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In this thesis, I attempt to trace the threads that links the theoretical concept of narrative to the museum blockbuster exhibition. I adopt a qualitative dialogic approach, exploring the topic of narrative from the perspective of both exhibition makers and museum visitors. Semi-structured interviews with museum professionals provide an insight into the strategies and practices involved in the encoding of narrative in museum exhibitions. Interviews with members of the public reveal how visitors decode exhibition narratives, while also illustrating the role museums play in the stories people tell about themselves. Narrative is a term that is often used in reference to museums but is frequently under-theorised. My case studies – three blockbuster exhibitions held at the British Museum from 2013 to 2015 – each approach the question of how is narrative as a concept relevant in helping us understand the critical issue of the museum from different perspectives. Drawing on the work of the Roland Barthes and the Mikhail Bakhtin, I investigate how concepts taken from literary theory such as plot structure and narratorial perspective might manifests themselves in the space of a museum exhibition. Using the concept of cultural capital taken from the work of the French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I also explore the role a visitor’s social background and familiarity with museums plays in their decision to follow a narrative or reject it. Two threads run throughout my thesis. One is the use of the term narrative to describe the multimodal, multi-authored nature of museum-making. The other is the role museums play in the construction of narratives about the past. It is in the dialogue between the two narrative threads that this thesis seeks to explore and untangle.

Mapping online performances via mobile technology among a group of diverse male adolescents, this thesis investigates the personal and institutional circumstances navigated at a secondary school in London. Exploring how adolescent males use their mobile devices to participate in online communities, the research questions how male identity constructions and peer relationships online shape embodied relations at school (offline) and vice versa. Following a qualitative interpretivist methodology based on eight male single gender focus groups (n = 30, May 2015) alongside four semi-structured staff interviews, data is analysed under three themes of Technology, Community, and Performances of Masculine Heterosexuality. Salient findings include the central tenet that mobile phone use blurs the space between school and outside of school (including home). Adolescent males describe versions of masculinity with regard to heterosexuality and girls that are distinct from those discourses performed around single-gender paradigms, often focused on violence. Technology is portrayed by the male adolescents as not static with school policy failing to acknowledge and respond to endemic picture and video exchange, free at the point of use. Social Networking Sites, accessed primarily through evolving mobile phones, transform relationships offline (e.g. ratings amongst peer groups) through online mediums (e.g. likes) and performances online (e.g. #soondelete) that only some schools may be familiar with. Banning mobile phones actively discourages transparent dialogue thereby reinforcing gendered stereotypes. Developing digital responsibility within the boys themselves lies at the heart of helping schools respond to challenges presented by male adolescent engagement with their personal mobile phones. Triangulating the needs of the boys alongside developing parent & carer understanding of mobile phone and ensuring staff training is effectively deployed should reduce risk to age inappropriate material (e.g. pornography) as well as ensure future mobile use remains focused on preparing the boys for whichever technological advancements lie in their future.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the rock-art of Egypt’s Central Eastern Desert in order to outline the petroglyphs’ distribution and influences on their location, to date them, and to explore the reasons why they were created. The area is notable for the presence of boat petroglyphs, along with images of people and a wide range of fauna, in the middle of the desert many miles from the Nile and Red Sea. Since Hans Winkler’s pioneering work in the 1930’s, the corpus covering the whole of the area has been considerably increased due to work from the 1980’s to the present, thanks mainly to the Eastern Desert Survey (EDS) and the Rock Art Topographical Survey (RATS). The construction of a comprehensive corpus enables an analysis of the distribution of the approximately 4000 images, the dating of a significant majority of the rock-art sites and interpretation of the reasons for their creation. Many of the petroglyphs were probably made in the early predynastic period: Naqada I c to II a/b (which scholars generally date from 3750 to 3650 BCE), and often show hunting scenes associated with boats, or even have vessels integrated within them. As the spatial analysis carried out in this work demonstrates, these motifs are often located in shaded locations and, especially in the south of the survey area, near to the entrances to side wadis. In contrast, the smaller numbers of dynastic and Greco-Roman images are usually situated on routes to the mines and quarries of the Eastern Desert, as well as to the Red Sea. This thesis also proposes a new approach to the interpretation of boats and the figures with arms raised and incurved above the head. As opposed to common scholarly practice where they have previously been interpreted by retrospective comparison with pharaonic themes, I pursue a synchronic approach to interpretation, placing the predynastic motifs in Naqada culture funerary context linked to hunting as an elite activity. The later rock-art is divided between pharaonic images related to mining and quarrying expeditions, and horse and camel riders pictured in unique conflict scenes.

This thesis seeks critically to examine Sierra Leone's participation in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). From a more general perspective, it assesses the role and contribution of regional integration and co-operation groupings in developing regions to national development. ECOWAS, an originally economic integration arrangement with common market objectives, has uniquely taken on security and defence responsibilities with the formation of the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in 1990 to help resolve the Liberian civil war. Within the context of regional security and political co-operative, an ECOWAS Peace Plan brought about a resolution of the Liberian conflict and restoration of constitutional rule in Sierra Leone. This inevitably has had serious consequences for ECOWAS member states like Sierra Leone. In addition to the financial and political constraints of the regional security initiative, ECOWAS integration objectives such as trade liberalisation, harmonisation of economic policies, and the free movement of the factors of production, have debilitating economic, political and socio-cultural consequences for the country. The implementation of these regional policies constrain the political sovereignty, economic and fiscal autonomy of Sierra Leone. The purpose of this thesis is to attempt a cost-benefit analysis of Sierra Leone's ECOWAS membership, using integration theory as the conceptual framework for analysis. An examination of the traditional and recent theories of regionalism will assess the utility of these conceptual models in explaining, or providing an understanding of, the regional integration process in West Africa. The thesis argues that incremental pragmatism provides a more convincing explanation of Sierra Leone's ECOWAS integration and the integration process in West Africa. The evaluation of this multi-sectoral project will seek to assess the political, economic, and socio-cultural gains and losses of Sierra Leone's ECOWAS membership. The analysis of Sierra Leone's ECOWAS membership will be instructive in understanding the problems of distribution of the benefit of integration which had led to the disintegration of many integration schemes in Third World regions. Evaluation of Sierra Leone's ECOWAS integration, would invariably provide an insight into other member states politics of economic integration. It is hoped that this pioneer study will generate further research interest among ECOWAS countries in their search for a viable development strategy.

Evidence suggests that host immunity has an important bearing on the growth and spread of malignant tumours. Naturally occurring immuno? suppressive substances have been demonstrated in the plasma of cancer patients, but the nature and relevance of such factors to the impaired immunity of cancer patients and to tumour behaviour are poorly understood. Cellular immunity is impaired in malnourished subjects also; although nutritional repletion with fat-free intravenous fluids may improve nutritional and immunological parameters, the immunological consequences of using solutions rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids are largely unknown. The aims of the study were to quantify the lymphocyte suppressive activity of plasma (plasma suppressive activity, PSA) and to identify specific substances associated with suppressive activity in plasma from normal subjects, and patients with benign or malignant diseases and with various degrees of malnutrition. Also, an attempt was made to correlate PSA with tumour behaviour in an animal model, firstly by measuring PSA before, during and after tumour growth, and secondly by observing tumour growth after artificially increasing PSA. In other studies in vitro lymphocyte reactivity was measured firstly after incubation with fat emulsion, and secondly in patients receiving parenteral fat emulsions. The study found that PSA was low in healthy subjects and patients with benign disease, and was associated entirely with the plasma protease inhibitor alpha-2-macroglobulin (A2M). PSA was raised moderately, although significantly, in malnourished patients with benign disease and correlated significantly with the extent of nutritional impairment; PSA was associated mainly with A2M but also with a small molecular weight peptide fraction. Patients with malignant disease had very high PSA which did not correlate with nutritional impairment and which was associated mainly with A2M but also with immune complexes, IgG, Fc fragments and a small molecular weight peptide fraction. Plasma A2M concentrations did not differ significantly between subject groups although the amount of suppressive activity associated with A2M did. PSA increased with tumour growth in the animal model but returned to pre-tumour levels after complete removal of tumours. Tumour growth was increased significantly in animals in which PSA was elevated at the time of tumour transplantation. Intravenous fluids containing fat significantly depressed in vitro lymphocyte reactivity in the laboratory and clinical studies. The study shows that A2M is an important regulator of lymphocyte reactivity in health and in malignant disease, and demonstrates a mechanism of immunological evasion by tumours by way of naturally occurring immunoregulatory plasma factors.

A deuterium bubble chamber experiment to investigate the inter-actions of K¯ mesons with neutrons at two incident momenta, 1.45 Gev/C and 1.65 Gev/C, is here reported. Assuming a Hulthen distribution of neutron momentum within the deuteron and using the impulse approximation, an expression is obtained to allow the neutron cross-section to be unfolded from observed effective mass distributions. Energy dependent cross-sections are reported for the principal inelastic channels. In four of these, angular distributions are fitted to Legendre polynomial series, and the coefficients are here reported. A partial wave analysis of the ∧π channel is attempted, and the fits are reported. Evidence is found for the existence of the ∑(2030) and ∑(1910) resonances, but not the proposed ∑(1815) resonance. Values are reported for the parameters of the ∑(2030) and ∑(1910) resonances.

In 1994 Ethiopia introduced a federal system of government as a national level approach to intra-state conflict management. Homogenisation of cultures and languages by the earlier regimes led to the emergence of ethno-national movements and civil wars that culminated in the collapse of the unitary state in 1991. For this reason, the federal system that recognises ethnic groups' rights is the first step in transforming the structural causes of civil wars in Ethiopia. Against this background this research examines whether the federal arrangement has created an enabling environment in managing conflicts in the country. To understand this problematic, the thesis conceptualises and analyses federalism and conflict management using a qualitative research design based on in-depth interviewing and content-based thematic analysis - taking the case study of the Benishangul-Gumuz regional state. The findings of the study demonstrate that different factors hinder the federal process. First, the constitutional focus on ethnic groups' rights has led, in practice, to lessened attention to citizenship and minority rights protection in the regional states. Second, the federal process encourages ethnic-based elite groups to compete in controlling regional and local state powers and resources. This has greatly contributed to the emergence of ethnic-based violent conflicts, hostile intergovernmental relationships and lack of law and order along the common borders of the regional states. Third, the centralised policy and decision making process of the ruling party has hindered genuine democratic participation of citizens and self-determination of the ethnic groups. This undermines the capacity of the regional states and makes the federal structure vulnerable to the dynamics of political change. The conflicts in Benishangul-Gumuz emanate from these causes, but lack of territorial land use rights of the indigenous people and lack of proportional political representation of the non-indigenous people are the principal manifestations. The research concludes by identifying the issues that determine the sustainability of the federal structure. Some of them include: making constitutional amendments which consider citizenship rights and minority rights protection; enhancing the democratic participation of citizens by developing the capacities of the regional states and correcting the organisational weakness of the multi-national political parties; encouraging co-operative intergovernmental relationships, and maintaining the territorial land use rights of the Benishangul-Gumuz indigenous people.

The level of brutality and violence against children abducted and forcefully conscripted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda pricked the conscience of humanity. The suffering of the people in northern Uganda was described by Jan Egeland, the former United Nations Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, as 'the biggest forgotten humanitarian crisis in the world'. This study is primarily concerned with the plight of child soldiers in northern Uganda and how their effective reintegration and rehabilitation (RR) could lead to successful peacebuilding. The study is premised on the hypothesis that 'the promotion of the RR of former child soldiers by providing psychosocial support based on traditional and indigenous resources may contribute to conditions of peace and stability in northern Uganda'. The main contribution of this research is that it explores the relevance of psychosocial support based on the traditional and indigenous resources to the RR of child soldiers and peacebuilding of war-torn societies. Psychosocial support based on traditional and indigenous resources as an element of peacebuilding has been the neglected element of peacebuilding by the liberal peacebuilding interventions in most war-torn societies. For example, while traditional and indigenous resources in northern Uganda have been instrumental in the RR of former child soldiers, most scholars and policy makers have largely paid attention to the usual official government and United Nations structured top-down interventions that emphasize Western approaches of peacebuilding. More so, the official approaches have tended to marginalize the plight of former child soldiers in the reconstruction and peacebuilding of northern Uganda. Yet, failing to pay sufficient attention to effective RR of child soldiers could undermine the peace dividends already achieved in northern Uganda. The study also analyses the limitations of psychosocial support based on traditional and indigenous resources in the RR of former child soldiers. It further examines why Western approaches of psychosocial support in the RR of child soldiers have remained in use in spite of the criticisms levelled against them. The study examines other peacebuilding interventions, both official and unofficial, that have been implemented in northern Uganda. In terms of key findings, the study establishes that traditional and indigenous resources are still popular and have been widely used in northern Uganda in the RR of child soldiers. Majority of former child soldiers who were interviewed observed that they found traditional and indigenous resources more helpful than the Western models of psychosocial support. However, it was also established that there is a significant section of former child soldiers who found Western models more relevant in their RR processes. Based on these findings, the study recommends an integrative and holistic model of psychosocial support that blends good elements from both traditional and indigenous resources and Western approaches with greater emphasis on the former.

Current approaches to post-war state reconstruction are primarily dominated by the liberal peace thesis. These approaches tend to ignore the indigenous institutions, societal resources and cultural agencies of post-conflict societies, although such entities are rooted in the sociological, historical, political and environmental realities of these societies. Such universalised and 'best practice' approaches, more often than not, tend to reproduce artificial states. The Poro and Sande are the largest indigenous sodality institutions in the 'hinterlands' - a pejorative term attributed to rural Liberia and Sierra Leone. Both the Poro and Sande exercise spiritual, political, economic and social authority. In this thesis, I use critical realism and the case study approach to investigate: a) the extent to which the liberal peace practitioners who are leading state reconstruction in Liberia and Sierra Leone recognised the role and potential utility of the Poro and Sande institutions; b) the extent to which the Poro and Sande were engaged; and c) the implications for the quality and viability of the reconstructed states. This evidence-based research suggests that the liberal peace project sidelined indigenous institutions, including the Poro and Sande, in the post-war recovery and rebuilding exercises. The disregard for indigenous and emerging resources in the context of state reconstruction in Liberia and Sierra Leone has contributed to the resurgence of 19th century counter-hegemonic resistance from the sodality-governed interior of both countries. At the same time, the reconstructed states are drifting back towards their pre-war status quo. Authority structures remain fragmented, kleptocracy is being restored, webs of militarised patronage networks are being emboldened, and spaces for constructive dialogues are shrinking. This thesis underscores the need for indigenisation as a complementary strategy to help reverse the deterioration, and to maximise gains from massive investments in peacebuilding.