Beyond the half-lives, Exclusions Zones, and official imaginaries of nuclear risk, exists an informal geography of Chernobyl. This thesis explores what it is like to live with nuclear disaster. It reveals how people have developed informal coping tactics and local risk understandings that defy formal constructions of nuclear space, and help resist de facto state abandonment. This project involved in-depth ethnographic research with marginalised communities who live in the contaminated landscapes around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. Qualitative approaches including participant observation, photographic methods and semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants including liquidators (cleanup workers), border guards, evacuees, returnees, ‘Chernobyl widows’, farmers and many other people impacted by the disaster’s contested nuclear geography. The thesis reveals how Chernobyl’s constructed landscape is produced through a negotiated process of ‘nuclearity’ (Hecht 2012). The research posits that alongside formal spatialisations of Chernobyl – such as its ‘Exclusion Zones’ - are a spectrum of unofficial understandings of space and risk that contest this top-down and ‘strategic’ geography of nuclear disaster (de Certeau 1984). It demonstrates that these alternative nuclear understandings help people assert agency and oppose the status of post-atomic ‘bare life’ (Agamben 1998). Utilising theorisations of power and resistance offered by de Certeau (1984), the thesis uncovers the hidden geography of informality, local knowledge and place attachment that allow people to resist the ‘stealthy violence’ (Li 2009, 67) of abandonment and perform their own alternative narratives of nuclear space. This thesis contributes to discussions of Agamben within geographical discourses, and advances understandings of informality in the context of post-socialist marginalisation and landscapes of risk.

This thesis will explore the agentive roles of material culture in ancient colonial encounters. It takes as a case study the Roman colonization of southern Britain, from the first century BC onwards. Using ethnographic and theoretical perspectives largely drawn from social anthropology, it seeks to demonstrate that the consumption of certain types of continental material culture by some members of communities in southern Britain, pre-disposed the local population to Roman political annexation in the later part of the first century AD. Once the Roman colonial project proper commenced, different material cultures were introduced by colonial agents to maintain domination over a subaltern population. Throughout, the entanglement of people and things represented a reciprocal continuum, in which things moved people's minds, as much as people got to grips with particular things. In addition it will be suggested that the confrontations of material culture brought about by the colonial encounters affected the colonizer as much as the colonized. The thesis will demonstrate the impact of a variety of novel material cultures by focusing in detail on a key area of southern Britain – Chichester and its immediate environs. Material culture will be examined in four major categories: Landscapes and Buildings; Exchange, Food and Drink; Coinages; Death and Burial. Chapters dealing with these categories will be preceded by an opening chapter on the nature of Roman colonialism, followed by an introductory one on the history and archaeology of southern Britain and the study area. The Conclusion will include some thoughts on the integration of anthropological approaches to archaeological interpretation. I intend that the thesis provides a contribution to the wider debate on the role of material culture in ancient colonial projects, and an example of the increasingly productive bidirectional entanglement of archaeology and anthropology.

The main objective of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the forms that environmental cooperation takes in regions of the South and the processes determining these different forms. Environmental cooperation has been researched extensively in other contexts, notably in relation to global environmental regimes, but the regional dimension and regions in the South in particular, have received very little attention. This thesis provides an in-depth exploratory study comparing three cases of regional environmental cooperation in one region of the South, the Southern Cone of South America. Based on the findings from two extensive fieldwork periods which served to conduct over 50 interviews with policy-makers, civil society representatives and researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and to collect relevant documentation, the thesis argues that regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone takes place in three main forms; regional organisations; regional resource regimes; and the regional implementation of global environmental conventions. These vary in terms of the type of institutional framework and its political purpose; the scope of issues addressed; and the way the membership is determined. Regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone is promoted by different types of drivers from within the region, notably civil society organisations and networks of government officials, as well as drivers from outside the region, most importantly donors and international organisations. The variation in the forms of cooperation is thus determined not only by the position of national governments, but also by the objectives and strategies used by the different drivers. In addition, regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone is marked by low political will and takes a marginal position in particular in relation to economic interests. While different drivers have been crucial in shaping the different forms that regional environmental cooperation takes, the marginality of this is an outcome of the political and economic context and the development strategy adopted by governments. Consequently, during the research process it became clear that it is important to distinguish between differing levels of strength of regional environmental cooperation and the thesis has developed the concepts of robustness and marginality to this end. These theoretical tools provide an important basis for further research and comparisons on environmental cooperation in regions of the South.

This thesis wishes to draw attention to the economic, social and political implications of the rise and establishment of the institutional Church in Early Christian Greece, particularly by exploring the pilgrimage, philanthropic and industrial function of the churches’ annexes. The diverse functions of churches annexes, besides reflecting a social dimension, they also reflect economic and political realities that require the development of an interdisciplinary approach, based on civil and ecclesiastical legislation, archaeology, epigraphy, history and theology, in order to explore the extent and the effects of the institutional Church’s activity in Greece. Interpreting Christian archaeology in key excavated sites of Greece by interweaving literary and material evidence both of ecclesiastical and secular origin, will help not only to ascertain how churches stood in relation to adjoining buildings combining religious and economic purposes, but also to restore to the most possible extent the Early Christian Greek urban and rural topographies.

Interpretations of osteological remains from mainland Greece during the 1960-1980s led to the suggestion that the most virulent form of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, was prevalent between the Mesolithic and Late Bronze Age (c. 8700 cal. BC-1100 cal. BC). Although disregarded over the past decade, the theory has regained support in recent years from osteological, epidemiological, environmental and DNA studies. However, the presence of this strain of malaria in prehistoric Greece remains controversial. This thesis evaluates 1) the palaeoclimatic conditions of the Aegean between the Mesolithic and Late Bronze Age and 2) the palaeoenvironmental conditions of three archaeological settlements, with the aim of ascertaining whether the climatic and environmental conditions were as conducive for P. falciparum and the mosquito vectors as the osteological evidence suggested. Equal consideration is given to the so-called ‘lesser strains’ of malaria, P. vivax and P. malariae, the significance of which is considered to have been underestimated in previous studies.

Capturing Appalachia: Visualizing Coal, Culture and Ecology, draws on extensive ethnographic, archival, and ecographic research conducted across Appalachia between 2014-2016 to develop an empirically informed sociological image of the interactions between culture, geography, and industry. Of particular interest are the ways that extractive cultures in Appalachia are constructed and communicated, and so the project includes archival work researching historical images as well as fieldwork focused on the production of images. Drawing on the traditions of cultural and ‘green’ criminologies, geography, and critical ecotheory, concluding that the cultural, political, and ecological worlds of Appalachia exist in a dialectical relationship with one another, and that at the center of each is an intense cultural relationship with the region’s historic and contemporary capture (cultural, economic, and ecological) by resource extraction. These dialectical relationships are made clear in the visuality of Appalachia, with paradigms frequently challenged by the production of countervisual narratives in productions spanning photography, literature, cinema, and media. The project constitutes the first extensive empirical application of the suggestions of an emergent green-cultural criminology. This research contributes significantly to the existing theoretical literature on extractive cultures through the development and application of the concept of ‘capture’, which is employed in throughout and which constitutes a central concept the project. The concept of ‘regulatory capture’ informs much of the existing sociological literature on harmful industry. Expanding on the concept of ‘capture’, I consider the capture of Appalachian economies by a single industry (economic capture), the capture of cultural production by the dominant industry (cultural capture), the legal capture of material landscapes by industry (ecological capture), the visual-mechanical capture of images of ecology and culture (photographic capture), and finally, the capture of ecology and people by an emerging industry of incarceration (carceral capture).

My thesis is the product of an in-depth qualitative study of the ‘return' of British-born Cypriots to Cyprus. By specifically focusing on the second generation, my thesis seeks to rectify the lacuna in research on the second generation's connections to the ethnic homeland, capitalising on these migrants' positionalities with respect to questions of home and belonging. The thesis consists of eight chapters: Chapter 1 introduces the context in which the research was conducted; Chapter 2 provides the historical and geographical background for the Cypriot migration experience; Chapter 3 presents the methodological and ethical context in which my research was conducted; Chapters, 4, 5, 6 are the main empirical chapters, discussing the British-born Greek-Cypriot returnees' experiences, motives and viewpoints, from childhood memories to today's adult experiences; Chapter 7 provides an additional comparative angle through the inclusion of a subsample of British-born Turkish Cypriots; and finally, Chapter 8, my concluding chapter, revisits the research questions, draws comparisons with other empirical studies on second-generation return, and re-evaluates my methodological framework. Through the voices and life-narratives of second-generation British-Cypriot ‘return' migrants – following a biographical timeline – the multifaceted perspectives in which notions of ‘return', ‘home' and ‘belonging' can be viewed and experienced in a migratory context are revealed. My study shows the complexities and ambivalences involved when exploring ideas of ‘identity' and ‘return', views of ‘home', and feelings of ‘belonging' in the ancestral homeland – demonstrating how boundaries of such notions are blurred, eroded and re-established by a new generation of migrants, reflecting their time, experiences, choices and ideologies. My findings deconstruct the meaning of ‘return', move beyond the primordial cultural confines of notions of ‘belonging', and challenge the simple dichotomy of ‘home' versus ‘away', revealing new similarities (and differences) beyond such predefined labels and categories, which form the building blocks for new, contemporary, ways and spaces of belonging.

Directed by the Millennium Development Goal to improve the lives of at least 100 million ‘slum’ dwellers by 2020, national governments and development agencies are driving policy to upgrade and formalise informal settlements. This study is an investigation into the effects of in situ upgrade and formalisation on the vulnerability and resilience of the urban poor in Durban, South Africa. The study examines the relationships between tenure and vulnerability by identifying and exploring how changes to tenure security, introduced through the upgrade process, affect individuals’ exposure to risk and ability to cope, and the ways in which identity and social relations influence those effects. The data are drawn from twenty-four ethnographies of residents living in three low income settlements in/around Durban each at different stages in the upgrade process. The findings of the study show that many residents are better off following an upgrade – ownership claims are better protected, they are more comfortable in their homes and able to improve livelihoods. However, these security and resilience gains are undermined by the high levels of crime and violence that continue post-upgrade and affect the desirability of a location and the ability of people to live there. Furthermore, the manner in which the process is implemented reconfigures local power relations, without meaningfully altering them; thus continuing to tie residents’ wellbeing to social rules administered by informal institutions. These findings challenge conceptualisations of ‘tenure security’ and the conventional orthodoxy of upgrading.

PBDEs were detected in all air and dust samples. The PBDE congener profile in both outdoor and indoor air samples from Thai e-waste storage facilities and homes was dominated by BDE-47 and 99, whilst the predominant BFRs in all dust samples from Thai e-waste storage facilities were BDE-209, BDE-208, BDE-207, BDE-206, BDE-197, BDE-183, BDE-99, BDE-47 and DBDPE. Furthermore, BDEs 99 and 47 were the most abundant congeners in all dust samples from Thai houses and cars and UK homes. Under realistic high-end scenarios of occupational exposure to BDE-99 via dust ingestion, workers in Thai e-waste storage facilities were exposed above a recently-published Health Based Limit Value for this congener. For non-occupational exposure, under a high-end exposure scenario, the exposure to BDE-99 of such Thai children via dust ingestion is either very close to or in exceedance of the HBLV. PBDE levels in most of the areas monitored within the same rooms were not statistically significantly different. Similarly, concentrations of PBDEs in the majority of rooms within the same houses were not statistically significantly different between rooms. Possible dilution of PBDE levels in dust with increasing dust loadings has been identified in a small number of rooms.

Charting the trans-Atlantic movement of ‘dynamic’ psychiatry from The Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Baltimore, to Gartnavel Mental Hospital, Glasgow, this thesis throws light upon the resultant ‘dynamic’ case note records, produced in Gartnavel during the 1920s. By undertaking an in-depth, qualitative analysis of Gartnavel’s case note records and corresponding archival materials, I explore the polemical question, posed, amongst others, by Foucault, of how psychiatry achieves its distinct status as a science of the individual. Foucault, most notably in Discipline and Power, ascribes to the psychiatric profession the power to fashion individual patient histories into cases, cases which simultaneously emphasise the individuality of a patient, while condensing, i.e. ‘fixing’ their identities that they may be constituted ‘an object for a branch of knowledge and a hold for a branch of power’. This thesis, while recognising the validity of this argument, explores how the clinical practices and philosophical outlook of dynamic psychiatry in the early twentieth century enabled both patient and psychiatrist to negotiate the construction of the psychiatric case note record, and consequently of patients’ individual identities. D. K. Henderson, physician superintendent of Gartnavel between 1921 and 1932, was one of the first, if not the first psychiatrist fully to incorporate dynamic principles into the working practices of a British mental hospital. Initiating methods of case note taking and staff meeting consultation (now integral components of modern day psychiatric practice) he transported the teachings of his mentor, the Swiss émigré psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, to the everyday clinical practices of Gartnavel. The dissemination of dynamic psychiatry through Henderson’s published works and medical teachings is recognised as having integrally shaped the practices of Scottish psychiatry in the twentieth century. However, the significance of the unpublished case note records, produced under his superintendence of Gartnavel during the 1920s, as sources of historical enquiry has gone largely unrecognised. A near-unique archive of ‘dynamic’ case note records is used in this thesis to reveal, what Roy Porter termed, a ‘history from below’ of clinical practices and examinatory processes. For as Henderson employed stenographers and clinical clerks to record verbatim and semi verbatim the dialogues that passed between patients and psychiatrists within staff meetings and mental examinations, I, as Porter himself aspired to, take as the focus of my research a history of the ‘two-way encounters between doctors and patients’. By employing an interdisciplinary research method, one that incorporates Foucauldian, literary, critical medical humanities, as well as more traditional forms of medical history scholarship, I establish a history of dynamic psychiatry set within clinical encounters. Engaging with current debate, evolving primarily within the interdisciplinary sphere of the medical humanities, I argue these records reveal a history of medical humanism, one in which both patients and psychiatrists actively shaped the history of twentieth century Scottish psychiatry.