Career progression for non-academic Black and minority ethnic (BME) women is challenging and has resulted in HEIs having questionable approaches in their endeavours to achieve fair representation. The Equality Act (2010), which meant to help reduce inequality in organisations including HEIs, has had little effect as regards a more representative HEI industry. Fourteen years since the Act came into force, the level of representation of non-academic BME women in HEIs is closer to zero than 1% (HESA, 2021/22) despite an increased percentage of BME students’ entry in HEIs post-1992 after the promotion of most polytechnics into universities. The purpose of this study is to explore the barriers faced by non-academic BME women as they aspire to become leaders in HEIs. The research design was an exploratory, qualitative study phenomenology (Hennik et al., 2020). The study included 28 women who self-identified as BME and were aspiring to be leaders in HEIs. I carried out seven focus groups with seven universities – f…
Dynamic scene understanding is the ability of a computer system to interpret and make sense of the visual information present in a video of a real-world scene. In this thesis, we present a series of frameworks for dynamic scene understanding starting from road event detection from an autonomous driving perspective to complex video activity detection, followed by continual learning approaches for the life-long learning of the models. Firstly, we introduce the ROad event Awareness Dataset (ROAD) for Autonomous Driving, to our knowledge the first of its kind. ROAD is designed to test an autonomous vehicle’s ability to detect road events, defined as triplets composed by an active agent, the action(s) it performs and the corresponding scene locations. Due to the lack of datasets equipped with formally specified logical requirements, we also introduce the ROad event Awareness Dataset with logical Requirements (ROAD-R), the first publicly available dataset for autonomous driving with requirements expressed as logica…
There is currently limited research on either coaching in organisations or executive coaching in Planned Radical Organisational Change (PROC). The research that does exist on these subjects focuses primarily on whether coaching is considered efficacious, and there has been no research on the obstacles preventing the adoption of executive coaching to assist divisional, functional and central leaders during PROC as part of change implementation programmes. The primary aim of this research was to uncover the reasons why executive coaching is not used in these situations, including whether some senior PROC leaders may block such investment because they are Machiavellian or not change-ready. The research uses a mixed-method design. Two hundred and sixty-two high-ranking executives were surveyed on their attitude towards executive coaching, their Machiavellianism and their change-readiness. Details about their previous roles in PROC, their rank and current employer were also collected. Nearly half of these leader…
In a time of worldwide mobility, global migration and subsequent cultural blending, our understanding of what makes us feel at home has become more significant. What do we call home, and what determines our sense of belonging? Is home simply a house – a place where we grew up? Firstly, I studied different perceptions and interpretations of the concept of home and analysed the perspectives of leading experts in contemporary art and architectural phenomenology. Secondly, using an autobiographical approach combined with a practice-based art methodology, I investigated my perception of home in relation to my culture and its traditions. Furthermore, I analysed my own experiences, memories and the places related to what I call ‘home’ to understand how those experiences and memories mould our sense of home and belonging. In this study, I question how the concept of ‘home’ can be researched through artistic practice. Thus, my creative process employs a practice-based method that focuses on material experimentation …
Animal sanctuaries have proliferated around the world in recent decades and play an important role in the growing wildlife tourism industry. With a general expectation that animal sanctuaries ensure animal welfare and conservation, the lack of an officially agreed definition and the absence of regulatory systems leave sanctuary operators largely free to choose which practices to adopt. This can lead to facilities marketing themselves as 'sanctuaries', but in reality using exploitative practices to attract visitors. This research examines existing governance systems for tourist-accessible animal sanctuaries in emerging economies and assesses their effectiveness from a stakehold-er perspective. To examine a variety of stakeholder perspectives, this research uses qualitative data in the form of 12 interviews representing industry experts, six docu-ments representing industry standards (guidelines and certification schemes) and 920 TripAdvisor reviews representing the customer view. The data is analysed using an …
Since 1993, like other African countries, Ghana's governments have sought to promote the private sector and entrepreneurship-led economic development, prioritising industrialisation and women empowerment. Successive governments have sought to achieve this through relevant policies prioritising building entrepreneurial capabilities and providing special credit to female entrepreneurs in manufacturing to address gender discrimination in access to financial resources and disparity in capabilities to manage entrepreneurial ventures. The role of owner competencies is known to be crucial for venture performance. Consequently, academic and state institutions and development agencies have embraced the notion and signal from the government to provide entrepreneurial competencies training for women entrepreneurs, some of whom have received government grants to fund their enterprises. However, some entrepreneurship training programmes in Ghana were adjudged as irrelevant because they failed to address the needs and circ…
This project offers new understandings of the complex relationship between the government and the British film studios, relating to feature film content and production, during the period of the Second World War. It explores government policy and institutional organisation, and investigates the impact of underlying film production processes and propaganda demands on the representation of the hero figure in British feature films. It opens a dialogue with a broad range of archival resources to give a visibility and voice to an otherwise unarticulated aspect of British cinema history. Through a combination of primary and secondary sources, this study examines whether there is evidence of institutional causal links between British government policies and film, and how any such links indirectly adapted and enhanced the role of the hero figure in feature films. Several previous studies have suggested the idea of a national identity being reframed to meet the demands of propaganda as war progressed, and that a hero…
Social media plays an important role in the global cosmetics industry and has enabled a change in consumer behaviour from ‘private’ to ‘public’ consumption of certain products. Cosmetic consumption used to be considered a private activity, but since the adoption of social media, it has become more open and is shared in public more than ever before. Nonetheless, social media-led learning processes of consumers are insufficient as well as understanding into how social media has transformed cosmetic consumption. This qualitative research aims to evaluate the role of social media in the development of skills and competencies in cosmetics consumption in Thailand. A total of 53 Thai female Social Media Users (SMUs) were interviewed and categorised using Kozinets’s (1999) typology of online community members - Tourists, Minglers, Devotees and Insiders – whose consumption of cosmetics ranged from low to high, as did the intensity of their relationship with social media. SMUs’ development of skills and competencies…
The Rivonia trial was a seminal event in South African history. In 1964 the defendants, Nelson Mandela and seven of his comrades, were sentenced to life in prison and they were all to serve over twenty years of their sentences. The trial took place at a time of intense political repression in South Africa, which led to the anti-apartheid struggle moving abroad. This thesis offers a novel understanding of the global importance of this trial by advancing two strands of analysis. Firstly, the international-diplomatic: the attempts of state actors to utilise diplomacy and negotiation to call for action against South Africa; and secondly the civic-transnational: the work of non-governmental groups to build a global movement in opposition to apartheid and on behalf of the defendants. It will be argued that it is only when looking at both of these strands, and recognising the ways in which they intertwined, that the global significance of the Rivonia trial can be properly appreciated. The focus of this thesi…
This case study focuses on six 8-9 year old children from one primary school classroom in southern England. It explores the children’s perspectives on writing, and addresses the gap in existing research around written feedback to support writing. Much of the research in this area has been carried out with students in secondary, further, and higher education, and often concentrates on what teachers do rather than how children respond. The evidence is particularly limited on how primary school children respond to their teachers’ comments. The teacher gave separate written feedback, firstly on the compositional aspects (content and ideas) and then on transcriptional elements (technical skills) of the children’s writing over two four-week phases. They then returned to their usual style of feedback for a final four-week phase. Individual interviews with three of the children, in which their writing books acted as a focus, explored how they used their teacher’s comments on different elements of writing. A gre…