compatibility of Islam with liberal values by conducting a comparative analysis of the moral language of Islamic faith and the liberal democratic ideas articulated in John Rawls’s theoretical framework. As the pre-eminent liberal political philosopher, John Rawls, articulates a fundamental set of liberal ideas and optimistically assumes that the moral and religious doctrines of a pluralist society would not conflict with the principles underlying a liberal democratic political culture. This project assumes that a liberal democratic society requires the support of different doctrinal traditions in order to enjoy legitimacy and political stability. Furthermore, it criticises the scholars who seek a liberal/Islam reconciliation for underestimating the significance of political stability or over-estimating Islamic doctrines capacity for radical change. This project proposes to reinterpret Islamic scholastic theology (ilm al-kalam) and moral theology (usul al-fiqh) in a way of which is supportive of a fundamental set of liberal ideas, as well as re-assess key Rawlsian liberal ideas to avoid being needlessly demanding on the Islamic doctrinal tradition. The reconciliation of Islamic doctrinal tradition and fundamental political liberal ideas could assure that Muslims would not withdraw their support to liberal societies as the presence of Islamic faith becomes more prominent, thus, the political stability can be sustained. This original reconciliation of Islam and Rawlsian Liberalism will enrich both the Islamic and liberal intellectual traditions, deepen their understanding of each other and engender respect for the doctrinal pluralism that characterizes liberal democratic societies.

Politics and International Relations

(University of Sussex)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Cynthia Weber

Second supervisor: Synne Dyvik

Research project: Sovereignty and Psychiatry: Analyzing German State Sovereignty through the Treatment of Trauma, 1870-1970

Research description: My doctoral research is located at the intersection of queer/feminist international and political theory, critical disability studies, history, and sociology, and investigates imbrications of psychiatry, subjectivity, and sovereignty. Tracing the history of the trauma diagnosis in modern German states from 1870 to the present, I investigate how different diagnostic and treatment approaches functioned to cohere the nation by constructing certain groups of subjects as threats and exposing them to violent forms of treatment, heightened precarity, and death. Based on queer and poststructuralist theories of sovereignty and accounts of psychiatric power informed by scholarship from critical disability studies and global politics of medicine, I develop the concept of ‘psychiatric statecraft’ to illuminate processes in which psychiatric expertise, management and intervention crafts ‘the people’.

Twitter: @LauraJung

Politics and International Relations

(University of Essex)

Awarded PhD 2021

Main supervisor: Kristian Skrede Gleditsch

Second supervisor: Florian Kern

Research project: Understanding Trajectories of Violence and Peace in Post-Conflict Societies

Research description: More than 60% of all armed conflicts recorded by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program reignite after they initially terminate. Yet, there are various cases in which armed conflict halted, but other types of violence persisted or ensued. In this project I aim to explain how socio-economic inequality shapes different trajectories of violence and peace in post-conflict countries. I mainly argue that changes in inequality rather than absolute levels of inequality can help us understand what type of peace we will observe in a post-conflict country. I employ both quantitative and qualitative methods to test different hypotheses derived from the main argument. I find that overall decreasing levels of inequality in contrast to pre-conflict levels can reduce the risk of conflict recurrence. Yet, these changes are not necessarily sufficient to guarantee peace beyond the absence of armed conflict. Looking at the case of Peru, I disaggregate the rationale behind when and where we see violence and who employs it (e.g., the state, citizens, rebel group). Using data collected during field work and an original dataset on inequality and contentious politics, I explore the effect of socio-economic development on different levels of consolidation of peace across time and space and ask under which conditions - if at all - socio-economic inclusion is a sufficient condition for peace.

Twitter: @SaavedraLux

Politics and International Relations

(University of Kent)

Main supervisor: Professor Richard Sakwa

Second supervisor: Dr Edward Morgan-Jones

Research project: Aleksey Navalny, A Liberal in Contemporary Russia: Ideology, Parties, Elections

Research description: This project seeks to explain the political trajectory of Alexey Navalny, who has become the most well-known and influential leader of the Russian liberal opposition. The thesis will explore three dimensions of this trajectory: ideology, electoral mobilisation, party building.

Politics and International Relations

(University of Sussex)

Main supervisor: Prof Dan Hough

Second supervisor: Liz David-Barrett

Research project: An analysis of policy intractability: Can institutional corruption shed light on the climate change mitigation challenge?

Research description: As 2016 claims the title of the hottest year on record, this study asks why the challenge of counteracting climate change has proven so intractable. In particular, given scientific assessments of the devastating consequences of the planet’s changing climate, it seeks to understand how discrepancies arise between governments’ stated intentions to tackle climate change and their actual performance. With a focus on the UK – which with the 2008 Climate Change Act styled itself as “an example to the world of what ambitious climate action looks like” (Hansard 14 Dec. 2015) – this study assesses whether government policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (and meet carbon budgets) lives up to its aspirations, and where discrepancies can be found what their causes might be. Is climate change mitigation simply the quintessential “wicked” policy problem, difficult to resolve and so understandably slow to develop and deploy? Can discrepancies be explained by political compromise, unintended consequences, government incompetence or inefficiencies? Or is it possible to identify another more disturbing root to its insolvability: one best explained by corruption and more specifically institutional corruption (IC)?

Politics and International Relations

(University of Sussex)

Main supervisor: Professor Dan Hough

Second supervisor: Professor Liz David-Barrett

Research project: Evaluations of anti-corruption programmes

Research description: My research is examining the methods used by international development agencies for evaluating anti-corruption programmes and how these might incorporate theoretical advances in our understanding of corruption.

Psychology

(Royal Holloway, University of London)

Main supervisor: Dr Jeanne Shinskey

Second supervisor: Dr Jessie Ricketts

Research project: Are Education Apps Truly Educational? An Investigation into the Features of Apps that may Support or Hinder Early Literacy Development.

Research description: Apps are becoming increasingly popular and are being used as educational tools by parents and educators alike. Many apps are branded ‘educational’ and aimed at children as young as 3 months. Despite this, little research into what children under 5 years old learn from apps has been conducted, and so their educational value is widely unknown. Professionals are calling for systematic independent research to test the educational claims made by apps, enabling parents to make informed choices about their child’s app usage. The Science of Learning provides a guide for educational principles from empirical research, with several ‘pillars of learning’ at its core. Apps may support learning through the following pillars: ‘active learning’, dynamic involvement in the task; ‘engagement’, focusing attention on the educational content; and ‘social interaction’, connecting with others around the new material. The current research aims to address these issues at preschool age, investigating whether apps have added educational use compared to traditional materials (eg. picture books), and which unique app features promote the learning of school readiness skills, an essential focus of this age group and skills that are predictive of later achievement. Literacy is a key subject, with the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum outlining letter recognition, letter-sound mapping, and reading and writing one’s own name as school readiness skills that should be learnt in nursery. These literacy skills will form the focus of three studies. Preschoolers aged 36-48 months will be recruited from private and school nurseries. This research is imperative due to the prevalence of apps, their educational claims, and the lack of research on them in this age group. It aims to ascertain which app features aid learning and how best to use them, as well as providing an experimental paradigm for further app research, and informing parents and app developers about the educational use of apps.

Twitter: @grace_1102

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-pocock-273434189

Psychology

(University of Essex)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Tom Foulsham

Second supervisor: Dr Geoff Cole

Research project: Signalling cues in conversation: an exploration using real world stimuli.

Research description: Eye gaze during a social interaction is not only a mechanism for taking in information, but also a signal which can direct attention and influence others. This “dual function” of human eye movements has only recently been studied (Gobel, Kim & Richardson, 2015) and is often overlooked in controlled experiments on attention that use pictures of people rather than real people (Foulsham, 2014). For this reason, recent work has stressed the need for more realistic experiments, particularly those involving interaction between individuals (Ho, Foulsham and Kingstone, 2015). The proposed series of experiments will test the conditions under which people signal to each other using eye movements. State-of-the-art eye-tracking will be used in a well-designed, incremental series of experiments with results analysed using advanced time-based analysis. The equipment I will use will include mobile eye tracking devices as well as static cameras. This will allow individuals to be mobile throughout the interactions, enabling a more realistic approach compared to previous stationary social interaction experiments. The proposed series of analyses include situations ranging from controlled laboratory experiments to real interactions. Specifically, I will investigate how participants watch videos of conversations (and how they are affected by the content of the dialogue); how participants change their looking behaviour (e.g., their head and eye movements) and how changing gaze affects a real face-to-face conversation. This will ensure results which inform theories of naturalistic attention. The proposed research fits into recent work on social attention which has begun to explore the differences between real, face-to-face interactions and the static stimuli usually used in psychology experiments. I will take into account a review by Risko et al. (2012) who propose social attention research needs to address concerns about the nature of social stimuli in comparison to a real social interaction. Psychologists are only just beginning to answer this call, and so my research is extremely topical. The research will also lead to advances in our theoretical knowledge about how people interact, which will have a wide range of applications in different social and digital settings. The potential significance of the proposed research for theory stems from an enhanced understanding of the use of eye movements to both receive and signal information. More broadly, this has considerable potential impact at a time when the analysis and interpretation of behaviour from video is a challenge in a range of industries. By encompassing the considerations highlighted in this review, the proposed research will have significant impact within the field of social cognition and beyond.

Twitter: @psych_jess

Psychology

(University of Kent)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: David Williams

Second supervisor: Kirsten Abbot-Smith

Research project: Are mindreading and metacognition underpinned by a common cognitive process?

Research description: The capacity for metarepresentation (i.e. for representing and reasoning about the mental states of oneself and others) is vital for many aspects of everyday life. Katie's PhD research project examines the relations between the two aspects of this capacity: metacognition and mindreading. On the one hand, it has been proposed that mindreading and metacognition rely on the same neurocognitive mechanism (Carruthers, 2011). However, others have argued that mindreading and metacognition rely on distinct processes (Nichols & Stich, 2003). The project will address this debate from multiple angles. Some studies will investigate the development of metacognition and mindreading among neurotypical children and adults, whereas others investigate these abilities in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder.

Twitter: @KatieLCarpenter

Psychology

(University of Kent)

Main supervisor: Prof. D Abrams

Second supervisor: Dr. Lindsey Cameron

Research project: Towards a measure of an Implicit Group Theory in children and adults: how having a fixed mindset may impact prejudice to multiple social groups.

Research description: The model of implicit theories refers specifically to the perceived malleability of personal attributes, both of the self and of others. Two assumptions can be made about the malleability of personal attributes; the first is that attributes such as these are fixed and cannot be changed (entity theory) whilst the other assumption or theory is that the attributes in question are malleable and can be changed and developed (incremental theory). Whilst holding an entity theory has been linked to quicker formation, and stronger endorsement and maintenance of stereotypes much of the previous work in this area relates to individuals and relatively little research has been conducted into how implicit theories affect the perceptions of groups, prejudice or intergroup relations. There is growing evidence that implicit theories influence the way in which people understand the malleability of groups, however, malleability is not the only implicit theory that can influence prejudice and intergroup relations; other factors such as essentialism, permeability and homogeneity of groups are also relevant. The current project aims to develop a reliable tool to measure an Implicit Group Theory in both adults and children, and to explore its developmental trajectory. Furthermore, it aims to explore the relationship between how holding an entity or incremental theory of groups impacts upon beliefs about intergroup relations and patterns of generalised prejudice.

Twitter: @KatieGoodbun

Psychology

(Goldsmiths, University of London)

Award PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Maria Herrojo Ruiz

Second supervisor: Jan de Fockert

Research project: Biased beliefs, computations of uncertainty, and reward learning in anxiety and motivation

Research description: This project investigates the impact of everyday experiences (like with emotion and motivation) and prior expectations upon learning. By combining computational modelling with brain imaging methods, I aim to achieve a mechanistic understanding of the neural computations subserving how we interact with and learn from uncertain states. Computational models, in combination with neuroimaging techniques, are increasingly being applied to the study of psychiatric disorders. However, their application to healthy individuals that may represent a population at risk to develop these disorders remains unexplored. Here I examine the neuro-computational mechanisms undergirding biases to beliefs in healthy individuals that can give rise to more serious and debilitating patterns of symptoms found in anxiety and depressive disorders. Recent theoretical accounts of learning propose that the brain learns about its environment by comparing prior beliefs with sensory evidence to generate an increasingly accurate model of the statistics of its sensory observations—in order to make useful predictions about future states. This process can be best understood using computational models of Bayesian inference, which account for how the brain infers the causal composition of its statistical environment. Specifically, these models propose that by weighting both sensory data and prior beliefs according to their reliability (or precision), the brain can either explain away predicted sensory input or use the discrepancy between prediction and input to inform updates to our model. The greater the precision, the more influence the information has on updates. Correspondingly, this project examines how everyday experiences with emotions like anxiety and intrinsic motivation in healthy participants modulates precision (uncertainty) estimates, biasing beliefs concerning the environmental states. To achieve this, we analyse neurophysiological and behavioural data in combination with Bayesian modelling to provide a mechanistic understanding of this previously unexplored Bayesian inference process.

Twitter: @teepleywords

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-hein-361043151/

Science, Technology, and Sustainability Studies

(University of East Anglia)

Main supervisor: Prof Andy Jordan

Second supervisor: Dr Irene Lorenzoni

Research project: Climate policy integration processes in the European Union: exploring the national levels of integration of climate objectives into non-climate policies and specific implementation strategies

Research description: Although significant progress has been made in adopting more national climate legislation, decarbonisation is still not happening quickly enough to limit the most devastating effects of climate change (UNEP, 2019). One of the solutions proposed within both academia and policy making spheres is greater policy integration, namely integrating climate objectives into other policy areas, a process known as climate policy integration. An ‘integrated’ response to the collective challenge of climate change is commonly seen in policy circles as making more efficient and effective use of financial and human resources, rather than designing, implementing and managing climate policy separately from other sectoral policies (see e.g. Meijers & Stead, 2004). Drawing on previous work by policy integration scholars, a policy is integrated [into another policy area] when recognised in all stages of policy making, including evaluation as well as “incorporated at all policy levels and into all government agencies involved in its execution.” (Underdal, 1980, p. 162). This thesis aims to study the operationalization of climate policy integration in the EU during the period 1990-2020. Through applying a novel nested research design, this study aims to (1) investigate how the political commitment to climate policy integration has evolved over time at the EU level and (2) assess the different approaches to and (3) the level of climate policy integration across all 28 EU Member states on four salient dimensions, i.e. policy frame, subsystem involvement, policy goals and policy instruments.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alba-prados-pascual-086a1540/?originalSubdomain=uk

Social Anthropology

(Goldsmiths, University of London)

Main supervisor: Massimiliano Mollona

Second supervisor: Professor Sophie Day

Research project: Engineers at work

Research description: Government, industry and experts claim ultra-fast fibre optic telecommunications are essential to deliver the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution of big data applications, cloud computing, the “Internet of Things” and automation of work. Yet at the heart of the upgrade is an intricate task for engineers working in a congested urban landscape — replacing copper wiring, and threading fibre optic cables under pavements and roads. This ethnographic research follows the changing conditions, livelihoods and material complexities of the work for London engineers involved in upgrading broadband to “ultrafast”. The research will examine what these infrastructure workers produce, how they produce it, the perspectives they have on bringing connectivity to society. The research also investigates a micro-urban context for these installations — the uses, desires, and relationships that are being reshaped by the advent of ultrafast.

Twitter: @CathyNugent1

Social Anthropology

(University of Sussex)

Award PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Rebecca Prentice

Second supervisor: David Orr

Research project: Investigating kinship care in dementia: an ethnography of dementia in families in Andalusia

Research description: This research will critically unpack cultural meanings behind dementia care within families in Andalusia, Spain. A demographically ageing world population has led dementia to become a global health crisis, with the World Health Organization urging governments to prioritise dementia public healthcare strategies. More countries and families are turning to institutions to care for their relatives with dementia. Andalusia, however provides an intriguing local cultural context to explore dementia care, as despite the ‘western’ status of Spain, an EU country rooted within advanced processes of economy, politics, media and technology, people are adapting care-giving into long-established patterns of family life rather than turning to modern private/state-run institutions. Andalusia, a region whose culture is embedded with strong family networks and kinship ties, forms a useful case study to explore how family structure, public health and dementia care interplay, contributing to global debates on dementia care.

Social Anthropology

(University of Kent)

Main supervisor: Dr Anna Waldstein

Second supervisor: Dr Raj Puri

Research project: The trade in medicinal plants between Jamaica and the UK

Research description: This PhD will investigate the wild harvesting of medicinal plants traded from Jamaica to the UK. It will provide a case study to contribute to research questions of ethnobiological knowledge systems, plant conservation, value chains of herbal medicines and migrant medical ethnobotany. It will ask “How is local ecological knowledge about the wild harvesting of medicinal plants developed within the context of global trade and social networks, and what can this tell us about human-environment relationships?” To answer this I will carry out an ethnography and ethnobotanical survey of harvesters in Jamaica. I will investigate and document their motivations for the selection of medicinal plants, their choice of harvesting techniques and methods of knowledge transmission. This focus responds to a call for medical anthropology to focus on the materials used in healing and the environmental context in which they are sourced. The research will explore how harvesters influence and are influenced by their local environment, and the implications this has for the use of herbal medicines. Recognising the global influences of trade on local knowledge and practice (and therefore on the environment), I will document different stages of value chains from harvesting to processing to sale from Jamaica to the UK. By exploring the actors involved and their relationships, I will provide a fuller picture of the trade by situating it within the cultural and socio-economic context of the people involved. Through undertaking ethnobotanical field work, I will discover which plants and plant parts are traded, providing the first such study of wild harvesting in Jamaica. This will support research in migrant medical ethnobotany by overcoming the challenge of accurately identifying the ingredients of medicines in study locations remote from where the plants are sourced and processed. The PhD will focus on ‘root tonics’, a common preparation method in Jamaica and the Caribbean, made from a base decoction of roots and barks mixed with other plant parts. Though often marketed as an aphrodisiac, a wide range of health benefits are reported by users and producers. Root tonics are the focus of this project because of the local environmental importance of their ingredients, their recent commercialisation and their historical and contemporary significance within the Black Atlantic. These medicinal preparations are relevant to questions of diasporic processes of cultural hybridity in the colonial and postcolonial context raised by Black Atlantic studies, as they have an origin in West Africa and have travelled with migrants from Jamaica to the UK. Contextualising the selection of species and the medicinal value associated with them within this network will contribute to research into change and continuity of healing practices under conditions of globalisation and migration.

Social Anthropology

(University of Sussex)

Awarded PhD 2023

Main supervisor: Prof Filippo Osella

Second supervisor: Geert de Neve

Research project: Teaching and learning in contemporary Delhi

Research description: This research will explore the contemporary landscape of primary education in India, with a focus on Delhi. The research will be ethnographic and conducted among teachers, children and educationalists. The broad aim will be to understand the institutions, conditions, organisation and ethos of primary education. The specific focus will be on the role of the teacher in the neo-liberal classroom: how they perform, adapt or resist in schools oriented by neoliberal rationality, and how this response is experienced by the children they teach. The research focuses on the explosion of education social enterprise 'start-ups' in India, and especially Delhi, and questions how these projects both carry neoliberal rationality and aesthetics, and yet have the potential to instigate learning environments based on emotional reflection that derail the individualist subjectification inherent to neoliberal schooling. The research follows relational, queer, feminist ontologies as imagined by theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Karen Barad, and Bronwyn Davies as a way to reconceptualise the moments of interaction between teachers and students within the classroom. As method, I will be working as a full-time teacher in a start-up schooling project in Delhi; I will use previous teacher training experience in India joined with further training provided by my employer to examine my own teacher-subjectification process. This emotional self-examination will be conducted alongside an exploration of the relations I build with the children I teach, and the forms of knowledge and imagination we discover. The aim is to construct an image and analysis of what social and political possibilities these new teacher/schooling initiatives could hold, and ultimately explore what such projects mean for neoliberalism and individualism in India more widely.

Social Anthropology

(University of Kent)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Jonathan Mair

Research project: The ethical foundations of climate activism in Trump-era USA

Research description: Responding to the urgency of both climate change and the need to investigate ethnographically how ‘the environment’, especially in relation to climate change and energy, continues to unfold as a key nexus of opposition during Trump’s presidency, this project will explore climate activists’ engagement with the ethical dimensions of climate change and clean-energy transitions in the USA. Primarily placed within the anthropology of ethics, the project asks: How do climate change activists creatively use ethical concepts, promote ethical sensibilities, and communicate visions of a ‘good society’ in their attempts to engender action on climate change and alternatives to the current energy system? I will undertake ethnographic fieldwork in Massachusetts. An important hub of civil responses to climate change and energy issues in the United States, Massachusetts is an ideal context to study the growing social movement seeking systemic alternatives to fossil fuel extraction and concerned with the connection between energy systems and environmental, economic and social justice. By focusing on the ethical foundations of climate change activism, I seek to provide unique perspectives on: the specific forms of social, economic and political transformation advanced by activists; the strategies used by activists to generate wider engagement with climate change and convince others to ‘take action’ in particular ways; the specific ways in which climate change and energy matter for particular actors; and activists’ responses to discourses oppositional to their aims, such as those promoted by the fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration.

Social Anthropology

(Goldsmiths, University of London)

Main supervisor: Prof. Rebecca Cassidy

Second supervisor: Dr. Massimilliano Mollona

Research project: A Derridean Perspective on Uncertainty in Finance

Research description: As politicians, economists, and social scientists have alluded to, the way finance deals with uncertainty raises important ethical issues. The treatment of uncertainty, especially the uncertainty that the future brings, as something that can be reduced by mathematical models and financial analysis has played a key role in allowing finance to make huge sums of profit, whilst at the same time also playing a critical role in recent financial crashes. Explanations for this mishandling of uncertainty by the financial world, from the main interpreters of the financial markets, mainstream economists, have been found wanting. In light of this, this project proposes an anthropological perspective to examine the workings and decision-making process of finance, to complicate the rational actor, to take a social and cultural approach to the understanding of finance; to reveal the perspectives that mainstream economics suppresses. To this end, this project utilises Jacques Derrida’s concept of ethics and justice to explore the ethical landscape created by finance’s interaction with uncertainty.

Social Work and Social Policy

(University of East Anglia)

Awarded PhD 2023

Main supervisor: Dr Elsbeth Neil

Second supervisor: Dr Georgia Philip

Research project: Hard To Tell: How Male Survivor of Female Perpetrated Intimate Partner Abuse Tell Their Stories

Research description: This research uses in-depth auto-biographical narrative interviews to enable male victims and survivors to tell their story. Understanding how male survivors speak about their experiences, and what it means for their identity and mental health, is crucial to being able to support them and their families, potentially helping men to understand their experiences, leave abusive relationships earlier, work to protect their children, and help them to rebuild their lives. Listening to men’s stories in this way can help inform a deeper understanding of Intimate Partner Abuse of all genders, enriching public discussion, better informing the work of those who provide support, and making it easier for others to make sense of their own experiences

Social Work and Social Policy

(University of Sussex)

Awarded PhD 2021

Main supervisor: Barry Luckock

Second supervisor: Russell Whiting

Research project: What matters to children living in kinship care

Research description: Background: Kinship care is the long-term caring arrangement within a family for children who cannot remain with their birth parents. Despite it being the most prevalent alternative care arrangement for children throughout the world, there is a lack of research into kinship care, and even less that focus on the perspectives of the child. These children often have similar losses, attachment difficulties, and needs as others that have experienced abuse and neglect. Additionally, they must manage complex dislocated family relationships, and most live in financial hardship with very little support. The little kinship care research that has been done reflects a preoccupation with comparing kinship care as an alternative to state care rather than a family set-up within its own right. This typically produces a range of atheoretical, descriptive outcome studies, that often provide conflicting answers by focussing on the ‘what’ rather than the ‘how’. This can cause ambivalence for practitioners, academics, and policy-makers, especially within current debates regarding the role of safeguarding, permanence, evidenced-based practice vs relationship-based practice, risks vs rights, and the role social work and state intervention. Objective: This is one of the first studies that has solely sought the views of children in kinship care. It explores the lived experiences of children in such arrangements. Another primary aim was to give critical insight into whether there are differences between the prevailing adult and professional views, and children’s views of kinship care. Do what we think matters to children, really matter to them? Method: The study’s innovative approach utilises critical realism as an underlabourer, and Sayer’s (2011) work on reasoning in particular. By using a dialogical participative approach, different methods such as child-led tours, photo-elicitation, and visual methods were used to capture the children’s valuations of their lives. This provided empirical certainty with an interpretivist awareness of subjectivities. Results: The study found that by using a range of methods, children are competent in giving nuanced, and sophisticated understandings of their own experiences, needs, and intentions. They show that they do not think in terms of binaries but navigate the ‘in-between spaces’ of their interdependent relationships with their families and the wider world. As such, they challenge the simplistic notions of family, home, contact, permanence, empowerment, agency, and participation that are often used in policy and social work practice. They show how they and their families ‘do’ kinship care as a family practice, rather than as a placement option.

Socio-Legal Studies

(University of East Anglia)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Professor Michael Harker

Second supervisor: Dr. Paul Bernal

Research project: Regulating Political Discourse: Curtailing, controlling and chilling satire on Britain’s broadcast media.

Research description: My thesis aims to explore how the (UK) broadcast regulation of political content might impact on the creating and editing of satirical work made for ‘traditional’ television and radio. As there are different regulatory approaches online and in the printed press, I question if broadcast regulations are necessary and proportionate. I am most interested in the effects of applying the rules of harm and offence and due impartiality on satirical work. The main empirical section of the thesis focuses on the interpretation and application of the various regulatory codes. I interview writers, performers and production teams to understand if/how editorial policies might affect satirical work beyond that which is required by statute. If satirical work is 'over-regulated', or the regulations misinterpreted, it may cause a chilling effect on the writers and have a negative effect on democratic debate. Those who write and perform political material might feel disadvantaged working within a more closely regulated industry and/or produce potentially less engaging programming. This may result in a lost opportunity to encourage an audience to critically analyse political ideas and information. Does regulation mean that the electorate might then not have access to information and ideas which could help inform their political opinions? I hope to explore if regulation leads to (self) censorship where some writers do not produce more contentious or challenging material as they assume it will be edited out before going to air. Or if broadcasters ‘play safe’ to avoid breaching the regulations or offending the audience. Could this create a chilling effect resulting in less challenging and engaging satirical content? If this is the case it could impact negatively on citizen participation in a democratic society. Would this not be damaging for democracy? If broadcast regulation is necessary and proportionate in a democratic society, why is it only statutorily applied to traditional broadcast media? My work questions who / what is protected by regulation, the audience, the speaker or political players.

Twitter: @subridere_young

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-young-llm-36875118/

Socio-Legal Studies

(University of Reading)

Awarded PhD 2021

Main supervisor: Prof Paul Almond

Second supervisor: Dr Beatrice Krebs

Research project: UK Corporate Corruption: A Regulatory Paradox. A critical assessment in the efficacy of the UK stance towards corporate bribery and corruption.

Research description: From a UK perspective the extent of corporate corruption reached a poignant moment with the implementation of the Bribery Act 2010 (hereafter the UKBA). Section 7 in particular, on the face of it, seemed to take aim at disobedient corporations – enacting criminal liability for a failure to prevent bribery. Incumbent to the section is also the full defence, where corporations are tasked with having in place adequate procedures to prevent bribery. If successful, despite their actions and its results, it effectively rescinds their wrongdoing from prosecution; having shown that sufficient self-regulatory steps were taken to prevent the corruption. The result MAY then be that they face a deferred prosecution agreement, a DPA, where they are effectively fined for their wrongdoing. From this it can be argued that the control of corporate bribery has therefore aimed to create a culture of effective self-governance, but does so via an emphasis on self-regulatory goals and values - rather than processes and practices which help enforce that culture. The result is that the boundary between state enforcement and self-regulatory reliance have become blurred with the arguable implications of a weakened ability to enforce corporate wrongdoing.

Socio-Legal Studies

(University of East Anglia)

Awarded PhD 2021

Main supervisor: Prof Morten Hviid

Second supervisor: Dr Nick Scharf

Research project: Lextual Poaching: A doctrinal and empirical investigation into the importance of unauthorised derivative works of fanfiction to society in the digital age and how Article 17 CDSM undervalues them

Research description: Fanfiction is a type of user-generated content (UGC) produced mostly online for free on websites such as Fanfiction.Net. Amateur writers reuse characters, locations and plotlines from commercially successful works (‘textual poaching’) to bring alternative viewpoints and storylines to life. This raises issues in relation to copyright in a digital market. This thesis analyses (i) what in the underlying work attracts copyright, (ii) whether fanfiction writers benefit from any of the fair dealing exceptions available within the Copyright Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) 1988, and (iii) how the Copyright in a Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive will apply these context-heavy exceptions to websites that host this material. Most existing literature on the subject has been ethnographic in nature and focused on the media implications of fan activities. While legal research exists, most is doctrinal and based within the US legal system. This thesis adopts a distinctive approach, applying doctrinal and quantitative methods together to test the economic biases within copyright law as applied to certain unauthorised derivative works. It makes several important contributions to knowledge – it suggests that some characters and locations attract individual copyright post-Infopaq; analyses the fair dealing exceptions as they stand in UK law after the recent Pelham/Funke Median cases; suggests a potential test for the as-yet undefined s30A CDPA 1988 pastiche fair dealing exception; and analyses how the CDSM Directive may apply to websites that host fanfiction. Finally, by using a dataset of user posts from the world’s largest online fanfiction archive (Fanfiction.Net) and sales data (Nielsen), this thesis further suggests that Article 17 of the CDSM Directive contains serious misapprehensions regarding culture in the digital age. This research suggests that existing theories of copyright harm are incomplete, and there may be important social incentives and welfare benefits to permitting this type of use.

Sociology

(University of Essex)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Dr Darren Thiel

Second supervisor: Dr Anna Sergi

Research project: The Socio-Legal Construction I’d Organised Crime in Romania

Research description: This project looks at the process of policy transference in the field of organised crime. By analysing national and international policies against organised crime and interrogating law-enforcement perceptions regarding the phenomenon, the research questions the effects of globalised crime control.

Sociology

(University of Kent)

Awarded PhD 2022

Main supervisor: Tim Strangleman

Second supervisor: Dawn Lyon

Research project: From a “job for life” to a gig economy: Rethinking work, time and economic life

Research description: The gig economy is vast and includes well-known companies such as Uber and Deliveroo. These companies are operating in a socio-economic climate that is “revolutionising” the nature of the contemporary workplace. With innovation comes new challenges. Jack's PhD is entitled: “From a ‘job for life’ to a gig economy: Rethinking Work, Time and Economic Life”. His project is an interrogation of the contemporary economy and workplace, using current methodological and conceptual tools to conduct his research

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/jack-warner

Sociology

(University of Sussex)

Main supervisor: Linda Morrice

Second supervisor: Laura Morosanu

Research project: A comparative analysis of migrant integration courses in two regions of Belgium

Research description: This project compares migrant integration/citizenship courses in two regions of Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia) from both a top-down and bottom-up perspective. It uses post-structural discourse theory and post-/decolonial theories to analyse the political and policy discourse around migrant integration in the two regions. Furthermore, (semi)-ethnographic methods such as participant observation and in-depth interviews are carried out during integration/citizenship courses in two field sites.

Twitter: @MarieTuley