Over the past thirty years attention has turned to how people leave a criminal lifestyle and develop an adaptive identity. Within the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales there exist physical activity interventions designed to give people an opportunity to improve their health and facilitate rehabilitation. A review of the literature indicated benefits to developing further understanding of the role of identity (re)construction, embodiment and physical activity in supporting adult desistance from crime. A narrative approach was adopted to explore the embodied, lived experience of people with criminal convictions and life transformation. Approval was gained to access prisons and probation units in England and Wales. Through purposeful sampling, life history interviews were conducted with 16 adults, 13 males and 3 females, with criminal convictions to explore their experience of change. Six people were successfully desisting from a criminal lifestyle, eight were trying to desist, and two were still involved in crime. 14 semi-structured interviews were also conducted with Criminal Justice staff. A narrative analysis was undertaken to explore the personal and public stories. Firstly, exploring the whats (what does the story tell us? Lieblich et al., 1998; Riessman, 2008) and, secondly, the hows (what do the stories do? Frank, 2010). From this analysis and interpretation six aspects of transforming criminal lives were identified and explored: embodied transformation, physical activity, spirituality, age and wisdom, claiming an adaptive identity, and maintaining change. These are represented in the thesis through modified realist tales, creative non-fictions and confessional tales to illustrate their role in the process of desistance from crime. Through the analysis, a six-domain ‘web’ model is proposed as one possible way to conceptualise the active, interdependent and ongoing nature of participants’ journeys in transforming their lives. Finally, implications of the study are reflected upon in relation to theory, practice and future research.

This thesis contributes to the field of strategy-as-practice by developing understanding of the enacted performance of power within strategic interactions, an area that is underdeveloped. This is addressed by voicing the silences within the field of strategy-as-practice using an organisational studies lens. The study investigates the macro-influences of power, gender, body, culture, and Westernisation on micro-strategising activities and is based on an empirical cross-cultural study of a Saudi Arabian business college. The strategy-as-practice approach faces the challenge of balancing a focus on the specified actions of individuals and remaining aware of the social influences that govern them. This study complements linguistic approaches to understanding strategy with an embodied socially enacted dramaturgical approach to strategy analysis. Dramaturgy is the theoretical and methodological framework used to focus on micro-face-to-face interactions of strategists, complemented by frame analysis which enables invistigation of macro-level aspects of analysis at the meso-organisational level. The analysis focuses on two main areas: first it explores the embodied gendered aspects of strategising, which have previously been marginalised within the field. This analysis shows how the doing and undoing of gender on a managerial level in mixed-gender strategic interactions reflects the values that govern the family context, maintaining traditional values and often constraining women from assuming active roles as participants in strategising. Second, it analyses the tensions that arise between the clash of modernity and tradition by the adoption of international/Western management practices. These institutional influences create conflicts within strategists’ scripts when tradition encounters modernity in confronting a significant aspect of the Arab struggle. This analysis focuses on the importance of adopting a multi-level of analysis that aknowledges both structure and agency within strategising contexts. It also considers the importance of adopting a different type of ethics that is more sensitive to the particularities of caring for the ‘other’.

Psicólogo / El siguiente artículo propone una aproximación teórica al fenómeno de los autocortes desde una perspectiva sistémico relacional. En primer lugar, se presenta una revisión de las investigaciones existentes en torno a autocortes y con ello se sitúa este artículo y su contribución. En segundo lugar, se plantea cómo los modelos sistémico-relacionales han tenido dificultades para otorgar un status ontológico al individuo y su corporalidad. Tercero, se introduce el concepto de mente corporizada como propuesta teórica que permite considerar al cuerpo como campo de sentido. En cuarto lugar, se plantea el concepto de lo no dicho como asedio al sentido que elicita la continuidad de la identidad. Por último, se plantea la hipótesis de este trabajo y se presenta una viñeta clínica revisada a la luz de la propuesta teórica. The following article propose a theoretical approximation to the phenomenon of self-cut from a systemic-relational perspective. In first place, a revision of the investigations present around self-cut is showed and with that this article is located and its contribution. In second place, it arises as the systemic-relational models have had difficulties to give an ontological status to the individual and his corporality. Third, it is introduced the concept of Embodied Mind as a theoretical proposal that can considerate the body as a sense-making field. In fourth place, it arises the concept of the unsaid as siege to the sense-making that arouse the continuity of the identity. To finish, the hypothesis of this work is raised and a clinical vignette is presented under the light of the theoretical proposal

The transformation of cities is a challenge of global significance that will depend on the capacity to re-imagine the potential of cities, and thus needs more than standard technocratic urban planning approaches. Deep engagement with the arts provides one avenue for recasting the future of cities. This thesis explores the question of how ‘critical urban art interventions’ develop alternative ways of knowing urban nature, and the opportunities and limitations of using art to reimagine the future of cities. By drawing on urban political ecology and cultural geography, the thesis documents and explores the aims and tactics used in five urban art interventions to reimagine sites of urban nature in Stockholm. Qualitative interviews and participant observation were carried to explore these questions. Findings suggest that tactics used in urban art interventions promote embodied ways of knowing, and simultaneously interacting with the physical and socio- historical constructions of sites of urban natures.

The present work is based on the research and design of a mobile AR experiment performed in the context of the emerging interdisciplinary fields of digital heritage and experience design. In an attempt to find a method to support the justification and discovery of elements that can influence the user towards the fulfilment of an objective in a heritage experience, my experimental research reveals that a combination of play moments including elements of embodiment and sensuousness in mobile AR are most suitable to convey a story. Determining suitable gameplay and game mechanics requires an appropriate setting and context for a user’s encounter with digital heritage. My research outlines a design methodology to reveal how the aesthetics of mobile AR technology can be designed to support critical user experiences through play and discovery. / Designing Digital Heritage. Seeing Secrets

UA Open Access Publishing Fund / It is increasingly argued that social and economic inequities poorly affect overall health. One of the means through which these inequities are translated to the body is via negative emotions, which carry known psychological and physiological responses. This paper examines migration-related psychosocial stressors impacting first-generation Mexican immigrants in southern Arizona, and reports on the primary emotional experiences immigrants associate with these stressors. Data were drawn from a qualitative, ethnographic study conducted over the course of 14 months during 2013–2014 with first-generation Mexican immigrants (N = 40) residing in Tucson Arizona and service providers working directly in the immigrant community (N = 32). Results indicate that the primary structural vulnerabilities that cause emotional hardship among immigrants are pre-migration stressors and adversity, dangerous border crossings, detention and deportation, undocumented citizenship status, family separation, and extreme poverty. Many of these factors have intensified over the past decade due to increased border security and state level anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona. Immigrants connected these hardships to the emotions of trauma (50%), fear (65%), depression (75%), loneliness (75%), sadness (80%), and stress (85%), and most respondents reported suffering from three or more of these emotions. Given the heavy emotional toll of migration and the direct impact that regional legislation and border security had on well-being, this paper argues that emotion be considered an important mechanism for health declines in the immigrant community. In order to stem the frequency and intensity of emotional stress in the Mexican immigrant community in Tucson, it is imperative to support organizations and policies that promote community building and support networks and also expand access to and availability of mental health services for immigrants regardless of documentation status.

This interdisciplinary practice-based thesis interrogates the term ‘operatic’ with particular reference to movement. It thereby aims to extract operatic movement from the practice of opera singers and investigate ways to transfer ‘operaticness’ into the bodies of non-singing performers. The research uses Butoh as a model for a non-foundational movement practice (termed herein ‘Body Opera’) and embodiment techniques derived from Butoh, to achieve this transfer of kinaesthetic information. The research was undertaken in part through interviews with opera singers and close observation of opera singers in rehearsal and performance. This process also included the making of sketches of singers in movement, which are included in the thesis and which are regarded as kinaesthetic responses to what was observed. Combining the sketches with embodiment techniques that unlock the movement they contain, the gap between the spectatorial position and the performance maker position is bridged and movement-based practice is created and presented as a component of the thesis, in dialogue with the written component. Furthermore, the spectatorial and researcher positionality are recognised as that of an ‘opera queen’ and this position participates in facilitating the transfer of operaticness from singers to non-singing performers. Operatic movement is identified as that which occurs as a result of the physical restrictions of singing operatically and through the negotiation of those restrictions with the need to convey plot and character, giving rise to non-naturalistic or artificial way of moving. This emphasis on artificiality is theorised as an operatic sensibility akin to queerness. The thesis examines opera through the lens of postmodernism and in particular through a queer theoretical framework. The research analogously applies Butler’s poststructuralist theories concerning performative gender construction to opera and in doing so suggests a reading of opera as potentially queer, gender fluid, subversive and non-normative. This position challenges notions of opera as elitist and pro-establishment. The thesis posits that the operatic is an emergent property that occurs at the intersection of creative practices in opera and which is embodied by singers in performance. The thesis also posits that kinaesthetic empathy provides an explanation for how the operatic is communicated between singers and further suggests that the opera queen is similarly subject to a form of kinaesthetic empathy when listening to opera. The thesis makes a contribution to knowledge through revealing ways in which spectatorial and performance maker positions may be bridged, as well as through suggesting practical ways in which non-singing performers might approach the task of moving operatically. The research therefore contributes to movement practice, but also to opera studies by interrogating the subject of opera from a kinaesthetic perspective that centralises the body and experience of singers in order to understand the art form.

The human subject is profoundly interdependent, in relation to other people and to the surrounding environment, both “natural” and technological. Western dualistic thinking creates bounded and oppositional categories and generates a conception of human subjects as autonomous, self-sufficient beings that are transparent to themselves and in control of self, other, and world. This contributes to the ongoing inequalities in society and supports normative hegemony. This dissertation argues that it is imperative to insist on the intersubjective, permeable, and contingent qualities of existence. While this project is preceded by a great deal of theoretical criticism of Western metaphysical dualism, we must still continually work to break down the binaries of mind and body, self and other, rational and emotional, culture and nature. We need not just to critique the binaries but to generate new ways of thinking. I propose that art can act as a catalyst for thinking the new. Art can queer the boundaries. It is impossible to separate out the mind from the sensual body in the production or reception of art. Art demonstrates how the sensual and affected/affecting body is integral to the thinking subject, not an impurity or distraction that needs to be controlled.

In this thesis, the author explores and develops new attributes for machine performers and merges the trans-disciplinary fields of the performing arts and artificial intelligence. The main aim is to redefine the term “embodiment” for robots on the stage and to demonstrate that this term requires broadening in various fields of research. This redefining has required a multifaceted theoretical analysis of embodiment in the field of artificial intelligence (e.g. the uncanny valley), as well as the construction of new robots for the stage by the author. It is hoped that these practical experimental examples will generate more research by others in similar fields. Even though the historical lineage of robotics is engraved with theatrical strategies and dramaturgy, further application of constructive principles from the performing arts and evidence from psychology and neurology can shift the perception of robotic agents both on stage and in other cultural environments. In this light, the relation between representation, movement and behaviour of bodies has been further explored to establish links between constructed bodies (as in artificial intelligence) and perceived bodies (as performers on the theatrical stage). In the course of this research, several practical works have been designed and built, and subsequently presented to live audiences and research communities. Audience reactions have been analysed with surveys and discussions. Interviews have also been conducted with choreographers, curators and scientists about the value of machine performers. The main conclusions from this study are that fakery and mystification can be used as persuasive elements to enhance agency. Morphologies can also be applied that tightly couple brain and sensorimotor actions and lead to a stronger stage presence. In fact, if this lack of presence is left out of human replicants, it causes an “uncanny” lack of agency. Furthermore, the addition of stage presence leads to stronger identification from audiences, even for bodies dissimilar to their own. The author demonstrates that audience reactions are enhanced by building these effects into machine body structures: rather than identification through mimicry, this causes them to have more unambiguously biological associations. Alongside these traits, atmospheres such as those created by a cast of machine performers tend to cause even more intensely visceral responses. In this thesis, “embodiment” has emerged as a paradigm shift – as well as within this shift – and morphological computing has been explored as a method to deepen this visceral immersion. Therefore, this dissertation considers and builds machine performers as “true” performers for the stage, rather than mere objects with an aura. Their singular and customized embodiment can enable the development of non-anthropocentric performances that encompass the abstract and conceptual patterns in motion and generate – as from human performers – empathy, identification and experiential reactions in live audiences.

Abstract: A phenomenological study of chiasmic and haptic embodiment of the world through passage, in order to illustrate the reading of chalked stone inscriptions on South African koppies as “footnotes” to a landscape as text.