The objective of this thesis was to investigate whether the addition of carbon nanofibers had an effect on the splitting tensile strength of Hydro-Stone gypsum concrete. The carbon nanofibers used were single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT), buckminsterfullerene (C60), and graphene oxide (GO). Evidence of the nanofibers interacting with gypsum crystals in a connective manner was identified in both 1 mm thick concrete discs and concrete columns possessing a height of 2 in and a diameter of 1 in. Before imaging, the columns were subjected to a splitting tensile strength test. The results illustrate that while there is a general decrease in strength with an increase in nanofibers for the nanotubes and graphene oxide, the addition of C60 did not noticeably effect the strength. This trend is consistent with trends determined by previous studies.

International actors from International Organizations, Western States, Think tanks, risk management consultancies, NGOs, and private security companies understand borderless threats like clandestine migration, drug trafficking, and international terrorism to emanate from ‘ungoverned spaces’ in the Global South. The Sahelian sub-region of West Africa has taken a prominent place in global discourses of insecurity and borderless threats. These non-traditional security concerns have been translated into an expanding array of transnational governance initiatives that bring together the activities and practices of a wide range of state and non-state, global and local, and public and private actors in efforts to deal with the challenges that borderless threats are assumed to present. This dissertation argues that attempts to govern drug trafficking in the Sahel are producing global assemblages of security intervention: shifting, multi-scalar, institutional orders that reorient and reconfigure the security practices, knowledges, mentalities, technologies, and priorities of multiple sets of governance actors across disparate jurisdictional spaces. The effects of the transnationalized security governance and capacity-building initiatives that unfold in simultaneous, connected spaces of intervention amplify and alter positions of social power and prominence in local fields of conflict. Through the practices and projects of global security experts and capacity-builders in the Sahel, new forms of international capital are introduced and become realized in local settings that intensify rivalries between local, national, and regional security institutions over the question of the recognition of their authority over security matters. In their relationships with international capacity-builders and other global actors, sets of local recipients of security governance interventions practice forms of extraversion whereby their structural positions of dependence and differentials of power and resources are leveraged to accumulate forms of international capital that they then use to dominate the fields of power in which they are embedded. The dissertation examines three components of the assemblages of security intervention in West Africa: the effects of the transnational field of capacity- building in the Sahelian interior; the establishment and operation of the UNODC Airport Communications drug interdiction project (AIRCOP) at Dakar’s International Airport, and the joint UNODC/World Customs Organization Container Control Programme operating at the port of Dakar. It advances new empirical material from these case studies, and makes contributions to debates in three sub-fields of International Relations: critical security studies, global governance, and international statebuilding.

This dissertation explores the ways in which media, visuality, and politics intersect through an analysis of contemporary war photography. In so doing, it seeks to uncover how war photography as a social practice works to produce, perform and construct the State. Furthermore, it argues that this productive and performative power works to constrain the conditions of possibility for geopolitics. The central argument of this project is that contemporary war photography reifies a view of the international in which the liberal, democratic West is pitted against the barbaric Islamic world in a ‘civilizational’ struggle. This project’s key contribution to knowledge rests in its unique and rigorous research methodology (Visual Discourse Analysis) – mixing as it does inspiration from both quantitative and qualitative approaches to scholarship. Empirically, the dissertation rests on the detailed analysis of over 1900 war images collected from 30 different media sources published between the years 2000-2013.

The United States has been increasingly concerned with the transnational threat posed by infectious diseases. Effective policy implementation to contain the spread of these diseases requires active engagement and support of the American public. To influence American public opinion and enlist support for related domestic and foreign policies, both domestic agencies and international organizations have framed infectious diseases as security threats, human rights disasters, economic risks, and as medical dangers. This study investigates whether American attitudes and opinions about infectious diseases are influenced by how the issue is framed. It also asks which issue frame has been most influential in shaping public opinion about global infectious diseases when people are exposed to multiple frames. The impact of media frames on public perception of infectious diseases is examined through content analysis of newspaper reports. Stories on SARS, avian flu, and HIV/AIDS were sampled from coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post between 1999 and 2007. Surveys of public opinion on infectious diseases in the same time period were also drawn from databases like Health Poll Search and iPoll. Statistical analysis tests the relationship between media framing of diseases and changes in public opinion. Results indicate that no one frame was persuasive across all diseases. The economic frame had a significant effect on public opinion about SARS, as did the biomedical frame in the case of avian flu. Both the security and human rights frames affected opinion and increased public support for policies intended to prevent or treat HIV/AIDS. The findings also address the debate on the role and importance of domestic public opinion as a factor in domestic and foreign policy decisions of governments in an increasingly interconnected world. The public is able to make reasonable evaluations of the frames and the domestic and foreign policy issues emphasized in the frames.

The aim of this research is to study the Ukrainian implementation of UNSCR 1325 from a feminist security perspective. This has been done by focusing on the pillars of participation and protection. The pillars have been operationalized into indicators whereas participation is analyzed in terms of women's participation in civil society, politics, the security sector, peace processes and the participation of IDPs. Protection has been analyzed in terms of protection from conflict related sexual violence and gender-based violence, protection of women IDPs, protection from trafficking, and economic and labor protection. The method used is an empirical case study where the case of Ukraine is explained through a feminist security perspective. The findings show that while the Ukrainian government has taken on some measures to increase the participation and protection of women, there are still challenges remaining in both areas. Finally, this research has contributed with bridging the gap between the work on UNSCR 1325, feminist security studies and the Ukrainian context.

The global Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has been established to address the widerange of issues and challenges faced by women in conflict and post-conflict situations, and acknowledge the vital role that women play in peace processes. Previous research has shown that although the women refugees are more vulnerable than their male counterparts, this group is still widely underrepresented in WPS policy. There is a gap between the WPS agenda and research on refugees. Women are only recognised as actors within the WPS agenda when they are geographically in the zone of conflict, and this does not extend to women who have been forced to flee. This thesis aims to investigate the policy representation of refugee and displaced women within African WPS national action plans (NAPs). In doing so, the research explores the theoretical concept of human security, and how it is related to feminist security studies and refugees, in order to understand the importance and relevance of including refugee and displaced women into national WPS policy. Within the theoretical discussion, the theories that have guided this thesis are also discussed, namely feminist research methodology and ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) as an analytical tool. The material for analysis is all available African WPS-NAPs, there are 22 of them used in this research. These NAPs are analysed using a multi-method approach, three methods used to answer the research questions. First, a qualitative case study to ascertain if refugees and displaced people are represented in these WPS-NAPs, secondly, a thematic analysis to critically analyse these representions as they relate to four pillars central to the WPS framework, and finally, an illustrative case study of the Cameroon to offer descriptive insight into how policy problem representations are implemented in the practical world. The main conclusions reveal that African states do mentioned refugees and displaced people in WPS-NAPs, acknowledging the validity of the ‘women in conflict on the move’ actor within WPS; secondly, it concludes that each African WPS-NAP analysed creates a multitude of problem representations, and discusses the policy implications of this according to WPR theory. Finally, it concludes that the actual implementation of WPS-NAPs in the realm of refugee and displaced persons is still not fullyrecognised, despite the inclusion in policy. Therefore, more specific policy actions should be integrated into WPP-NAP policy planning and drafting in order to prevent fueling the real life insecurity of these groups, making them more marginalized and vulnerable.

This thesis aims to investigate the narrative created around the covid-19 virus as a security threat during the first months of the pandemic. Speeches made by three political leaders, namely Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel, held in March 2020 are analysed in depth using a feminist narrative framework. The overall purpose is to investigate how a gendered reading of the portrayal of the covid-19 pandemic as a security threat can contribute to the already existing feminist research on how gender is both part of, and affected by, the construction of security narratives. The research questions concern whether the pandemic was militarised by political leaders, and if so, how this is done through the construction of the narrative. Furthermore, it is investigated how masculinity and femininity come to expression within the narrative of covid-19 as a security threat, and how this differs from the gendered hierarchies in relation to “traditional” security threats already outlined in previous feminist research on security. The result of the analysis shows that the pandemic is clearly being militarised. Traditional gender constructions are however altered, for example when feminine roles are assigned to groups traditionally not perceived as feminine. The result shows the flexibility of gender roles, but also the need to sustain a division between some groups as feminine and some groups as masculine. The very existence of hierarchies is seemingly more important than which physical bodies take place within that hierarchy.

This thesis scrutinises the European Commission’s discourse surrounding the externalisation of migration and asylum policies and discusses what potential implications this may have on the right to asylum. The aim of this work is to increase the understanding of how migration and security are discursively connected and identify what this discourse looks like. The study is placed in the context of a scientific debate on the Securitisation of migration and the externalisation of migration management. By means of a Critical Discourse Analysis, based on the work of Norman Fairclough, speeches and press releases produced by the European Commission are analysed. The analysis departs from the theoretical framework of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies and the concept of Securitisation, which suggests that political narratives have direct effects on policies. The theory also argues that when a phenomenon is securitised, policy measures that would otherwise not be acceptable, become legitimised in dealing with a constructed threat. The thesis presents three findings. The first main finding is that the Commission legitimises the externalisation of EU borders through a humanitarian discourse, arguing that the increased restrictions and shifting of responsibilities to third countries are necessary to protect migrants from human smugglers. Second, the current EU agenda risks limiting mobility in countries outside of the EU, thus creating large camps with substandard living conditions. And finally, from a human rights perspective, there is a great risk with the continued collective expulsions and pushbacks from EU territory, given that the mandate of Frontex is only seen to increase.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, regionalism as an approach for studying International Relations has been gaining a momentum and popularity, yet, it has been mostly dominated by Eurocentric and deductive postulations, unable to successfully answer many regional issues. The focus of this thesis is to examine the validity of the major regionalist theories in the context of South America, a region that offers an ideal environment for a study of post-liberal regionalism. The thesis attempts to answer what are the main shortcomings of the contemporary regionalist debate. The main hypothesis is that while the contemporary debate of regionalism is dominated by the deductive approach, this can only direct us to some general variables and factors, but it is the inductive approach that leads us to correct assumption by expulsing extra-regional influences while building the hypothesis up. The hypothesis is tested on the South American regional dynamics through four thematic clusters based on the major assumptions of the regional theories that test their validity. The analyzed trajectories of the South American regional dynamic prove that the deductive approach is valuable in directing the research the right way in some general patterns, but it fails to make correct postulations about the type of the regional...

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