Durham University

Research Question: What factors at individual, health service provision and system levels are influencing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) service uptake? Rationale: In many Afghan ethnic groups, girls and women face heavier risks of disease and infection than men. Their diminished economic and social status compromises their ability to select healthier life strategies and access to sexual reproductive health (SRH) services. The Afghan government estimates a high maternal mortality ratio (327/100,000 live births) in Afghanistan. However, due to inadequate reliability of data, the true maternal mortality and morbidity ratio remain unknown. A deeper understanding of the policy and social factors that impact on poor SRH service uptake would help the development of applicable and successful SRH Policy and frame applicable and appropriate approaches for sustainable SRH service uptake in Afghanistan. Method: It is a qualitative policy analysis using the ‘Broader Framework of Thinking’...

Throughout the world people motivated by their Christian faith are relocating into low-income neighbourhoods, slums and shanty towns as a response to poverty. These practitioners (I call them relocators) believe that close proximity with people who experience poverty enables missional, ecclesial and spiritual transformation. In Just Friendship I propose that there are also political and societal implications of this practice and construct a theological framework that challenges relocators to incorporate this into their practice. Initially I survey the literature written by relocators in the United Kingdom. I argue that their use of incarnational living to describe their practice is unhelpful as it oversimplifies the context and produces a reductionist theology. From this, I explore how the sociological frameworks of social citizenship, vulnerability and resilience provide a way of understanding the complexity of low-income neighbourhoods that ensures the theological framework reloca...

The link between music and emotion is essential for understanding the importance of music in life. A significant variety of research has focused on perceived emotion in musical sound and music-evoked emotion in listening. However, what performers experience has only recently begun to attract scholarly attention. Research in non-performance music activities, such as communal singing or simply “jamming” with friends, is sparse. This thesis aims to answer the following questions about the latter: Do singers experience actual emotion while singing? If so, do such experiences fit with prevailing emotion models? What lingering effects come from emotion in music- making? The answers to these questions may promote the understanding of music and emotion in several fields of study, such as cognitive musicology, music therapy, music in education, and congregational music studies.

An examination of congregational singing addresses these questions. Two aspects of the activity suggest broader applications of the findings: communal singing does not include the elements of practice and performance inherent in choral music; and many Christian congregations sing for distinctly non-music goals, such as theological instruction, spiritual maturation, or a palpable engagement with God. Two Filipino Baptist churches with strong singing traditions agreed to an in-depth study of their congregational singing experiences to help answer the research questions.

The research was shaped by the use of the Component Process Model (CPM), a framework rooted in the idea that emotion is primarily a cognitive experience. A combination of ethnographic surveys and phenomenological interviews was used to gather data about the theological expectations of and personal experiences in congregational singing. The data was then examined through the lens of the CPM. The results of the study are presented after chapters detailing emotion theories, the theological perspectives of the case study churches, methodology, and descriptions about the churches and their congregational song repertory. A final chapter presents other pertinent findings.

The triangulation of emotion theory, theology of emotion, and phenomenology of emotion in performative music activity created for this thesis offers a significant approach to further study the complexity of emotion experience in communal singing and other music-making experiences.

The present study deals with reconstruction of the ancient courses of the Tigris and the Euphrates in the Mesopotamian floodplain, which covers most of the central and southern parts of Iraq. The focus is on tracing palaeochannel courses, determining when these palaeochannels were active, and understanding the patterns of avulsion and its impact on human settlements of ancient civilisations. The research was carried out using a combination of geological, geomorphological, remote sensing, historical and archaeological approaches. Fieldwork included “groundtruthing” of the remote sensing work. A total of thirty seven boreholes were dug, sedimentary and geomorphologic documentation has been carried out, and twenty five shell samples were collected, and analysed by radiocarbon dating. This study has reconstructed palaeochannels and archaeological sites within the area of southern Mesopotamia; intensive networks of palaeochannels and archaeological sites within the study area have been i...

This thesis investigates the topic of human imagery and hybrid human imagery rendered on metalwork of early Anglo-Saxon date recovered within eastern England. It presents the first definitive catalogue of its kind in this region and timeframe. Taking inspiration from recent transitions in thinking on early Anglo-Saxon art, the major topics of consideration include: a) the interrelationship between image, object and the user, b) the changing portrayal of human representation and the social implications of such developments and c) the emergence of new bodily gestures in representational art. These key themes might provide an understanding of how and why human imagery changed as it did, how and by whom it was deployed in life and death and the role this type of imagery performed in the construction and presentation of social identity.

This thesis revisits Milton’s employment of mythology and the demonic, by shedding a light on a neglected, yet intriguing possible presence of Middle-Eastern mythology – or as identified in this thesis – Judeo-Arabic mythology in Paradise Lost. The mythographic reception of Milton’s work has been rightly discussed within a Greco-Roman frame. However, this thesis offers for a consideration an analysis of the unique role of Judeo-Arabic mythology. By doing so, the thesis not only aims to enrich the dualistic analyses of ‘East-West’, ‘Christian-Muslim’ and ‘Anglo-Ottoman’ relations, when tackling this angle of Early Modern studies, but also to generally demonstrate the way seventeenth-century literature encompassed multifaceted and interchangeable allusions to both Islam and Judaism in Catholic and Protestant writing. The thesis directs its attention towards examining the possible presence of two Judeo-Arabic demonic figures in Paradise Lost: the Islamic devil, Iblis, and his consort i...

Post-alpine deposits cover substantial areas of Hellas. The fine grained facies of these deposits, comprise a wide range of over consolidated materials of varying grading and mineralogy. On average, however, these deposits cover different depositional environments and may be classed as silty clays and clayey silts of low to intermediate plasticity containing calcite in their mineralogical suite. Such deposits have been collectively known to practising engineers as marls. A concerted effort to collect field and laboratory data and interpret the behaviour of these materials was recently launched in view of the involvement of the aforesaid mentioned deposits in a series of geotechnical problems. This thesis aspires to contribute to this knowledge and provide a framework on which the field performance of such materials may be interpreted. To that end, disturbed and high quality undisturbed samples from the geologically dissimilar areas of Korinthos, Preveza-Igoumenitsa road axis and Amalias- Goumeron were obtained and tested in order to ascertain their physical characteristics and mineralogical composition. Further, engineering properties which are independent of stress history, i.e. intrinsic, of the materials sampled, were determined. These were the residual strength as determined by ring shearing and the compressibility of reconstituted samples. The performance of the samples was assessed in terms of grain size distribution and mineralogy. The results show that any attempt to explain or predict intrinsic properties of Hellenic fine grained calcareous sediments without taking simultaneous account of gradation and mineralogy is incomplete and therefore inaccurate.

Customer retention is essential for firms in the service sector and will subsequently receive a great deal of attention in the coming years. A large majority of firms are losing their current customers at a significant rate. UK operators lose over a third of their subscribers every year in spite of incurring large customer acquisition and retention expenditures. A study of customer retention from a variety of angles, including economic, behavioural and psychological perspectives, was rigorously carried out. It has been found that a majority of scholars explain customer retention from a behavioural perspective by using unrelated or indirect factors such as trust and commitment, price terms, and loyalty terms. It has also been noted that previous studies lack a clear theoretical background and a solid empirical proof to support their findings of customer operant retention behaviour. This study approaches the customer retention problem in the mobile phone sector from a behavioural pers...

Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details.

Beyond Crisis: Visions for the New Humanities was a conference held at Durham University to explore the future of the digital humanities. Dawn of the Unread outlined a 10 point manifesto for new ways to engage students and join up disciplines within the humanities.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original ...

William Stephen Gilly was born in 1789 in Hawkedon parsonage in Suffolk, and died in 1855 in Norham parsonage, County Durham, rising to become a Prebendary of Durham Cathedral..

This book pieces together the course of Gilly’s career and the numerous causes that that he discovered and took up with vigour and enthusiasm. As an ambitious parson, he impinged on many lives, and often achieved much good. He wrote frequently about his various causes, and many of his writings survive and are drawn on for this book.

Once discovered, Gilly’s abiding cause was for the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the Waldensian church which  survived in the Cottian Alps. The church had its roots in a 13th century schism from the mainstream Catholic Church, but threw its lot in with the Reformed churches in the 16th century. This early protestant church predated the reformation in the rest of Europe and Iits remnant had survived much persecution. In Gilly’s time the Waldensians were an isolated pocket of Reformed Protestantism within the catholic Sardinian state.

Gilly wrote so frequently and passionately on this cause topic that it was dubbed ‘Gilly's Waldensian Hobby’ by his critics. However, the Waldensian church even today honours Gilly’s memory for the work he did, the money he raised, and the schools and churches he caused to be built. And it is chiefly for his work for the Waldensians that Gilly’s life should be regarded with respect; although there is much else that is interesting and intriguing about Gilly’s life.

The book arose out of the curiosity engendered when, whilst on a walking holiday in the Italian Alps, Hugh Norwood came across the present day Waldensian community. It was a curiosity that was to occupy much of the last five years of Hugh’s life, but he died before the final chapter of the book was written. The work has been very ably checked, amended, supplemented and completed by historian Nick Groves, who has a huge working knowledge of the Victorian church. Between them, Hugh and Nick have uncovered and untangled many interesting biographical knots to produce a smooth and competing biography of an ambitious, hard-working parson.

This The illustrated biography is presented in 13 chapters, with six appendices.