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Government-initiated schemes of cultural regeneration aim to improve both internal and external perceptions of a city, and as such offer the potential to galvanise renegotiations of place. However, I problematise the single narrative of a city that this top-down approach projects and promotes; hegemonic cultural discourse can often override, or forget, collective memory. In this research project, situated within Kingston upon Hull's transformative year as the United Kingdom's 2017 City of Culture, I apply existing knowledge within the field of theatre studies, memory studies, and placemaking to produce two interconnected outcomes. Firstly, through questioning how memory can be performed as a process, I establish performance strategies that avoid representing the past as a fixed version of events. In doing so, I expose approaches to performance practice that invite and support autobiographical remembering in order to effectively facilitate, and favour, individual reconstructions of the experienced past. Secondly, I establish the performance of memory as a tool with which to practice place. My research contributes to the field of performance and autobiography and its application within projects that aim to reach, encourage, and effect public engagement with cultural regeneration. Ultimately, I present the performance of autobiographical memory as a means of activating a city's inhabitants to contribute to, and lead, a process of placemaking in order to regain ownership of collective memory from the control of those in positions of cultural and political power.

This thesis is concerned with the role of human rights in contemporary liberal democracy and considers this role specifically in the context of the 'war on terror'. The thesis examines the relationship between human rights and security developed in this context and considers the processes through which this relationship has been formulated as well as the various players involved in development and maintenance of what needs to be understood as a liberty-security regime. The analysis begins from a critical understanding of contemporary liberalism still very much grounded in its classical tradition and seeks to interrogate the liberal character of the current regime. The necessary unraveling of this regime is done in part through a comparative analysis of the relationship between liberty and security as formulated in state strategy in the UK, Australia and the US. However, rather than understanding this regime as developed and sustained solely at the level of state or government action, the crucial role of civil society actors, particularly of certain intellectual strata and of human rights advocacy organisations, in constructing and legitimating such a regime, as well as the interplay between these perspectives, is also at the core of this study. The thesis demonstrates the pivotal role that liberal intellectuals and human rights organisations play in not only legitimating the current regime but also influencing its current form. Fundamentally, the research suggests that this legitimating function exists not in spite of their apparently critical position but because of it. The analysis in turn aims to establish whether the role of human rights in this context is indicative of an inherent political functionality or whether there is the possibility that human rights can be part of an alternative and above all emancipatory politics. To develop this consideration, a critical review is provided of certain thinkers on the left who utilise human rights principles as central to a critique of the current regime and as part of their vision of an alternative, leftist politics. By demonstrating that the effect of a human rights framework on critical interventions is not restricted to those working within the liberal tradition, this thesis suggests that a commitment to human rights principles in this context cannot be part of the development of a substantive critique of both the current regime and the wider liberal-capitalist status quo.

An increased knowledge in the solids flow in multiphase flow systems can be applied in the design of industrial systems used for power generation, gasification, pneumatic transport of material, drying, and various other tasks. An instrument was constructed for the activation, injection, and measurement of phosphorescent tracer particles in a fluidized bed riser to determine the Residence Time Distribution (RTD) of solids flow within a fluidized bed riser. The instrument was implemented in a dual-stage transparent scale model fluidized bed riser. Testing of the instrument system validated the functionality of the instrument. It was proven to be capable of determining both localized and total Residence Time Distribution in a fluidized bed riser operated in the pneumatic transport flow regime with relatively short RTD. The determination of localized RTD was also achieved in the fluidized bed riser operated in the core-annular flow regime.

This thesis was conceived in response to the recent controversy in Hartmann scholarship concerning the existence of a psychological progression in Hartmann's characters. Whilst the majority of scholars argue that a progression does exist in these works, three scholars in particular, Rudolf Voβ, Hubertus Fischer, and Otfrid Ehrismann, claim that Hartmann remains unconcerned with the inner world of his characters. Instead, they suggest that he depicts perfect protagonists who are affected by a visitation of objective sin (Voβ), or who react primarily to the demands of secular honour (Fischer) or courtliness (Ehrismann). The present study attempts to re-examine the issue of ethical progression in Hartmann's three earliest narratives. This is achieved principally by considering the ability of the characters to perceive and to make ethical judgements on the basis of their mental deliberations. This evidence is considered in the light of the objections of the scholars mentioned above. In particular, their work has reminded scholarship that Hartmann's narratives cannot be interpreted in terms of modern individual morality. Similarly, their arguments lead one to surmise that an ethical dimension in these works would be likely to reflect Hartmann's status as a clerically-educated secular poet and the concerns of his secular audience, rather than specific theological developments relating to self-awareness. A moral dimension in these works would therefore be likely to be informed by lay ethical notions and a general awareness of theological concepts concerning perceptiveness, such as would be broadcast through the penitential system. The present study attempts therefore to set the evidence pertaining to perceptiveness and ethical behaviour in Hartmann's works within the context of the lay morality shared by this poet and his audience.