Scotland is being transformed as renewable energy resources are being exploited through new developments and infrastructure as part of an energy transition. Scotland has a significant amount of potential onshore and offshore renewable energy available for capture largely located in rural and isolated regions. Some of this potential renewable energy has been developed and contributes to the increasing amount of energy from low carbon sources in the UK, aiding in the UK reaching its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. This thesis responds to four research questions. The first proposes an analytical framework that incorporates the concept of resource peripheries and processes of peripheralization and centralization in the multilevel perspective (MLP) from the sociotechnical transitions literature. The second discusses the transition dynamics during the renewable energy transition in Scotland that are being shaped by a number of drivers including the shift to community ownership in Scotland and a range of policies, targets, and legislation. The third address the relationship dynamics between cores and peripheries created through processes of peripheralization that include relational, multi-dimensional processes that are also multi-scalar. The fourth discusses the uneven multi-scalar dynamics created as a transition occurs with processes of peripheralization and centralization creating resource peripheries as ‘transition-periphery dynamics’. By better understanding these dynamics and relationships during transitions the renewable energy transition can be better informed to deal with possible implications and ensure possible benefits are secured for a more sustainable future.

Traditionally research into how we perceive our external world focused on the unisensory approach, examining how information is processed by one sense at a time. This produced a vast literature of results revealing how our brains process information from the different senses, from fields such as psychophysics, animal electrophysiology, and neuroimaging. However, we know from our own experiences that we use more than one sense at a time to understand our external world. Therefore to fully understand perception, we must understand not only how the brain processes information from individual sensory modalities, but also how and when this information interacts and combines with information from other modalities. In short, we need to understand the phenomenon of multisensory perception. The work in this thesis describes three experiments aimed to provide new insights into this topic. Specifically, the three experiments presented here focused on examining when and where effects related to multisensory perception emerged in neural signals, and whether or not these effects could be related to behaviour in a time-resolved way and on a trial-by-trial basis. These experiments were carried out using a novel combination of psychophysics, high density electroencephalography (EEG), and advanced computational methods (linear discriminant analysis and mutual information analysis). Experiment 1 (Chapter 3) investigated how behavioural and neural signals are modulated by the reliability of sensory information. Previous work has shown that subjects will weight sensory cues in proportion to their relative reliabilities; high reliability cues are assigned a higher weight and have more influence on the final perceptual estimate, while low reliability cues are assigned a lower weight and have less influence. Despite this widespread finding, it remains unclear when neural correlates of sensory reliability emerge during a trial, and whether or not modulations in neural signals due to reliability relate to modulations in behavioural reweighting. To investigate these questions we used a combination of psychophysics, EEG-based neuroimaging, single-trial decoding, and regression modelling. Subjects performed an audio-visual rate discrimination task where the modality (auditory, visual, audio-visual), stimulus stream rate (8 to 14 Hz), visual reliability (high/low), and congruency in rate between audio-visual stimuli (± 2 Hz) were systematically manipulated. For the behavioural and EEG components (derived using linear discriminant analysis), a set of perceptual and neural weights were calculated for each time point. The behavioural results revealed that participants weighted sensory information based on reliability: as visual reliability decreased, auditory weighting increased. These modulations in perceptual weights emerged early after stimulus onset (48 ms). The EEG data revealed that neural correlates of sensory reliability and perceptual weighting were also evident in decoding signals, and that these occurred surprisingly early in the trial (84 ms). Finally, source localisation suggested that these correlates originated in early sensory (occipital/temporal) and parietal regions respectively. Overall, these results provide the first insights into the temporal dynamics underlying human cue weighting in the brain, and suggest that it is an early, dynamic, and distributed process in the brain. Experiment 2 (Chapter 4) expanded on this work by investigating how oscillatory power was modulated by the reliability of sensory information. To this end, we used a time-frequency approach to analyse the data collected for the work in Chapter 3. Our results showed that significant effects in the theta and alpha bands over fronto-central regions occurred during the same early time windows as a shift in perceptual weighting (100 ms and 250 ms respectively). Specifically, we found that theta power (4 - 6 Hz) was lower and alpha power (10 – 12 Hz) was higher in audio-visual conditions where visual reliability was low, relative to conditions where visual reliability was high. These results suggest that changes in oscillatory power may underlie reliability based cue weighting in the brain, and that these changes occur early during the sensory integration process. Finally, Experiment 3 (Chapter 5) moved away from examining reliability based cue weighting and focused on investigating cases where spatially and temporally incongruent auditory and visual cues interact to affect behaviour. Known collectively as “cross-modal associations”, past work has shown that observers have preferred and non-preferred stimuli pairings. For example, subjects will frequently pair high pitched tones with small objects and low pitched tones with large objects. However it is still unclear when and where these associations are reflected in neural signals, and whether they emerge at an early perceptual level or later decisional level. To investigate these questions we used a modified version of the implicit association test (IAT) to examine the modulation of behavioural and neural signals underlying an auditory pitch – visual size cross modal association. Congruency was manipulated by assigning two stimuli (one auditory and one visual) to each of the left or right response keys and changing this assignment across blocks to create congruent (left key: high tone – small circle, right key: low tone – large circle) and incongruent (left key: low tone – small circle, right key: high tone – large circle) pairings of stimuli. On each trial, subjects were presented with only one of the four stimuli (auditory high tone, auditory low tone, visual small circle, visual large circle), and asked to respond which was presented as quickly and accurately as possible. The key assumption with such a design is that subjects should respond faster when associated (i.e. congruent) stimuli are assigned to the same response key than when two non-associated stimuli are. In line with this, our behavioural results demonstrated that subjects responded faster on blocks where congruent pairings of stimuli were assigned to the response keys (high pitch-small circle and low pitch large circle), than blocks where incongruent pairings were. The EEG results demonstrated that information about auditory pitch and visual size could be extracted from neural signals using two approaches to single-trial analysis (linear discriminant analysis and mutual information analysis) early during the trial (50ms), with the strongest information contained over posterior and temporal electrodes for auditory trials, and posterior electrodes for visual trials. EEG components related to auditory pitch were significantly modulated by cross-modal congruency over temporal and frontal regions early in the trial (~100ms), while EEG components related to visual size were modulated later (~220ms) over frontal and temporal electrodes. For the auditory trials, these EEG components were significantly predictive of single trial reaction times, yet for the visual trials the components were not. As a result, the data support an early and short-latency origin of cross-modal associations, and suggest that these may originate in a bottom-up manner during early sensory processing rather than from high-level inference processes. Importantly, the findings were consistent across both analysis methods, suggesting these effects are robust. To summarise, the results across all three experiments showed that it is possible to extract meaningful, single-trial information from the EEG signal and relate it to behaviour on a time resolved basis. As a result, the work presented here steps beyond previous studies to provide new insights into the temporal dynamics of audio-visual perception in the brain. / All experiments, although employing different paradigms and investigating different processes, showed early neural correlates related to audio-visual perception emerging in neural signals across early sensory, parietal, and frontal regions. Together, these results provide support for the prevailing modern view that the entire cortex is essentially multisensory and that multisensory effects can emerge at all stages during the perceptual process.

Background and aims: Recent decades have seen material shifts in global migration flows. Migrants now come to the UK for an increasing number of reasons and from an increasing number of countries. This presents a challenge for health services that must provide care to individuals with a broad range of needs. In particular, there is concern that asylum seekers and refugees (ASRs) are at heightened risk of poor wellbeing and of receiving suboptimal healthcare. Concurrent with these shifts in migration, increasing attention is being paid to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which are now the most significant drivers of morbidity and mortality in most regions of the world. In the UK, the burden of NCDs is not evenly distributed, with inequalities related to ethnicity and socioeconomic status shaping an individual’s risk of ill health. Little is known, however, about how diverse migrant groups, including ASRs, conceptualise health and respond to health prevention messaging. Against this backdrop, this thesis aims to understand the health-related experiences of one such group – asylum seekers and refugees (ASRs) from Sub Saharan Africa living in Glasgow Scotland. Specifically, it explores: a) perceptions of health, wellbeing, and illness causation, b) experiences of accessing primary and preventive healthcare, and c) the factors influencing these perceptions and experiences. It also seeks to elucidate professional perspectives on ASR health. Methods: To gain an in depth understanding of ASR health perceptions and experiences, as well as professional perspectives, a focused ethnography was undertaken. This approach utilised four qualitative methods: community engagement, participatory focus groups, semistructured interviews, and go- along interviews. In total 12 primary care and public health professionals were interviewed, and 27 ASRs took part in either a focus group, an interview, or both. The thesis took a theoretically informed approach, seeking to determine whether and how two theories – ‘candidacy’ (Dixon-Woods et al 2005) and ‘structural vulnerability’ (Quesada et al 2011) – might deepen our understanding of ASR health. Results: Candidacy enhanced understanding of how ASRs identified and responded to messages about ‘healthy lifestyles’. ASR participants considered keeping healthy to be an individual responsibility, with diet and exercise highlighted as especially important. At the same time, however, perceptions and experiences of health and wellbeing were shaped by a number of structural influences, which limited the capacity of ASRs to engage in health practices. Therefore, while ASRs considered health to be an individual choice in theory, they did not necessarily feel they had the ability to be healthy in practice. The theory of structural vulnerability proved useful in identifying the wider structural determinants that impacted on an individual’s capacity to respond. There were several important structural influences, including poverty, racism, discrimination, and language barriers. The greatest negative influence, however, and one that compounded all the others, was the asylum process. This diminished individuals’ capacity to identify as candidates for prevention messages, engage in preventive health practices, and/ or access care in an optimal fashion. Conclusions: Efforts to engage ASRs in preventive health programmes and practices must take into account the ways in which the immigration and asylum system acts as a determinant of health, affecting both what it means to be healthy and what capacity individuals have to engage. The NHS, together with non statutory bodies, has a role to play in mitigating some of the vulnerabilities to which ASRs are subject.

Educational attainment is strongly associated with a person’s life chances, and poorer children most often have poorer educational outcomes, thus entrenching inequalities. It is known that living in a deprived neighbourhood can have a detrimental impact on educational outcomes. Additionally, it has been found that having a high proportion of poor pupils within a school can have a negative impact on individual educational outcomes. In Glasgow, tenure mixing, which aims to break up areas of mainly social rented housing with owner occupation, has been an objective of regeneration policy. This thesis aims to look at whether mixed tenure policy has had an impact on individual pupil educational attainment in Glasgow. A mixed methods approach was utilised. Firstly changes between two timepoints using data from Glasgow City Council, 2001 and 2011 Censuses, and Scottish Qualification Agency data were examined, focusing on educational attainment and housing tenure. Secondly, multilevel modelling was used to explore variations in educational attainment between neighbourhoods and schools in relation to housing tenure and other socioeconomic measures at each timepoint, as well as over time. Finally, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 15 teachers and pupils in two case study schools in Glasgow. This research found that the proportion of owner occupied households in a pupil’s neighbourhood had a significant impact on their educational attainment, over and above other individual, neighbourhood, school catchment area and school factors, suggesting that mixed tenure policy could have an impact on educational attainment in Glasgow. Owner occupation was seen by teachers as a way of increasing the numbers of ‘aspirational’ families in catchment areas. Without an influx of ‘aspirational’ pupils the scope for policies to raise attainment and reputation to take hold was viewed to be limited. Pupils were more likely to be negative about changes in the catchment areas, highlighting the slow pace of change, and felt that their schools and areas were stigmatised due to poor reputation. This thesis illustrates the importance of taking into account the different contexts that may impact on a person’s outcomes. It also highlights the role of policy to take a more holistic view of contextual influences.

The thesis compares the business activities of a particular type of British overseas trading company, the Agency House, in two former British colonies, Malaysia and Nigeria. The thesis charts the commercial and political circumstances that heralded the arrival of the Agency House in each colony and the companies’ rapid business growth thereafter while trading under the relative security offered by the British Empire. The thesis then examines the firms’ development in the aftermath of empire as the selected companies struggled to survive in independent nations. Here, each of the London-domiciled boards faced a very different set of commercial conditions overseas, which were largely shaped by politics both home and abroad. Each firm was forced into tough decisions on trade strategy to safeguard interests overseas and thereafter placate an increasingly hostile host regime. After independence, the Agency House, as obvious and symbolic reminders of imperialism, became targets for punitive legislation aimed at redressing imbalances in the private sector and achieving the repatriation of corporate wealth in each of the selected nations. The commodity trade was the basis for the development of the Agency House in each former colony. In Malaysia, a British-financed estate industry spread rapidly in response to escalating demand for rubber at the start of the 20th century. By the 1950s, for a number of reasons, the estate industry moved from rubber to oil palm cultivation, which quickly became a catalyst for a huge expansion in the plantation industry, the evidence of which is etched across the nation’s topography today. In Nigeria, the production of (although not trade in) commodities always remained the remit of indigenes only which was enshrined in law, both colonial and nationalist, despite the lobbying by resident British traders. This was one of a number of factors examined in the thesis to understand why trade there could not keep pace with the British estate development taking place in Malaysia and despite Nigeria’s long history in the export of commodities like palm oil. Examining the commodity trade of each nation helps to explain the growth of the British Agency House to become commercial powerhouses in each nation. The thesis therefore looks at the strategy of each firm, the trade they were engaged in and thereafter how each attempted to survive when confronted by increasingly hostile nationalist legislation. It will also explain why only one of the Agency Houses examined here continues to trade today.

This qualitative study explores the aspirations and expectations of fifty-two young people attending a Welsh-medium and an English-medium school in the South Wales Valleys (an area which has undergone significant and economic changes as a result of deindustrialisation). These young people were first interviewed at the start of Year 11 when they were considering their futures after compulsory education. Some of these young people were interviewed again approximately a year after to explore whether they were able to achieve their aspirations and to examine whether their long-term aspirations had changed. This study illustrates how wider trends such as the contraction of the youth labour market and increasing participation rates in further and higher education as well as transformations in the local labour market have changed the way in which young people understand their educational and employment prospects. Different to some of the young people in Brown’s (1987) Schooling Ordinary Kids study, all of the young people in this study aspired to stay in some form of education and training after Year 11. This study also identifies three types of students – The Academic Inheritors, the Academic Strivers and Vocational students – which differ in terms of their orientations to education and occupational futures. There are also variations between these types of students in terms of their social background, educational experiences and the character and usage of their social networks. The different types of students highlight the limitations of accounts which present Rational Choice Theory (associated with the work of Boudon (1974) and Goldthorpe (1998)) and Bourdieu’s Cultural Reproduction Theory as opposing/competing explanatory theories. This study also compared and contrasted the aspirations and expectations of young people who attended a Welsh-medium and an English-medium school. This study shows how school choice has an impact on the social composition of Welsh-medium and English-medium schools in South East Wales, with Welsh-medium schools on average having lower proportions of students from poorer households compared to English-medium schools. School choice provides some explanation for the differences between the aspirations of young people attending the Welsh-medium and the English-medium school in this study. This study offers a new analysis of the aspirations and expectations of young people finishing compulsory education, in a context of significant social and economic change. It also makes an original contribution by exploring the aspirations of young people who attend a Welsh-medium and an English-medium school – something which has not been explored in depth before by researchers. In addition, this study contributes towards debates regarding the extent that Rational Choice Theory and Bourdieu’s Cultural Reproduction Theory are able to explain young people’s aspirations and expectations. In attempting to explain differences in student orientations, it also shows that it is extremely difficult to empirically test the relative merits of these theories and as such contributes to existing discussions of educational opportunities and inequalities. This study also has policy implications regarding how key actors such as policymakers and schools can provide support to young people to fulfil and achieve their aspirations.

This research investigates the experiences and expectations of working-class law students at a ‘new’ university. It critically examines the influence of cultural, social, linguistic and academic capital on working-class law students and their chances of success in the legal labour market. Statistics show that the number of working-class students beginning a legal education continues to grow despite the rising cost of qualification; continuing class prejudice and decline in number of training contracts and pupillages. With supply consistently exceeding demand in a middle-class dominated legal labour market, working-class students face ongoing and increasing difficulties in negotiating the barriers to entry, often with very little chance of success. This thesis presents the findings from a case study employing semi – structured interviews and focus groups used to collect qualitative data. Bourdieu’s theories on class, field and habitus are used to illuminate the findings and the data. Students describe their thoughts and experiences about their legal education and their attempts to enter the legal labour market; about why they chose to study law and why Middlebridge was their preferred university. The data suggests that the difficulties they face become apparent and their expectations begin to change as they progress through their legal education. However, instead of attempting to overcome the barriers they face, in the main, participants adjusted their sights downwards and were prepared to settle for employment at the lower-end of the legal labour market. This study suggests that universities like Middlebridge may, perhaps inadvertently, encourage inequality in law because those who enter with the lowest stock of capital benefit the least. Higher education masks how power within the legal profession is distributed, instead allowing students to believe it is based upon merit and ability.

This thesis addresses the impact of deindustrialisation and the subsequent move to a post-industrial 'new economy' on skilled working class men and their sons and grandsons. The decline in manufacturing and growth of service-based jobs has prompted many social theorists to argue working-class men’s ability to construct meaningful careers and identities is becoming ever more limited. This thesis explores 27 career history interviews collected in South-East England from 13 former Royal Dockyard tradesmen and 14 of these men’s sons and grandsons. Closed in 1984, Chatham’s naval shipbuilding and repair yard had been the major employer for generations of men and their families for over 400 years. To explore this generational significance and consider the long-term, residual effect of deindustrialisation on male work identities a mutigenerational sample was used. In the process of doing thematic analysis, it became clear that cross-generational themes were being continued and reinterpreted by these men. Three intergenerational themes were central to the men’s explanations of how they tackled transition in their working lives. The first theme ‘getting on’ reflects evidence that the men’s career motivations and attitudes were primarily focused on upward career mobility and better job security. The second theme ‘personal adaptability’ was the men strategy of adapting skills and embodying new work identities to actualize their desire to ‘get on’. However in the transition to post-industrial employment, men did not lose their engagement with their trade learning and hands on work. The third theme ‘a craft outlook’ illustrates that men developed unpaid craft projects, to retain a ‘linear life narrative’ (Sennett, 1998), which gave meaning to their evolving careers and lives. These craft projects also created channels through which fathers, sons and grandsons talked about their growing and changing relationships with each other. In light of these themes, this study generates four main findings. First although men had to deal with change in their careers this did not cause a rupture in their working identities. Instead they used powerful life themes (Savickas, 1997), to take ownership of their own working lives. So they navigated deindustrialisation and employment change in a manner that left many now viewing these transitions as positive in either personal and/or economic terms. Second, class and occupation were still fundamental to men’s identity. But, unlike career writers who suggest that a self-driven career is a middle class, professional notion this study found these men did construct sophisticated career narratives. That incorporated both their private and paid work, akin to Mirvis and Hall’s (1994) notion of a ‘protean career’. Third, the PhD finds that neither sample experienced a working class male crisis due to feeling they could not satisfy traditional gendered identities and masculine practices. Instead, intergenerational transmission was based on each generation making something of what had been passed to them, a process Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame (1997: 93) term the ‘transmission of equivalents’. The replication of occupations was not the desire of any generation in this study. Finally, this study finds that craft had a continued and evolving meaning for the majority of men. Craft gave men practices on which to structure a linear life narrative, produce familial solidarity and create a powerful labour ethic of performing quality work. Overall findings from this research challenge the idea that most men were/are passive victims of industrial change. By contrast, the majority of men in this study managed to carefully adapt to and navigate the transition from industrial to post-industrial work. Whereas this study only speaks for a section of the skilled working class, these findings suggest that the current literature needs to be modified in three ways. First, the manual working classes should not be considered a homogeneous or static group when responding to deindustrialisation. The skilled men in this study demonstrate a distinct experience of work transitions. Second, the experiences of the men were mediated by the regional employment context of the south-east, whereas the current literature is largely based on relatively isolated communities in the North of England or Celtic fringes. This studies results therefore questions the validity of generalising the impacts of this process at a national or international level. Third, unlike static studies of geographically located collective community experience, this research has followed generations of families. These individuals’ career stories reflect the important accounts of men who strategically moved away or commute to work outside these former industrial areas. Overall the omission of these factors has led to an over passive account of deindustrialisation and the move to the new economy, which robs many working-class men of their individuality and active agency.

The author of this thesis examines how SADS is made and remade within interdisciplinary professional practice. Whilst recent sociological scholarship has followed the discourse of ‘molecularization’ when examining the construction of biomedical categories, I instead place the genetic as part of a broader clinical and medico-legal system. Whilst it is accepted that there are genetic aspects of SADS this does not reduce the usefulness of other disciplinary explanations in practice. This thesis is situated around the molecular autopsy, a technology simultaneously employed to identify the cause of death and help in the diagnosis and treatment of family members of the deceased. As such, this thesis examines the professional system which surrounds this technology across the medico-legal – clinical divide. In doing so, the author of this thesis argues that the usefulness of genetic testing for SADS is an explicitly political problem. Suggesting that the current focus of research examining translational medicine falls short by focusing on the translation from ‘Bench to Bedside’, instead arguing for the importance of examining the political, and socio-economic space in which the technology is to reside. Finally, I explore the co-construction of the professional system of making SADS. A relational approach to professionalism is developed as a way to examine how mutuality is achieved during collaboration between distinct epistemic cultures. The consequence of such an approach is the ability to understand how professional groups are able to mobilise multiple conceptions of SADS in the pursuit of preventing future deaths. Making SADS gains further meaning in that I argue that understandings of SADS are distinct to accounts given in practice. Understandings of the usefulness of genetic testing for coroners is thus, not only based upon the ability of genetics to serve a particular function, but is based upon a fragmented account of the technology, rhetorically produced by clinicians.

This thesis explores how the concept of well-being is understood and operationalised in the early years through examining the implementation of the Foundation Phase in Wales. In 2008, the Welsh Government presented well-being as one of seven Areas of Learning in the Foundation Phase, which is the statutory curriculum for 3-to-7 year olds. Despite the appealing interest of well-being within policy, very limited research focuses on understanding the nature of well-being in schools and the curriculum. Well-being is generally acknowledged as a complex concept and there are many different explanations. In addition, and despite the fast-growing interest in education there is little consensus about child well-being. Therefore, this study explores primary school practitioners’ knowledge and understanding of well-being and examines day-to-day classroom practices. This qualitative case study included eight focus groups, 21 practitioner interviews, as well as 342 hours of observations in two primary schools. Several Bernsteinian concepts are drawn upon in the analysis. Key findings suggest that practitioners are uncertain about the nature of well-being as well as operationalising and capturing well-being. The study reveals four different dimensions associated with the concept of well-being, and one unwarranted assumption shared by some practitioners about a child’s well-being and their socio-economic background. In addition, five different types of well-being practices are identified; four of these practices are integrated in nature and one of them is discretely delivered by adults. The study shows that criterion-referenced assessment is implemented in different ways, but practitioners encounter various difficulties when capturing children’s well-being. Practitioners also report that well-being assessment tools are missing helpful follow-up strategies. The thesis concludes by discussing ways of developing practitioners’ understanding of complex concepts such as well-being and pedagogy, and the longer term policy implications regarding the curriculum and assessment. Future directions about child well-being research are considered.