Understanding the role of genetic testing in parental adjustment to their child’s developmental and epileptic encephalopathy or treatment-resistant epilepsy diagnosis

Abstract available at each chapter

The application of the Delphi methodology in intervention development for social withdrawal and Hikikomori

Abstract available at each chapter

If war is the answer, what is the question? A genealogy of ideas in the Greek Just War tradition

Just War theories are shaped by distinct cultures, collective mentalities, and historical developments. However, the existing International Relations literature on Just Wars has not effectively integrated the role of ideas in how actions acquire meaning and legitimacy. Even within the literature on the Just War tradition, there has been a predominant focus on the evolution of Roman ‘Ciceronian’ concepts through the Western medieval system, which became ingrained in Western thought as part of the collective mentalities and experiences of recent centuries. My study tried to address this gap by examining the genealogy of the Greek Just War tradition. The central question of my research is: how did the concept of Just War develop within Greek thought from antiquity to the establishment of an independent Greek state in the 19th century, and can we trace a distinct (Greek) Just War tradition shaped by unique collective experiences, norms, and ideas? References to the Greeks are not ethnological; they refer to the Mediterranean culture centred on the Greek language, concepts, and way of life, which leads to a precise analysis on ideas and practices that construct Just War mentalities. My study demonstrated that the origins of Western Just War traditions can be traced back to Ancient Greek thought and examined how these ideas contributed to the Greco-Roman and Christian synthesis. I explored how Christianity, alongside factors such as geopolitical circumstances, interactions with other cultures, and pre-existing ideas and norms, shaped Eastern Roman practices and created a distinct normative environment, i.e., a different Just War tradition. This environment influenced the evolution of Modern Greek thought, particularly among the Greek diaspora, during the Greek War of Independence, and in the social constructions that legitimised armed conflict as a core element of Greek identity and future Greek security discourses on various domains. Analysing Just War traditions as part of the evolution of ideas across different cultures is both methodologically and ontologically significant. Such an approach enables a deeper understanding of how communities justify warfare, how ideas give meaning to action, and ultimately challenges the positivist view prevalent in modern International Relations, which often treats war merely as a strategic manoeuvre in the game of international politics, rather than as a reflection of diverse cultures. In a globalised interdependent world, the understanding of how warfare is an extension of different communities’ mentality and how ideas legitimise practice is crucial for any aim to improve security discourses, multilateral strategy, and crisis management

The effect of emotional intelligence and emotional regulation in elite military units

Despite widespread application of emotional intelligence (EI) assessments in high-stakes occupations, fundamental theoretical and methodological challenges persist regarding how well current measurements represent the nomological network of EI and their predictive validity. The extent to which existing EI instruments capture a unified construct versus distinct psychological phenomena, remains unclear. Simultaneously, while emotional regulation (ER) theory demonstrates clear links to performance under stress, there remains a critical absence of empirically validated intra-personal regulation interventions that can be effectively deployed in real-world, high-pressure contexts. This thesis addresses these substantial theoretical and practical limitations through two complementary studies investigating EI measurement precision and ER intervention efficacy within British Royal Marine Commandos training. Study 1 examined how well current EI measurements represent the construct by investigating convergent validity between two leading ability-based assessments, the MSCEIT and GECo, and their predictive utility for military training success. Analysis revealed weak to moderate correlations between total EI scores, with similarly labelled sub-scales showing negligible correlations, indicating low convergent validity and suggesting these instruments capture different aspects of EI’s nomological network. Comparative analysis demonstrated that Officer recruits possessed significantly higher EI across most domains compared to civilian reference samples, while non-Officer recruits showed mixed profiles. Logistic regression identified only the GECo emotional management sub-scale as predictive of Officer training success, while the MSCEIT showed no predictive utility in either cohort, and no EI measures predicted non-Officer outcomes. Study 2 evaluated a novel three-component ER intervention (The King Strategy®1) combining resonance breathing, cognitive reframing, and vagus nerve reset techniques through a longitudinal experimental design (n=233). Mixed-effects modelling revealed significant improvements in Commando training performance markers for intervention participants. Under acute stress serials, critical findings included enhanced memory recall when ER strategies were actively employed, with optimal heart rate recovery occurring within 99 seconds; beyond this threshold, memory performance declined significantly. Longitudinally, the intervention increased heart rate variability (RMSSD), reduced perceived stress, enhanced interoceptive awareness, and improved EI sub-scales (management, understanding, regulation) while leaving emotional recognition unchanged. These findings contribute to EI theory by demonstrating measurement challenges within the construct’s nomological network while establishing utility for role-specific applications. The study advances ER theory by providing empirical validation of a multi-modal intra-personal regulation strategy and identifying critical physiological thresholds for cognitive performance under stress. Practically, this research informs evidence-based selection processes and provides a deployable intervention for enhancing human performance in high-stakes environments

Gendered power dynamics and the development of Mammisi Temples in Ptolemaic Egypt: reading Cleopatra VII in context

Despite the large body of research dedicated to the reign of Cleopatra VII in Egypt, little of it relies on evidence from Egypt during her reign as its primary source material. What little is referenced is often read out of context and used to prop up themes established by foreign authorship without consideration of potential conflict of interests held by the authors of these texts, or ethnocentric beliefs about Egypt and the Ptolemaic Period as a whole, which may alter both ancient and modern authors’ ability to interpret the information that is being discussed. For this study, I developed an intersectional approach to understanding gendered power dynamics as they developed in Egypt during the Ptolemaic period, their correlation with Cleopatra VII’s reign and method of rulership. This new approach focuses on establishing patterns in religious iconography sourced from Ptolemaic Mammisi Temples and utilizes new analytical tools to allow for a more dynamic discussion of themes of legitimacy, power, and gender which would in turn affect the politico-religious landscape during Cleopatra VII’s reign

Mathematical modelling of active fluids in a channel

Active fluids, such as active nematics, consist of self-driven units that convert energy into directed motion. Examples include suspensions of cytoskeletal filaments, motor proteins, bacteria, schools of fish, cellular layers, and cell tissues. This thesis presents a theoretical and computational study of active nematics using an adapted Ericksen-Leslie dynamical theory, with a focus on understanding how activity, external fields, and geometry influence flow and director patterns in confined systems. In one dimension, we investigate the effects of an orienting field on extensile and contractile nematics under planar and homeotropic anchoring. Extensile systems with planar anchoring exhibit minimal director distortion, whereas contractile systems display significant distortion when the orienting field exceeds a threshold from the initial homeotropic alignment. A kickback effect is observed in contractile nematics, which diminishes in extensile systems as activity increases. Nonlinear analyses reveal uniform, symmetric, and antisymmetric states, with activity enhancing flow and inducing bistability in contractile systems. In two-dimensional channels, we analyse the influence of activity and non-constant boundary conditions. Under inlet/outlet normal flow conditions, low activities produce localised flows, while higher activities generate spatial fluctuations in contractile systems. Extensile nematics at high activity exhibit transitions from unidirectional to bidirectional flow. For inlet/outlet periodic conditions, the system behaviour is similar to that under normal flow conditions. Variation in the splay-to-bend elastic constant ratio leads to transitions from positive to negative flux, demonstrating that active stresses can dominate elastic forces and produce unidirectional flow with positive flux for extensile systems. We also explore time-dependent boundary conditions as a conceptual demonstration of object sensing, showing that the speed of anchoring transitions affects flow patterns: slower transitions delay system activation, while faster transitions reduce bidirectional flows. These results indicate that small local disturbances can produce large-scale flows. In a biological context, such as wound healing, the tissue edge acts as a dynamic boundary where cells actively migrate and reorganise. Our findings on time-dependent boundary anchoring and activity-driven flows suggest that localised changes at wound margins can trigger large-scale tissue flows, mimicking the collective migration observed during wound closure. Overall, this work provides a theoretical framework for understanding how activity and confinement can be harnessed in systems that respond sensitively to local perturbations, highlighting potential applications for active-nematic-based sensing

The impact of autistic traits on emotional prosody and gesture perception: the behavioural and fMRI studies

This thesis combines behavioral and fMRI methods to investigate the neural and behavioral mechanisms of emotional processing in individuals with high-autistic traits (HAQ) compared with those with low-autistic traits (LAQ). The research focuses on the perception and processing of emotional information from prosody, gestures, and audiovisual displays of speech and gesture. It emphasized the study of specific brain regions and compensatory mechanisms that mediate the social communication difficulties commonly observed in those with high-autistic traits. The research involved several experimental studies, each aimed at a different aspect of emotional processing. Participants were divided into two groups based on their scores from the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), which classified them as having high or low autistic traits. This grouping provided a structured approach toward understanding how trait severity impinges upon emotional processing. In the prosody experiment, the participants were required to recognize emotions solely by the tone of voice. The results showed that the HAQ group showed reduced accuracy and slower response times, particularly in angry and happy emotional cues. The results of fMRI experiment also pointed out that HAQ participants showed less neural activation-indicative of a greater recruitment of cognitive control areas, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), suggesting more effortful processing to perform one or another type of processing related to emotional content compared with LAQ participants. The experiment involving with the gesture showed participants with HAQ had an impaired recognition of emotions from body language, especially under congruence or incongruence conditions. Neuroimaging data revealed a greater reliance on brain regions involved in processing information of self-reference, namely the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and insular cortex, implying compensatory strategies that do not fit the efficiency observed in LAQ group. This divergence in the neural pathways underlying the processing indicates the nature of the extra effort and special challenges taken by individuals with high autistic traits to interpret non-verbal social cues. The audiovisual congruence study investigated how HAQ and LAQ groups integrate multisensory emotional signals. Behavioural results showed participants with HAQ to be significantly less accurate and slower to recognize emotions on trials presenting incongruent signals, such as mismatched body movements and vocal tones. Neuroimaging showed that HAQ individuals activated a wider number of neural structures when processing these emotionally complex situations, including prefrontal regions supporting cognitive control and conflict resolution. In contrast, results from LAQ participants indicated automated neural processing in typically responsible for perceptual integration sites such as the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and fusiform gyrus (FG), consistent with faster and more accurate emotional identification. Specifically, the multisensory integration fMRI experiment investigated how visual and auditory emotional cues are integrated in individuals with HAQ. Results showed increased activation for the HAQ participants in areas of the brain that are involved in multisensory integration, including the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC.). These regions were more strongly activated in HAQ participants than in LAQ participants, in whom congruent emotional stimuli elicited more automatic processing. Further, the results suggest that HAQ individuals engage higher cognitive resources to attain the perception of emotion, emphasizing a basic dissimilarity in the manner of processing emotional information across modalities. Overall, this thesis provides evidence that individuals with high-autistic traits rely on compensatory neural mechanisms due to difficulties in automatic sensory integration. The findings underpin the relevance of targeted interventions prioritizing enhancement in efficiency regarding emotional processing and reduction of cognitive load during the performance of social communication tasks. Limitations of research include a modest sample size and possible variation in the severity of autistic traits, which could affect generalizability. Larger and more diverse samples would be important to replicate these findings and investigate further the role of individual differences within the HAQ group

Children’s experiences of the care ‘system’ in Scotland since 1945

This thesis explores children’s experiences of the Scottish care ‘system’ in the past and asks how we can uncover, recover and come to know them. It focuses on the experiences of those who were in the care of voluntary children’s homes run by charitable, religious organisations from the 1940s to the 1980s, when the homes largely ceased operation in Scotland. The concept of experience provides historians with new methodological possibilities. It allows us to move beyond seeking voice defined as a largely linguistic phenomenon to be traced in the written historical record. Experience is understood as an embodied culturally and situationally bound social process. By moving beyond the purely linguistic, this thesis seeks to develop new interpretative strategies that can uncover the perspectives and experiences of children who have, in the past, left little textual trace in the official record. The approach developed throughout this thesis contributes new analytical and conceptual strategies that can be adapted and adopted by scholars working in the fields of emotions history and the history of childhood. This thesis combines the analysis of the testimonies of 160 of those who were formerly in care, heard before the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, with both testimonies and archival materials from those who provided, managed and regulated their care in the past. By placing the memories and perspectives of those who were once children in care at the centre of its analysis, rather than the narratives of child welfare professionals in the past, this thesis deepens our understanding of the day-to-day lives of children in Scotland’s care ‘system’ in the decades following the end of the Second World War. In spite of significant legislative and structural change during this period, when it comes to Scotland’s care ‘system’, this study recasts it as a period of continuity and inertia in terms of children’s care. Moreover, this thesis recognises that care experience is lifelong and does not end when a child is discharged from the care ‘system’ and seeks to reflect the full life stories of those who testified before the Inquiry

The John Muir Award's role in the complex formation of lasting nature connectedness: a Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping study with Scottish outdoor learning practitioners

Evaluations of outdoor learning interventions consistently report improvements in participants’ nature connectedness, yet evidence for sustained impact is scarce. This gap persists because nature connectedness comes from numerous factors interacting over time, frustrating understanding of how to foster strong human-nature bonds for lifelong health and environmental behaviours. To understand how fixed-duration interventions might contribute to lasting change within complex systems, this study pursued three progressive objectives: mapping the complex system shaping lasting nature connectedness in Scottish children and young people; identifying the most influential concepts where strategic intervention might achieve maximum impact; and exploring how the John Muir Award, may contribute to connectedness under different system conditions. I engaged Scottish outdoor learning practitioners to collaboratively map factors shaping nature connectedness using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM). Through workshops and interviews, practitioners identified key system concepts and assigned numerical weights representing relationship strengths. Degree centrality analysis identified which concepts practitioners view as most influential. Child-led outdoor play emerged as the most critical direct factor, though heavily dependent on parental support and community attitudes. The model showed how key influences change with age: parental guidance is key in childhood while peer influence and community norms grow dominant in adolescence. Simulations explored conditions that support or impede the Award's sustained impact. Practitioners understand the Award's primary impact to be indirect, building leader confidence and motivation to facilitate ongoing outdoor learning. While the Award showed positive impacts across all simulations, improvements were modest and constrained by disabling community norms. This study concludes that outdoor learning interventions may achieve long-term impact by reinforcing the wider system that sustain engagement. As the first application of FCM to the fields of outdoor learning and nature connectedness, this work provides researchers with a pioneering demonstration for modelling complex nature-human dynamics, and offers practitioners a 'thinking tool' to design interventions for lasting impact

MEC-assisted integrated sensing, communication, and control for autonomous vehicles towards intelligent transportation system

Abstract not currently available