The repetition of particular photographic narratives may homogenise women from the non-European world, particularly those from sub-Saharan Africa, who are often portrayed as victims of drought, famine, war and conflict. The research critically analyses the historical and contemporary construction of female bodies in Ethiopia through photographic images. It provides a novel overview of the least explored representational practices, by comparing photographic works commissioned by aid and development organisations with those produced by Ethiopian photographers. It specifically considers how far stereotypical representations are being challenged and deconstructed in contemporary practices of photography in Ethiopia. This project assesses over seventy photographic images, ranging from picture postcards to photojournalism and photo-essays, and seeks to critically interpret them from their site of production to their final presentation in different modes of circulation (Rose, 2003). It triangulates the meanings of images through developing an understanding of the specificity of documentary photographs, the photographers’ intent and the demands of institutions, including the national print media, development aid organisations and galleries. The research argues that some Ethiopian photographers use the photographic image as a medium to confront stereotypes in picturing poverty, drought, famine, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, there by contesting narratives about Ethiopia and Ethiopians in the process.

Oceanic anoxic events occur in response to significant climate perturbations. This study focuses on the late Cretaceous OAE 2, which occurred across the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary (CTB), ~93.9 Ma. Multiple isotope proxies have reviewed the implications of palaeocirculation, volcanism and climate change to assess the driving mechanism(s) associated with global anoxia. Utilising geochemistry and geochronology (Os, Ca and U-Pb) this study provides a greater understanding of palaeoclimate conditions and assesses the global extent of anoxia. Hitherto, analyses have focussed on sections in and around the proto-North Atlantic. Herein, high-resolution 187Os/188Os isotope stratigraphy from 8 globally representative sections is presented; Portland #1 core, Site 1260, Wunstorf, Vocontian Basin, Furlo, Site 530, Yezo Group, and Great Valley Sequence. The Re-Os system is sensitive to regional and global variation in seawater chemistry on the order of the residence time of Os due to ocean inputs: radiogenic Os from continental weathering and unradiogenic Os from hydrothermal inputs. The initial 187Os/188Os (Osi) profiles present a globally ubiquitous trend: radiogenic Os values are attenuated by unradiogenic Os for ~200 kyr, which then gradually return to radiogenic Os. Minor discrepancies illustrate the sensitivity of local water masses as a function of basin connectivity and global sea level; i.e., Portland, Great Valley Sequence and Yezo Group (temporally restricted basins) vs. Site 1260 and Site 530 (open ocean). Furthermore, a temporal framework is developed from existing ages (from the Western Interior, USA) and new U-Pb zircon geochronology (Yezo Group, Japan) to quantify the duration of OAE 2 and volcanic activity at the Caribbean LIP. Age models are applied and support the revision of the stratigraphic position of the OAE 2 onset and the CTB in the Yezo Group. The integration of the Western Interior and Pacific geochronology quantitatively verifies that the OAE 2 was globally synchronous occurring at ~94.4 Ma ± 0.15 Ma. In addition, marine δ44Ca records from 4 global OAE 2 sections are presented. The seawater mixing models reveal that δ44Ca values show no appreciable change to riverine or hydrothermal influx. Herein, I quantitatively demonstrate that fractionation is a parameter for δ44Ca isotopic variation at Portland and Pont d’Issole, which may be attributed to diagenetic reactions in the marl-rich lithology leading to site-specific fractionation. Therefore, marine δ44Ca profiles are different in each section as a function of varying fractionation factor. Ca isotope systematics are highly complex and so further work is crucial in order to develop our understanding of other parameters and to establish which, if any, is the most influential.

Characterization of the mantle source of arc magmas using the composition of erupted lavas is only possible after the assessment of the effects of crustal assimilation. While the impact of crustal assimilation on continental arc lavas is commonly investigated, it is often ignored or debated in oceanic arcs. Nowhere has the debate been more acute than in the Lesser Antilles arc which is characterised by extreme ranges in geochemistry from typical oceanic arc to continental crust-like compositions. Given the oceanic provenance of the arc, these geochemical features can be inherited either from subducted sediments, or from crustal contamination by continental sediments intercalated in the arc crust. In this thesis, the problem is reassessed using a whole rock-to sub-grain scale trace element and isotopic (Sr-Nd-Hf-Pb- O isotopes) investigation of volcanic rocks from St Lucia Island, thought to encompass most of the arc’s isotopic heterogeneities. In addition, an Os isotopic investigation of some of the most mafic and well constrained lavas from along the arc was performed. New isotopic composition of St Lucia lavas confirm that the island covers most of the arc’s compositional variations. Intra-crystal 87Sr/86Sr heterogeneities as well as the co-variation of lava radiogenic isotopes and trace elements with SiO2 and mineral d18O suggest that crustal assimilation affected lavas as mafic as basaltic andesites and is responsible for the isotopic and trace element heterogeneities observed in the Island. The assimilant is thought to be a mix of detrital and organic sediments, likely to have been part of the sedimentary basin intruded by the arc. Assimilation of sediment is thought to occur in the middle crust of the arc and to be tightly linked with the production of silicic magmas. Sr, Nd, Hf and Pb isotopic compositions of the lavas that avoided significant sediment assimilation suggest that no more than 2% of slab-derived sediment was added to the source of St Lucia magmas. However, an along arc 187Os/188Os investigation suggests that even the most mafic lavas, having escaped sediment assimilation, were modified on their way to the surface by assimilation of the igneous arc roots, possibly a plagioclase-rich cumulate. Care must therefore be applied before characterising the source using mafic lava compositions since this process is thought to modify the Os and Sr isotopes, as well as La/Sm and Sr/Th ratios. This suggests that, in the Lesser Antilles arc, very few lavas preserved their original mantle source characteristics.

This thesis analyses the potential of Facebook as well as offline social interactions and experiences in cultivating cosmopolitan sensibilities and the performance of cosmopolitanism in both online and offline spaces. Cosmopolitanism has received immense attention in academia but its discourse is slow to incorporate everyday online experiences. In today’s world, when the use of social network sites such as Facebook have become commonplace, it is imperative that use of such a site, and its ensuing experiences, be included in the field of cosmopolitanism studies. This thesis contends for its inclusion and has chosen Facebook as the site from which to study UK-based Malay Malaysian students’ online experiences, in order to investigate the potential of the site in cultivating the students’ cosmopolitan sensibilities and cosmopolitan performances together with the students’ offline experiences. This thesis emphasises the need for the voices of the individuals to be heard, and their experiences to be understood within their own contexts. By capturing their voices, the nuances in their use of the site, their cosmopolitan sensibilities and performances could be obtained. To achieve this, an ethnographic approach that employed semi-structured interviews and online observation is used. This research has captured the voices of the respondents and found a specific form of cosmopolitanism that is influenced by their dominant Malay Muslim context, so creating what this thesis author has labelled as rooted Muslim cosmopolitanism. This concept refers to a form of cosmopolitanism rooted in the students’ Malay Muslim identity; the online and offline contexts they are in which are a replication of the host society’s contexts and their own home contexts. The discussion centres on the students’ negotiation of Malay Muslim identities in both online and offline contexts. This thesis contributes a different angle to the understanding of cultural religious cosmopolitanism for Malaysian and the general cosmopolitanism discourse, through a number of elements including: online experiences, international students as cosmopolitan actors and everyday experiences. An analytical framework was employed that separates cosmopolitan sensibilities and performance by using the six dynamics of online cosmopolitanism: self-reflexivity; motivation; affordances and features; self-disclosure and self-censorship; collapsed contexts and audience; and privacy, as well as a call for rethinking what cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan are.

Rockfall threaten infrastructure and people throughout the world. Estimating the runout dynamics of rockfall is commonly performed using models, providing fundamental data for hazard management and mitigation design. Modelling rockfall is made challenging by the complexity of rock-ground impacts. Much research has focused on empirical impact laws that bundle the rock-ground impact into a single parameter, but this approach fails to capture characteristics associated with the impact configuration and, in particular, the effects of rock-shape. While it is apparent that particular geological settings produce characteristic rock-shapes, and that different rock-shapes may produce characteristic runout dynamics, these aspects of rockfall are poorly understood. This study has focused on investigating the mechanics behind the notion that different rock-shapes produce characteristic runout dynamics and trajectories. The study combines field data on rockfall runout, trajectory and dynamics, laboratory analogue testing in controlled conditions, and numerical modelling of the influence of rock-shape. Initially rock-shape, deposition patterns and rockfall dynamics were documented at rockfall sites in Switzerland and New Zealand. This informed a detailed study of individual rock-ground impacts on planar slopes in which laboratory-scale and numerical rockfall experiments were combined to isolate the role of rock-shape on runout. Innovatively, the physical experiments captured the dynamics of impacts and runout paths using high speed video tracking and a sensor bundle with accelerometers and gyroscopes. Numerical experiments were performed using a 3-D rigid-body rockfall model that considers rock-shape, and has allowed the variability of rockfall behaviour to be explored beyond the limitations of physical experimentation. The main findings of the study were on understanding rockfall-ground impacts, the influence of rock-shape on rockfall dynamics, and influence of rock sphericity. By measuring velocity, rotational speed, impact and runout character, it has been possible to quantify the variability of individual rock-ground impacts as a function of rock-shape. Investigation of single rebounds reveals that if classical restitution coefficients are applied, $R_n$ values greater than unity are common and rebounds are highly variable regardless of constant contact parameters. It is shown that this variability is rooted in the inherent differences in the magnitudes of the principal moment of inertia of a rock body brought about by rock-shape. Any departure from a perfect sphere induces increased range and variability in rock-ground rebound characteristics. In addition to the popular description of a rock bouncing down slope, rebounds involve the pinning of an exterior edge point on the rock, creating a moment arm which effectively levers the rock into ballistic trajectory as it rotates. Observations reveal that the angle of the impact configuration plays a key role in the resulting rebound, whereby low angles produce highly arched rebounds, while large impact angles produce low flat rebounds. The type of rebound produced has a strong bearing on the mobility of the rocks and their ability to maintain motion over a long runout. The mobility of rocks is also shown to be related to rotation, which is governed by the differences in the principal inertial axes as a function of rock-shape. Angular velocity measurements about each principal inertial axis indicate that rocks have a tendency to seek rotation about the axis of largest inertia, as the most stable state. Rotations about intermediate and small axes of inertia and transitions between rotational axes are shown to be unstable and responsible for the dispersive nature of runout trajectories, which are inherent characteristics of different rock-shapes. The findings of this research demonstrate the importance of rock-shape in rockfall runout dynamics and illustrate how it is essential that the rock-shape is included in rockfall modelling approaches if the variability of rockfall behaviour is to be simulated.

Peatlands are serving as one of the most important terrestrial carbon stores in the United Kingdom and globally. In the UK, the current trend of peatlands turning from carbon sinks to carbon sources is widely observed and reported. As numerous factors may affect the carbon cycle of peatlands, including climate, land management, hydrology and vegetation, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) was commonly used as an indicator of peatland carbon changes. Besides the function as an indicator of carbon turnover in peatland, increasing DOC in the stream water also raises concern in water companies as the removal of DOC from water represents a major cost of water treatment. This thesis investigates the impacts of land management such as drain blocking and revegetation on stream DOC changes. By building a pilot column study, this thesis also assessed the potential of bank filtration serving as DOC treatment in UK. Results of drain blocking shows the management was a significant impact on the DOC changes. However, later investigation of peak flow events indicates such positive impacts from drain blocking were minor in terms of high peak flow events. Since the majority of DOC export occurred during such peak flow events, drain blocking were found not as an efficient management of DOC changes. The field study of revegetation observed minor effects of revegetation on stream DOC. The results of column bank filtration indicate low DOC removal rate under the current stream DOC level in UK. The bank filtration may efficient remove DOC when higher DOC input applied. However, it is not suitable for UK peatland under current DOC export.

This thesis examines the role of low carbon energy projects in widening energy access, progressing energy transitions and furthering development goals in rural India. Currently in development contexts, energy access and transitions are mobilised through micro energy projects like solar lanterns and micro-grids. The successes and failures of these projects are primarily assessed quantitatively – number of villages covered, number of households connected etc. However, this approach fails to understand how energy transitions projects perform in people’s everyday lives. It does not capture the reasons why they work for particular groups of people and not for others. To go beyond the quantitative understanding, this thesisfocuses on the micro-politics of everyday life that shape the effects energy transitions projects have on different groups of people. Itconsiders how power, politics and culture are vital for understanding the successes and failures of these projects. Theoretically the thesis conceives low carbon projects as low carbon assemblages to understand their fluid and contingent nature and the ways in which they are configured and reconfigured through relationships of power and everyday politics. Engaging with governmentality studies, it further considers how different, pre-existing and newly configured relationships of power conduct people’s conducts and sometimes lead to resistances for low carbon projects. The thesis critically examines three crucial aspects of low carbon energy projects by engaging with three key ideas – trusteeship, significances and resistances. Firstly, it explores how, by positioning themselves as trustees, particular actors seek to assemble and govern low carbon projects in order to achieve specific outcomes. Secondly, it investigates how, by focusing on particular significances of electricity, these interventions work to achieve particular development goals in different spaces of everyday life. Finally, it asks how and why different pressures and contestations emerge as everyday resistances in low carbon transitions. The thesis takes an ethnographic route of enquiry in order to examine energy in everyday life, using participant observations, interviews and photography. It explores two different low carbon projects – Lighting a Billion Lives (LaBL) solar lanterns project and Husk Power Systems (HPS) biomass micro-grids project – and contrasts them against the central grid and kerosene oil networks, in five villages in Bihar. Three key arguments emerge from the thesis. Firstly, electricity access should be understood as a spatially heterogeneous and temporally fluid idea. Its firm quantification and standardisation are problematic because electricity access is geographically and socially differentiated. It needs to be explored in an ethnographic manner, in which not onlyquestions of ‘how much’ but also of who, how and where are critical. Secondly, in energy and development projects, context matters. The society, culture, politics and economy of spaces in which projects are implemented mediate their impacts. Finally, the upkeep and maintenance of low carbon energy projects is not just about economies and supply chains of spare parts but also about cooperation and coordination between the project designers and users. Being able to fulfil people’s changing electricity requirements by building flexibility in the projects is critical to respond to these three issues. This will make projects more sustainable and increase people’s trust on low carbon projects leading to a convergence between energy access and energy transitions.

The spiking food prices in 2007/08 and 2010/11 and the absence of local food water prompted Jordanian and Qatari decision-makers to look for ways to achieve food security. They needed alternatives to domestic food production and food commodity imports via the global trading systems. A new policy-choice was to invest in water and land in Sudan. These so-called “land grabs” have been widely criticised because of their potential impacts on livelihoods and on ecosystem services in the target countries. By deploying an analytical framework from a pragmatic philosophical perspective, referred to here as -a range of policy-choices to achieve food and water security-this study makes an original contribution by analyzing how the goal of “importing” virtual water is a distinct choice for both Jordan and Qatar. The study is also original in examining the politics of policy-making in Jordan and Qatar. The respective politics are shown to determine whether or not a policy-choice is adopted -in this case foreign direct investment in water and land overseas. In addition, questions on the influence of the corporate global “food regime” and global food supply value chains will be answered. These answers will further illustrate how politicised the range of choice is in Jordan and Qatar. The thesis is the outcome of extensive qualitative research in East Africa and the Middle East between August 2010 to November 2012. In total 40 key-informants were interviewed to provide an understanding of water resources and policy- choice in Jordan and Qatar. The principal findings are that the range of choice of decision-makers in Jordan and Qatar is determined first, by strategic international food geopolitics, and second, domestic neo-patrimonial power games over water and rents and anticipated rents. Severe environmental and social constraints in Sudan are shown to make farmland investment a costly strategy to achieve food and water security. The study contributes new knowledge on the international food politics that affect the Middle East as a region as well as on the role of food in domestic political decision-making in Qatar and Jordan. It shows that even if the potential investors can develop effective policies to “grab” or “responsibly invest in land and water” in East Africa the approach is not a feasible option. Alleviating water insecurity in Jordan and Qatar through virtual water imports from Sudan is a costly and risky option because of the environmental, political and social constraints in Sudan.

Rivers have a multitude of important functions and provide crucial services to millions of people. However, rivers currently face severe anthropogenic threats due to an expanding human population and a surge in water demand. The fish species present within rivers provide a source of protein to some poorer sections of communities and present ecological and socio-economic opportunities for various stakeholders, (i.e. village members, catch-and-release (C&R) angling associations, C&R anglers, forest managers, and conservationists). To protect rivers and their fish species in the Indian Himalayan region, critical stressors and novel conservation strategies were investigated. Terrestrial Protected Areas (tPAs) are applied management tools for biodiversity conservation in the region, and along with existing managed reaches, (i.e. temple pools and angling pools) could protect river ecosystems from pressures such as over fishing, habitat degradation and fragmentation, and pollution. Although under scrutiny for its probable effects on aquatic ecosystems, C&R angling as a leisure activity could protect target fish species through associated socio-economic opportunities, and could act as a monitoring tool for fish species. A global online survey conducted among C&R anglers visiting Indian rivers revealed their willingness to assist with conservation projects targeting prime angling fish species. In view of the current benefits associated with global flagship species and examined support among local stakeholders in the study area, an attempt was made to promote a freshwater fish as a flagship conservation species for wider benefits to river ecosystems. With the present available support among local stakeholders and novel applicable conservation opportunities for river ecosystems, an innovative strategy, i.e. setting up of Freshwater Fish Safe Zones (FFSZs) was proposed to the State and Central Government of India to bring about long-term ecological and socio-economic benefits to Indian rivers and local stakeholders.

Biofuels are a major element of Brazilian geopolitics and diplomacy. They replace fossil fuels, thereby underpinning national energy security and contribute to Brazilian exports and influence in the world. Biofuels are also one of the GHG mitigation options in the Brazilian climate change regime. However, once land-use related emissions from biofuel crop production are considered, the environmental payoff is measurably diluted, illustrating one area where two mitigation instruments - biofuel production and deforestation control – can clash. Decisions on how land should be used, whether for food, biofuel production or environmental preservation are therefore crucial, intertwined as they are with land tenure systems and geopolitical discourses and practices. The thesis investigates the connections between biofuel and deforestation control policies in the Brazilian Amazon with two case studies in the state of Mato Grosso. With a qualitative methodology, the case studies analyse the political ecology of biofuel land-use in the production pathways of biodiesel from soybeans and ethanol from sugar cane. The study identifies weaknesses in the inclusion of deforestation concerns in biofuel policies and further contradictions on the ground, thus casting doubts about the real GHG emission reduction potential of biofuels. Furthermore, there are also clear efforts at legitimising biofuel crop expansion in the Amazon as a result of discourses and practices operating within Mato Grosso and at the federal level, in contrast to the international commitments on deforestation control made by the Brazilian government. Biofuel and deforestation control policies have been important elements of Brazil’s international ‘green soft power’ strategy, but their domestic contradictions, as the case studies show, are significant. This thesis examines these pressing issues in a novel way by combining a political ecology approach with critical geopolitics. It also provides the first in-depth analysis of this kind in the Brazilian context - a world biofuel leader - and highlights the need for further scholarship in this pivotal subject.