The Department of Health (DH) is responsible for one of the largest estates in Europe. In this capacity, the DH produce and disseminate estates-related Standards & Guidance (S&G) to provide support to the briefing and design processes for new, and refurbishment projects in old healthcare buildings. The estate is made up of a variety of buildings, many ageing and in need of extensive refurbishment or replacement. It is therefore important to the stakeholders in the procurement and provision of healthcare environments that the DH S&G provide them with the information and data they need at the relevant time in the process to enable them to design and construct healthcare facilities that are safe and fit-for-purpose. Policy changes over the past 20 30 years have had a profound effect upon the estate. The estate was seen to be in need of modernisation, but Government lacked the extensive funding necessary to achieve anything like the extent of redevelopment required. The introduction of private sector funding to achieve this resulted in a major shift in the ownership of the estate, and latterly the regulation of the estate, both private sector and National Health Service (NHS). The NHS Constitution, introduced in 2009, was the first Government document explicitly to recognise the estate and the importance of it being fit-for-purpose. This research seeks to establish the importance of the DH S&G, and their benefits and dis-benefits to stakeholders using them, including organisations and individuals from the private and public sectors. The groups have differing roles and priorities and the research seeks to establish how these affect their requirements for S&G, how effectively the S&G meet those requirements and how they contribute to the overall provision of healthcare environments. Moreover, hospital accommodation has been proven to have an effect on the patients and staff, therefore, the provision of useful and helpful S&G could be seen to have an indirect influence on patient outcomes, and also on providing a pleasant and efficient environment for staff. The research has identified three major strands: Policy; the DH S&G themselves; and what is important to users about them and any benefits or dis-benefits incurred. Policy is viewed as the driver for the need for DH S&G. The changing political environment, amongst many other factors, affects how the S&G have been operationalized. This study of the application of DH S&G aims to establish how users view the benefits and dis-benefits and their effects on the healthcare environment. Research in the construction industry sector spans the scientific and social worlds, and the methodology is deductive research orientated, exploiting a range of data. Qualitative and quantitative data have been collected through open interviews with known experts and an on-line survey of the stakeholders using the S&G from private and public sector organisations involved with the provision of healthcare accommodation. Reference to the DH S&G and related unpublished DH documents traces their development and examines their content. The results have been mapped to the stakeholder categories (Designers, Service Users, Estates and Facilities Managers, Contractors and the DH/NHS), thus enabling comparisons to be made between each group, and between the public and private sectors. Analysis of the data identified the characteristics users found to be of importance and of benefit or dis-benefit. On balance, it was clear that the DH S&G are beneficial, but not universally. Of prime importance to its users is the DH endorsement of the S&G and its independence from commercial influences. However, the classification of the DH S&G, defined as best practice is often regarded and applied as mandatory. The content of the S&G varies in its scope, content and characteristics, being perceived as incomplete, inconsistent and out-of-date. Taking all these factors, therefore there is a danger that the DH S&G may contribute to healthcare buildings being unfit-for-purpose or out-of-date.

The Dutch Revolt (c. 1568-1648) led to the establishment of a new state in the northern provinces of the old Habsburg Netherlands. This new polity confronted intense hostility from Habsburg dynastic interests. It sustained itself militarily against these interests, and extended its power globally. In addition it developed a remarkable and wealthy mercantile culture. However configurations of power in the new state differed radically from those within the surrounding monarchies, and its political texts remain problematic. Thus there is no dynamic political theory to match the reality of its might. However, one of the remarkable features of its culture was the unprecedented output of pictorial art, including thousands of political prints. Therefore, this thesis addresses the issue of power in the Republic on the basis of pictorial evidence, using a combination of three routes. First, instead of examining evidence made up of texts, it was decided to use a range of political imagery, largely political prints, to serve as primary sources, inverting the usual practice of alluding to images from an argument based on texts. Second, there is a requirement upon historians for a systematic approach to primary sources, allowing argument to be tightly referenced. However, imagery is not subject to the usual methods (footnoting chapters and pages for example), so a methodology was developed which incorporates digitally modelled representations of the prints. This was based upon work undertaken by Gerhard Jaritz at the Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit in Austria. Thirdly, prompted by the doubts of several scholars about the utility of conventional political theories in the context of the Dutch Republic, the work of Michel Foucault, in particular his prescription for the study of power, has been adapted and used as an analytical framework in which to discuss the sources. The thesis demonstrates the systematic exploitation of pictorial sources in the context of historical study. It demonstrates the advantages and limitations of digital models and computer analysis. On the basis of these novel methodologies, the thesis summarises a thorough exploration of a range of political imagery. It also highlights the extraordinary success of a particular image of the Revolt, the Tyranny of Alva. On the basis of the evidence examined, it also demonstrates that there was a profound antipathy towards monarchic, 'top down1 power in the early Republic, and argues that power there was more easily diagrammed than textualised.

Der Gegenstand der vorliegenden Dissertationsschrift ist eine Geschichte des chemischen Elements Selen von der Vorgeschichte seiner Entdeckung um 1783 bis in die 1920er Jahren. Methodisch folgt die Arbeit Vorschlägen aus den Science and Technology Studies, nicht die menschlichen Akteure ins Zentrum zu stellen, sondern danach zu fragen, in welcher Weise auch Dinge als nicht-menschliche Wesen eine Differenz erzeugen, die ihre reine Objekthaftigkeit zu hinterfragen erlaubt und sie zu Akteuren der Geschichte macht. Ziel der Arbeit war eine Rekontextualisierung der historischen Voraussetzungen, die die unterschiedlichen Ereignisse im Leben des Selens erst möglich gemacht haben. Die Arbeit stützt sich auf eine sehr breite Quellenbasis. Der Untersuchungszeitraum erstreckt sich von ersten Publikationen im erweiterten Kontext der Vorgeschichte der Entdeckung des Selens im Jahr 1783, die Entdeckung der lichtsensitiven Eigenschaften W. Smith 1873 bis in die 1920er Jahre, als der Einsatz der Selenzelle in diversen Erfindungen rund um das Thema der Fernsteuerung und Automatisierung zu einem vorläufigen Ende kommt. Die hier als »Selen – Ein Biographem« vorgestellte Arbeit unternimmt einen Perspektivenwechsel: Das chemische Element Selen ist der Protagonist der Untersuchung. Die Arbeit trägt einen Teil zur medienhistorischen Aufarbeitung der Geschichte des Fernsehens bei, wobei der Fokus auf den Entwicklungen im Bereich der technischen Bildübertragung zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts liegt. Aber auch die Geschichte der Entdeckung des Selens sowie der Einsatz desselben im Kontext der Verlegung des transatlantischen Telegraphenkabels – um nur zwei weitere historische Knoten aufzurufen – müssen fortan in einem anderen Licht betrachtet werden. / The subject of this dissertation is a history of the chemical element selenium from the prehistory of the discovery of selenium around 1783 to the 1920s. Methodically, the work follows proposals from the Science and Technology Studies, not to focus on the human actors, but to ask in which way things as non-human beings also create a difference, which allows to question their pure objecthood and makes them actors of history. The aim of the work was to recontextualize the historical preconditions that made the different events in the life of the selenium possible in the first place. The work is based on a very broad source base. The period of investigation extends from the first publications in the expanded context of the prehistory of the discovery of selenium in 1783, the discovery of the light-sensitive properties of selenium by W. Smith in 1873 up to the 1920s, when the use of the selenium cell in various inventions around the topic of remote control and automation comes to a provisional end. The work presented here as »Selenium – A Biographeme« makes a change of perspective: The chemical element selenium is the protagonist of the investigation. The present work contributes its part to the media-historical analysis of the history of television. The focus is on developments in the field of technical image transmission at the beginning of the 20th century. But also the history of the discovery of selenium, as well as its use in the context of the laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable–to call up only two further historical nodes–must henceforth be viewed in a different light.

The Cabinet of Count Charles Cobenzl lies at the heart of the Hermitage Museum, forming the core of the collection of Old Master Drawings. Yet despite perpetual references to him as ‘grand collectionneur’, no study of Cobenzl’s collecting has ever been undertaken. Nor, in the absence of prosopographical studies of art production or collecting in the Austrian Netherlands in the middle of the eighteenth century, or indeed of other individual collectors, has it been possible to set him in a ‘collecting context’. Bringing together the works of art themselves and Cobenzl’s abundant correspondence, this thesis assesses what he owned, how and why he acquired it, the political and intellectual framework for his collecting and how he perceived the objects in his possession. Looking at Cobenzl’s roles as public figure and private collector, it shows how the latter fits into the context of the former, his collecting rooted firmly in his ambition to revive the economy and the arts of the Austrian Netherlands, in his own ambiguous status and his conflicts with the Governor, Charles de Lorraine. The battle for both real and perceived superiority was played out in many different parts of Cobenzl’s professional and private life, and he used display – the adornment of his home and his person and his collecting – as part of a play for social prestige. Cobenzl used objects as a discrete assertion of both intellectual and aesthetic superiority. This thesis proposes that Cobenzl’s transformation into a collector of drawings was an example of his perspicacious identification of emerging trends that could be turned to advantage, economic or prestigious, public or personal. He was drawn by the status of drawings, perceived as accessible only to those of greater refinement and understanding, as something elite, less accessible than the collecting of paintings. The direct and specific stimulus for his emergence as a collector of drawings lay in the provenance of two large groups of works he was offered, which permitted him to assert a very specific link to the past. It suggests that Cobenzl adopted not only the drawings, but also their histories, to negotiate social position and identity, within the context of his pragmatic utilitarianism. This egocentric study also provides the foundation for a preliminary attempt to create a context for Cobenzl’s collecting of drawings, within his circle, in the Austrian Netherlands overall, and, through analysis of his collecting practices, in the wider European context.

The history of the British Army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is generally associated with stories of British military victory and the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington. An intrinsic aspect of the historiography is the argument that, following British defeat in the Low Countries in 1795, the Army was transformed by the military reforms of His Royal Highness, Frederick Duke of York. This thesis provides a critical appraisal of the reform process with reference to the organisation, structure, ethos and learning capabilities of the British Army and evaluates the impact of the reforms upon British military performance in the Low Countries, in the period 1793 to 1814, via a series of narrative reconstructions. This thesis directly challenges the transformation argument and provides a re-evaluation of British military competency in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) and the Sack of Antwerp (1576), two of the most notorious massacres of the 1570s, were of international consequence in a confessionally-divided Europe. This thesis offers a comparative analysis of the Elizabethan political and print responses to both atrocities, evaluating to what extent and in what ways each shaped the increasingly Protestant political character of the period. It compares strands of argument aired by Elizabethan councillors, courtiers, military commanders and clerics, in contrast with the content of contemporary news pamphlets, to establish whether there was any overlap between the parameters of political debate and topical print. It investigates whether, and on what occasions, statesmen or figures associated with the court may have sought to confessionalise public opinion via the production of printed news. Analysing often overlooked printed sources, the thesis focuses on aspects of content and contexts of production. It considers the kinds of comment expressed on the massacres per se and in relation to: the nature of the wars in France and the Low Countries; Elizabeth’s foreign and domestic agendas; the compound significance of her gender, the unresolved succession and her realm's vulnerability to foreign invasion; and providential discourses concerning God’s favour and protection. These lines of enquiry throw up some insights into changing English attitudes towards the Catholic crowns of France and Spain and key figures abroad. Finally, the thesis reaches some broader conclusions regarding the development of an increasingly militant Anglo-Protestant nationalism in the mid-Elizabethan period.

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Due to desirable emission reductions and population growth, an increasing energy demand isidentified as a dire issue for energy systems. The introduction of low energy building districtsenables an increased energy system efficiency. This study’s aim is twofold. Firstly, an extensive urban building energy model is used to simulatethe yearly use and geographic distribution of the heat demand for residential and commercialbuildings that are to be supplied by a low-temperature district heating system. Two buildingenergy performance cases are studied; one where all buildings are assumed to be of PassiveHouse standard, and one where the building energy performance is in line with conventionalnew-building regulations in Sweden. The study showed that that Passive Houses will generatethe lowest yearly heat demand and that implementation of ventilation heat recovery has a bigimpact. Furthermore, the results showed that a variation of building energy performance mightbe advantageous when planning a new city district with district heating. Secondly, one specific building is in detail modeled as Passive House and according to BBR-standards and simulated in the building energy simulation software IDA ICE to investigate whatbuilding heating system is best suited for low-temperature heat supply. The temperaturedemands for floor heating and low tempered radiators is investigated and compared toconventional water-based radiators. Results showed that floor heating requires lowertemperature’s than low temperature radiators, but both are well suited for low temperaturedistrict heating. The study’s results will be used as an example for future city district planning aswell as presenting relevant heating systems for low-temperature district heating.

The status of theory in the Digital Humanities (DH) has been the subject of much debate. As a result, we find different theory narratives competing and entangled with each other. If at all, these narratives can only be grasped and examined from a somewhat detached perspective. Here, we attempt to investigate these elusive narratives by means of a conceptual history approach. In doing so, we define different theory dimensions, ranging from specific cultural and literary theory frameworks to more generic uses of the concept of theory. We examine the use and semantic changes of these theory notions in a large corpus of DH journals. Using a mixture of heuristic methods and approaches from the field of distributional semantics, we aim to create tellable conceptual stories of DH theory.

Digital tools and computer programming are useful in easing and improving the speed and repeat- ability of outputs in social sciences and humanities research. Data visualisation plays an important role in getting insights into (large) datasets, communicating results and sharing knowledge amongst researchers. There exist several tools and software for data collection and visualisation but they are not always designed to fit all situations. In this rather technical working paper, we present some possibilities and advantages of using computer programming within the scope of a research project: (1) analysing quantitative datasets through means of visualisations produced within our research by (de)coding school atlases, and (2) data management for large sets of source-data, especially optimis- ation and embedding of coherent metadata in atlas scans to prepare for archiving and reuse. Together, we have developed an effective and efficient technical workflow for the processing, visualisation and management of our research data.