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The state-of-the-art for generating accurate and high-quality hexahedral meshes of irregular geometries for finite element (FE) simulations is a laborious and time-consuming endeavour. Mesh-morphing is a technique which modifies the vertices of an existing mesh to match the boundary prescribed by another. This technique has been chosen as it has the capacity to automatically create accurate and high-quality hexahedral meshes of irregular geometries from a single template. The meniscus was chosen as it is an important component of the knee and challenging structure to simulate. Hexahedral discretisation is often required due to: multi-body contact, large deformations and complex material properties (nearly-incompressible and anisotropic). In this research, a novel, automatic and general-purpose mesh-morphing strategy was developed. Additionally, several robust and thorough methodologies were developed to assess the sensitivity and validate the performance of the mesh-morphing strategy. This was achieved through performance comparisons against a state-of-the-art procedure - the multi-block method (IA-FEMesh). The performance metrics not only assessed the capacity of the mesh-morphing strategy (i.e. speed, accuracy and mesh-quality), but also the functionality for meaningful FE simulations. The mesh-morphing strategy generated 20 challenging meniscus meshes in under a minute compared to an average of 26 minutes, with comparable surface error and mesh-quality metrics to the state-of-the-art. Also, there was no significant difference in the FE simulation outcomes. The mesh-morphing strategy offers a faster, competitive and automated alternative to the semi-automatic state-of-the-art, and only required one template mesh. The strategy can already be applied to a diverse range of geometries, and with some trivial modifications can approach a larger proportion. The developed tool can be used to improve productivity and automate the development of FE models. This could enable the design of large-scale studies and assist the development of digital twins. A wide-range of industries that require automatic and accurate meshing from 3D scanning technologies could utilise this work.

Introduction: The purpose of a player development pathway is to realise the most effective methods to support young individuals to maximise their potential (MacNamara & Collins, 2015). Within a modern football academy setting, the essential developmental characteristics are often termed environmental, psychological, sociological, physiological, technical, and tactical attributes (Sarmento et al., 2018). Although these factors have been explained to independently facilitate the acquisition of expert performance, fully-integrated multidisciplinary evidence from an English context is unknown. Therefore, the aim of this study was two-fold; firstly, to analyse these respective features to determine what outcomes support greater age-specific performance within the Foundation Development Phase (FDP; under-9 to 11s) and Youth Development Phase (YDP; under-12 to 16s) at an English professional football academy. Following this investigation, this thesis examined what characteristics facilitated age-specific development across two football seasons within the same group. Methods: During the first season, a total of 98 outfield academy players (FDP n=40; YDP n=58) participated. Two professional coaches from each age group (n=14) ranked their players from top to bottom in relation to current ability from a holistic perspective. This created a linear classification with a group of ‘high-performers’ (top third) and ‘low-performers’ (bottom third) within both the FDP and YDP. Results were standardised using z-scores and the assumptions were tested using a two-tailed independent samples t-test. A total of 87 outfield players who progressed into the second season were further analysed within their respective phase (FDP n=36; YDP n=51). A combination of 34 holistic factors, that discriminated high- and low-performers in the initial investigation, were measured at two time points across two football seasons with the Participation History Questionnaire (PHQ), Psychological Characteristics for Developing Excellence Questionnaire (PCDEQ), socio-economic status, growth and maturation data, physical performance, technical tests, match analysis statistics, perceptual-cognitive expertise (PCE), and game test situations. Development was measured by comparing the delta change between the overall player profile scores from two seasonal reports. Stepwise regression analyses were conducted to assess the predictive capability of these variables on overall development. Results: Multiple factors from environmental, psychological, sociological, physiological, technical, and tactical examinations significantly discriminated high- and low-performers, within both the FDP and YDP. Following these initial findings, developmental results illustrated significant technical and tactical characteristics within the FDP, whilst significant environmental, physiological, technical, and tactical attributes were observed within the YDP. When focussing on these factors combined, total touches change (p=0.023), taking advantage of openings quality (p=0.003), and PCE ‘post’ score change (p=0.029) explained a combined 11.5% of the variance within the FDP. Within the YDP, PCE ‘at’ score (p=0.21), total sports played change (p=0.008), and total match-play hours (p=0.009) explained a combined 34.1% of the variance. Discussion: Identifying talented players as young as 8 years of age is a complex and holistic process. Thus, academy coaches and practitioners must understand the significant features, such as practice history and multi-sport engagement, psychological characteristics, socio-economic factors, physical performance abilities, technical attributes, and tactical decision making when identifying and recruiting individuals. From a talent development viewpoint, results from the FDP support the importance of technical and tactical development during middle childhood compared to other influential factors. From a YDP perspective, results support the significance of the environment players are exposed to, whilst also illustrating the importance of PCE as a key ingredient within adolescence, to support greater overall development. Therefore, professional football academies are encouraged to deliver technical and tactical specific developmental activities within the FDP, whilst offering a substantial games programme, alongside other opportunities to participate in multi-sport activities across both age phases, to support superior development. Further evidence is needed within an English context, through collaboration with other academy environments, to support these findings, whilst greater longitudinal data is also required to understand which of these characteristics are necessary to ultimately achieve senior professional status.

The benefits of participating in regular physical activity are wide-ranging and well-accepted globally, yet physical inactivity is increasing, especially amongst adults. Occupations involving sedentary behaviour are considered a leading contributor to the inactive lifestyle responsible for many health-related problems. An increasing number of occupations involving predominantly sedentary work and the incidence of work-related health issues is becoming more prevalent, with evidence suggesting that adults spend approximately 60% of their waking time at work. Moreover, higher educational institutions are arguably one of the predominant sources of influence on society and can play a significant role in developing the nation and changing attitudes. Despite this, research in physical activity, sedentary behaviour, health and wellbeing substantially lacks in these settings. Therefore, this thesis adds to the limited knowledge about physical activity, sedentary behaviour, health and wellbeing interventions on university employees in the workplace. To elucidate this, several studies were conducted to evaluate existing physical activity levels and sedentary behaviour, followed by the exploration of barriers to physical activity amongst employees. The outcomes of these investigations contributed to the subsequent design and implementation of five physical activity, health and wellbeing interventions within the university. The five interventions were: • Accessibility and the availability of exercise resources in the workplace • Reducing sitting time through sit and stand workstation amongst university employees • Exploring the impact of seated, standing and walking meetings in the university setting • Getting university employees on the stairs: The impact of points of decision prompts • Promoting PA amongst employees through the 10,000 steps team-based competition Findings concluded that there is potential for physical activity, sedentary behaviour, health, and wellbeing interventions to be extended to other settings to promote physical activity engagement, reduce sitting time, and improve employees health and wellbeing. For instance, findings of intervention one indicate, employees engaged in 1287 minutes of physical activity/exercise throughout the intervention period and staff reported positive mood, work productivity and stress relief by having access to the exercise resources in the workplace. The intervention two findings indicate that having access to the height-adjustable sit-stand workstation resulted in sedentary behaviour reducing from 1974 to 821 minutes. Standing time increased from 439 minutes to 923 minutes across the week. The results of intervention three demonstrated that staff indicated enhanced anger, fatigue, tension, and vigour post seated meeting instead of standing and walking meetings. The outcomes of this thesis demonstrate that these interventions can be generalizable and physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and health-related interventions must be tailored to the needs of employees in other settings. The intervention four results demonstrated that 84 participants noticed the banners, 54 were influenced to take the stairs, 68 felt physical, and 66 felt mental benefits of taking the stairs, whilst 88 suggested that the banners displayed in the workplace will influence them to take the stairs in future. Intervention five showed that the daily average steps increased from 5959 to 10308, and staff reported motivation, competitiveness, enjoyment, active and behaviour change due to 10,000 steps challenge intervention. These findings support the implementation of physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and health-related interventions across settings. This thesis contributes to the existing knowledge of behaviour theories, including the Trans-theoretical Model, Self-determination theory and Social-Ecological Model in the subject of exercise psychology associated with public health, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, health, and wellbeing of employees in the university workplace.

This thesis explores American literature of the last 25 years that has staged a debate with positive thinking—a century-old American self-help discipline—and the symbiotic relationship it has formed with neoliberal capitalism. I will connect positive thinking, along with its contemporary institutionalized form within positive psychology, to theories of neoliberal governmentality. I will be using the various short stories, novels, and poetry in this thesis to discover the multivalent implications, connotations, and applications of positive thinking as a term and a practice.

This thesis explores the relationship between grammar and twentieth-century American literature. The introduction attempts to map out the many connotations that grammar holds, examining its relationship to national identity, pedagogy, democracy, cultural and linguistic standardisation, and literary criticism. My first chapter explores the connections between Gertrude Stein’s experimental work and the ideological paradoxes of the Harvard writing programme at the turn of the twentieth century, which was itself responding to social anxieties about immigration and national identity. In my second chapter I argue that Lydia Davis’s idiosyncratic fiction reflects and responds to a tumultuous period in America’s intellectual history, which, from Chomsky to Derrida, was dominated and defined by questions of language. In the midst of this ferment and the political upheaval of the 1960s liberation movements, Davis’s work draws on these contexts while continuously reaffirming grammar’s role in the ‘everyday’. In my final chapter, I explore how grammar opens up new ways of understanding David Foster Wallace’s aesthetic and political vision, viewing his key works in terms of the opposition between linguistic prescriptivism and descriptivism. By examining Wallace’s response to developments in formal linguistics, I argue that these contexts offer a key to understanding his ultimate reversion to standard English as a means of recuperating a sense of community and consensus in American society, even at the cost of marginalising the languages of sexual and racial difference.

This project focuses on American art and fiction in the long nineties (1989-2001). Specifically, it explores the critical strategies that artists working in this decade employ in their efforts to challenge aspects of the political philosophy of neoliberalism, in the wake of the declining power of postmodern aesthetics. My approach to this topic is structured around a series of readings of genres. This structure imitates Hal Foster's recent work Bad New Days, in which Foster engages with four 'terms', noting that 'some are closer to strategies, others to predicaments.' As for Foster, each genre I engage with contains elements of both strategy and predicament: they generate new ideas about remaking the word - strategies that might be considered post-postmodern - as well as manifesting intractable political and aesthetic situations beyond which the artists working in this period struggle to move. Each genre ultimately represents one specific critical approach to neoliberalism in the 1990s, from the withdrawal central to the slacker narrative to the mediation by which suburban fiction engages with financialisation, to the abject art that forces a confrontation with the outer limits of what fiction can represent and accomplish.

This thesis explores the relationship between literature and the public sphere in the internet age. The introduction identifies gaps on these three topics in current academic work, and outlines the need for clarification of the links between them. The chapters go on to explicate these links with reference to the work of four contemporary authors, namely Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace. In their writing, these authors all identify different challenges to the public sphere in the internet age and, in response, 'model' alternative modes of being in the public sphere. These modes of being emerge from the particular formal affordances of literature, and are described here as forms of 'literary publicness.' The thesis situates these authors on a spectrum of discursive agency, ranging from a view of the public sphere in which writers are seen as authoritative, to a view in which reading processes are prioritised. Each chapter also addresses how these authors have themselves been considered as figures in the public sphere. As such, the story that this thesis tells both helps to clarify the role that culture plays in the public sphere, and reveals the concept of the public sphere itself as a key locus of the relationship between contemporary literature and the internet.

Since the 1970s, the world has seen the ascendance of a new form of global capitalism and, underlying it, a new ideology with its own set of core beliefs and assumptions: neoliberalism. The rise of neoliberalism has had a profound effect on society, culture, and life worldwide. This thesis offers an analysis of one part of that broader socio-cultural picture. It explores how a specific cultural form with a particular societal focus, the literary genre of the Bildungsroman, has been adapted by authors seeking to use the genre to address the dominant political-social system of their day. The Bildungsroman has its roots in the rise of capitalism, and the exploration of certain socio-political problems is central to the genre through its core focus on the relationship between human development, the individual, and society. As such, the rise of a new, dominant form of capitalism has particular significance for it. Taking four novels by four significant authors from across the lifespan of neoliberalism – Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003), and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004) – this thesis examines how each author has sought to examine, reclaim, redeploy, and problematise the genre in order to address neoliberalism. Two key features of neoliberalism are of particular significance here: neoliberal ideology’s individualised models of human behaviour and societal functioning, and neoliberal capitalism’s global dominance and systemic functioning. Each case-study demonstrates something about how these aspects of neoliberalism have overlapped with, co-opted, and undermined core elements that enable the Bildungsroman to function as a tool for socio-political exploration and critique, and so about how neoliberalism functions culturally. Through these analyses, this thesis explores not only what neoliberalism can tell us about the Bildungsroman but also what the Bildungsroman can tell us about neoliberalism.