The effects of explosive volcanism on local ecosystems are investigated in Middle Ordovician siliciclastics from the Welsh Basin. Bulk sampling analysis has provided quantitative data, regarding population proportions and abundance, following ash deposition in nearshore, shallow dysaerobic basin, and deeper basinal facies. Consistent ecological effects include the destruction of small sessile benthos by rapid burial, followed by re-establishment of mobile and opportunistic taxa, and a bimodal, planktic-benthic bloom in dysaerobic facies. The results are explained through vertical circulation initiated by turbid surface waters following ash deposition. Upwelling of subsurface, nutrient-rich waters of stratified basins is accompanied by downwelling of oxygenated surface waters, entrained into broadly spaced columns. The duration and nature of the events are investigated by ecological, sedimentological, and mechanical approaches, and high sedimentation rate invoked, resulting from seismicity associated with local volcanism. Systematic studies are included on Porifera, Echinodermata and Palaeoscolecida, the unusual preservation of each resulting from volcanism-related processes. The poriferan fauna provides significant information on non-lithistid demosponges and hexactinellids, including the earliest representatives of several groups. Rapid silicification of the proteinaceous skeleton of two species indicates a new source of soft-tissue preservation. Echinoderms comprise the most diverse pre-Caradoc fauna known from Britain, including six crinoids, three asteroids, and a cystoid.

This thesis explores Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI) as an alternative vehicle for the supply of debt finance to financially excluded enterprises. CDFIs are part of a broader approach to addressing financial exclusion that is experienced by commercial and social enterprises in the US and UK. The thesis explores US and UK CDFI lending processes to develop an understanding of how financial and social objectives are balanced in the lending process and the ways in which CDFIs become embedded in local financial and business support networks. The analysis is based upon detailed comparative research of CDFIs located in the US and the UK; interviews were undertaken with CDFIs, their clients and a quantitative analysis of a CDFIs loan portfolio was undertaken. The research concludes that CDFIs are complex dynamic organizations as they have to balance a double or triple bottom line which has the potential to undermine the firm’s long term survival or mission. The danger is that over time a CDFI will reduce its exposure to risk and become more like a mainstream bank. The tensions with the CDFI business model implies that they will only ever provide a partial solution to the enterprise finance gap.

The Newry Igneous Complex (NIC) in Northern Ireland comprises three largely granodioritic plutons, together with an intermediate-ultramafic body at its northeast end. Geochronology shows that the NIC becomes broadly younger to the southwest and towards the centres of individual plutons. Geophysical results from the recent Tellus Survey of Northern Ireland have been combined with petrology and geochemistry to establish 17 distinct zones within the NIC, which are interpreted to represent separately intruded magma pulses. A combination of Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS), petrographical and field data shows that the NIC was emplaced as a series of laccoliths into a tension-releasing bend on a strike-slip fault. This regime is proposed to have been facilitated by two deep-seated crustal lineaments. Inflation is suggested to have occurred due to magma pressure during emplacement of each individual zone. At least five constituent parts of the NIC are interpreted to have been emplaced separately at successively higher crustal levels. Thus the intrusion is thought to represent a series of stacked laccoliths, produced by a southwestward migrating source.

This thesis presents new micro palaeontological and geochemical palaenvironmental proxy data through the late Eocene into the earliest Oligocene from a clay-rich succession from the US Gulf Coast. It is based on samples from the Yazoo Clay Formation, recovered in the Mossy Grove Core near Jackson, Mississippi. This represents an apparently continuous section of relatively uniform lithology, clay-rich deposits that host very well preserved assemblages of calcareous nannofossils, foraminifera and organic biomarkers. This thesis makes use of these to generate a detailed calcareous nannofossil taxonomy, high-resolution calcareous nannofossil assemblage data and coccolith-fraction bulk isotope data, as well as pilot planktonic foraminifera abundance and isotope records. It also develops pilot data for organic biomarkers that demonstrate the presence and utility of biomarker proxies for ancient sea surface temperatures within the Yazoo Clay. The results of this project characterize the late Eocene US Gulf Coast as a sub-tropical shelf sea environment that experiences several stages of sea surface cooling and increasing nutrient contents - potentially linked to sea level fall - in the late Eocene and earliest Oligocene. The most important finding of this project is evidence for cooling and major perturbations to the climate-carbon cycle significantly before the onset of the major phases of Antarctic glaciation.

The geography of Scotland, with a highly undulating hinterland, long and indented coastline, together with a large number of islands, means that much social and economic activity is largely located at the coast. The importance of the coast is further highlighted by the large number of ecosystem services derived from the coast. The threat posed by climate change, particularly current and future sea level rise, is of considerable concern and the associated coastal erosion and coastal flooding has the potential to have a substantial effect on the socioeconomic activity of the whole country. Currently, the knowledge base of coastal erosion is poor, which serves to hinder the current and future management of the coast. This research reported here aimed to establish four key aspects of coastal erosion within Scotland: the physical susceptibility of the coast to erosion; the assets exposed to coastal erosion; the vulnerability of communities to coastal erosion; and the coastal erosion risk to those communities. Coastal erosion susceptibility was modelled here within a GIS, using data for ground elevation, rockhead elevation, wave exposure and proximity to the open coast. Combining these data produced the Underlying Physical Susceptibility Model (UPSM), in the form of a 50 m2 raster of national coverage. The Coastal Erosion Susceptibility Model (CESM) was produced with the addition of sediment supply and coastal defence data, which then moderates the outputs of the UPSM. Asset data for dwellings, key assets, transport infrastructure, historic assets, and natural assets were used along with the UPSM and CESM to assess their degree of exposure to coastal erosion. A Coastal Erosion Vulnerability Model (CEVM) was produced using Experian Mosaic Scotland (a geodemographic classification which identifies 44 different social groups within Scotland) to classify populations based upon 11 vulnerability variables. Dwellings were assigned a CESM and CEVM score in order to establish their coastal erosion risk. This research demonstrated that the issue of coastal erosion will impact on a relatively low number of properties compared to those impacted by flooding (both coastal and fluvial) as many dwellings are already protected by coastal defences. There is therefore, a considerable future liability, and great pressure for coastal defences to be maintained and upgraded in their current form. The use of the CEVM is a novel inclusion within a coastal erosion assessment for Scotland. Use of the CEVM established that coastal erosion risk is not distributed equally amongst the Scottish coastal population and highlighted that risk can be reduced by either reducing exposure or reducing vulnerability. Thus far in Scotland, reducing exposure has been the primary management approach, which has a number of implications with regards social justice. This research identified the existing data gaps that should be addressed by future research in order to further improve coastal management in Scotland. Future research should focus on assessing historical coastal change rates on a national scale, improve modelling of national scale wave exposure, enhance the information held about current coastal defences and, determine the direct and indirect economic cost associated with the loss of different asset types. It is also necessary to clarify the social justice implications of using adaptation approaches to manage coastal erosion as well as establishing a method to communicate the susceptibility, exposure, vulnerability and risk aspects whilst minimising the potential negative impacts (e.g. property blight) of releasing such information.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Programme is forty-six years old this year, is one of UNESCO's most successful programmes, and has been at the forefront of global conservation efforts for much of that time, changing how we think about the world around us. However, there are many contradictions in the programme. In this thesis I draw attention to some of these and what work they, and the programme, does. I look at the history of the organization and how this has impacted a programme that is claimed to be for all people for all time. The League of Nations was developed as part of peace-keeping efforts following World War One and collapsed during World War Two to be replaced with UNESCO when the war ended. As such, the World Heritage Programme was a geopolitical project that developed primarily in western Europe and the USA, and drew on these cultures to imagine the world and attempt to bring peace to it. The world that was imagined was broken down into categories such as nature opposed to culture, and tangible as opposed to intangible; and administrable territories with clear borders. I argue that this has worked to maintain a hierarchical colonial world order that has shaped the concept and practice of conservation by imagining a separate, vulnerable world that needs protection, and that humans are removed from and can control. I counter this imaginary by arguing for a 'vibrant' earth that has its own trajectory, and that rather than being orderly, fixed and hierarchical, is chaotic, creative and collaborative. Here humans are one form of life on the planet rather than sitting at the pinnacle of evolution. In this world I argue rather than conservation, it is 'kinservation' that is needed in which all life is imagined as family, echoing many indigenous cultures including the Kitchwa-speaking peoples in Ecuador. I draw on the ability of artists and arts organizations to reimagine this world, and by doing so, bring it into being. The thesis begins by outlining the key ideas and concepts that inform my thesis, pivoting around the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, before turning to methodology and how this can address these imaginaries. I then introduce the field of geopolitics, and how more recent thinking has worked to pluralize the field. The empirical section of the thesis starts by exploring the history of UNESCO, and is then divided into three chapters that outline first how worlds can be congealed and stratified over time, how eruptions can break through the strata, and finally how the arts can mediate this process. The final chapter outlines how World Heritage can be re-worlded and re-worded.

The primary focus of this thesis is the development of narrative transportation theory. Narrative transportation has been acknowledged as the immersive experience associated with reading for pleasure. This was later extended to include re-enactments (Escales, 2004), media (Green, Brock and Kaufman, 2004), education (Moyer-Guse, 2008), video games (Baranowski et al., 2008) and social media (Van Laer and De Ruyter, 2010). This discussion, whilst interesting, has failed to explore the full depth of application of the theory. As such, this thesis seeks to explore the conceptual breadth of the concept and offers support for an extension of the current conceptualisation. Insights from the well-developed field of authenticity will be used to enhance the discussion on and understanding of narrative transportation. Whilst there has been much discussion on the conceptualisation of authenticity (Pearce and Moscardo, 1985; Handler and Saxton, 1988; Bruner, 1994; Selwyn, 1996a, 1996b; Wang, 1999), there has been less exploration into visitor perceptions of authenticity and how the form of authenticity influences the visitor experience. The thesis seeks to explore narrative transportation and its conceptual breadth of application by investigating the motivations for visiting literary heritage sites and the interactions that occur amongst visitors. Specifically, the research focuses on the antecedents affecting participation, the resulting impact on engagement and the post-experience evaluation. The research adopts a case-study approach and utilises access at two literary attractions. One of these, Shakespeare’s Birthplace, is internationally known; the other, Sarehole Mill, is associated with J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The findings are informed by a two-year period of data collection, including an archival search, a document analysis, semi-structured interviews and small focus groups. The findings offer a full understanding of the variables that affect engagement and participation at literary heritage sites amongst a range of participants. The primary contributions of this study are to the development of narrative transportation theory. Narrative-transportation theory has been reconceptualised as cyclical – not linear, as previously suggested – and new elements have been identified, including a post-narrative-transportation effect. Several insights into the supporting theory of authenticity have also emerged; namely, elected authenticity, the role of costumed guides as a tangible hybrid, and a new perspective on the relationship between alienation and the search for the authentic. The development of the dual longitudinal focus-group approach offers a new development and dimension for discussion within the methodology literature. The relevance of these findings extends beyond the literary heritage setting to the wider tourism industry and service sector, where brand stories, identities and engagement with consumers are crucial.

Over the past five years the UK has seen an increased number of refugees and asylum-seekers arriving on its shores as a result of ongoing conflicts happening around the world. Refugees and asylum-seekers make up only a very small percentage of the country’s population, yet immigration concerns regularly make headlines and are a ‘hot topic’ for politicians seeking public support. Glasgow became home for a large number of refugees and asylum-seekers after it signed up to the ‘dispersal’ scheme nearly twenty years ago, and as a result the make-up of communities in the city is everchanging. It has increased multiculturalism and is a decidedly multilingual city. This thesis brings together work in language geographies and migration studies to explore the everyday language geographies of refugees and asylum-seekers in Glasgow. The central aim is to reveal the situated dynamics of ‘talk’; what languages are used, in what combinations, and with what kinds of ‘props’ as people seek to ‘get-by’, make friends and express themselves, all the while considering the implications of the spaces involved. Through the voices of refugees, asylum-seekers and associated professionals, this thesis explores different spaces of multilingualism and the associated emotional geographies of these spaces. Language is conceptualised in this thesis as an object in itself, engendering feelings of belonging (or not), and recognises that language is fluid and mobile, mutually constituted with the space in which it happens. The thesis explores four different sites of language use - journeys to the UK, the body, the classroom, and the community - to investigate the complex geographies of refugees and asylum-seekers as they seek to acquire English and settle in the city of Glasgow. Of importance is the part that language plays in positioning refugees and asylum-seekers in society, often relating to insider-outsider type dichotomies, but also thinking about how these divides may be overcome. Finally, the refugee and asylum-seeker body is conceptualised as the mobile linguistic stranger, simultaneously near and far, and the thesis uncovers how this figure comes to be and the implications of such a conceptualisation.

As urbanisation continues to fragment and degrade habitats there is a need to ensure that cities are managed to sustain ecosystem function and high biodiversity. Ecological theories suggest that areas with higher levels of functional connectivity sustain a more diverse avian population. By identifying the key habitat features that dictate the distribution and abundance of avian populations it is possible to inform planning policy to maximise biodiversity. Bird species presence and abundance across an urban gradient in Birmingham (UK) was surveyed at 70 sites over three sampling periods (between 2009 and 2010), in combination with a tree survey and digital analysis of land use. Functional connectivity was shown to increase the abundance of bird species and to ameliorate the impacts of urban development. Bird species were found to vary with their associations with vegetation structure and a proxy for invertebrate productivity. There was clear evidence for increasing native tree species in the urban matrix to support more bird species. Ringing data collected between 2008 and 2011 were used to examine bird movements through the city and the influence of habitat factors such as connectivity and built space in the matrix. Bird movements between ringing sites demonstrated the permeability of the city and the importance of connectivity in the landscape. This work showed that the composition of the matrix influences bird occupancy and turnover of sites. The novel findings presented in this thesis on the influence of the urban landscape on urban avian ecology should make an important contribution to urban conservation methods.

The Galicia margin has been at the forefront the development and testing of models on the break-up of magma-poor passive margins. However the current paradigm of continental break-up is still largely based on two dimensional observations. The data presented here from a high resolution 3D seismic reflection data reveal in unprecedented detail the complexity of continental break-up. Using the 3D geometry of the faults, analysing fault displacement at a number of different levels, and mapping syn-rift sediments it has been possible to offer a new model of break-up. This model combines elements of previous models but offers a new degree of clarity over the mechanism including fault linkage. Slip initiates at different points on the a weakened serpentinised mantle forming a slip surface that propagates up through a network of faults forming the S reflector, a detachment fault whilst also dissecting the crust, allowing further water ingress and weakening. Progressive slip and weakening rotates slip surfaces, eventually new sites of slip initiation form that propagate through the crust forming a new fault network and ceasing slip on the previous network. Continued weakening and slip eventually leads to break-up.