This thesis addresses the question of how socio-political differences and lived experiences of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity may be perceived to manifest in the making of sound arts and experimental musics with a specific focus upon works made by women. Drawing upon compositions, installations and artist-archives including works by Lina Džuverovic, Anne Hilde Neset, Cathy Lane, Emma Hedditch, Sonia Boyce, Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether, the research considers the different ways in which the category of “woman” has been historically silenced, erased, ignored and disqualified from and misrepresented within dominant historical sound and music histories. I then ask what representations of “woman” might have materialised within this relational paradigm that “privileges the perspective of an archetypal Western, white, and male subject” as the universal subject of sound (Rodgers 2010b: v)? In particular noise and silence are addressed as the assumed polar limits of sound arts and experimental musics combined with a reconsideration of the fundamental parameters of pitch, timbre and amplitude as sound’s dominant laws, norms and conventions. The analysis of how the artists addressed within the research have in turn used and critiqued historically dominant representations through their aesthetic practices aims to demonstrate the ways in which these artists have challenged, resisted or transformed sound art and experimental music practices in the historical present. This research aims to contribute new insights within the emerging field of feminist sound studies by connecting social and aesthetic processes in contemporary sound arts and experimental music practices within a discourse of feminist composition. Such a discourse seeks to contribute to the materialisation of alternative sound and music economies through the subtle calibration of compositional strategies that seek to displace dominant compositional processes intent upon regulating the noise of the social as a field of normalisation for the reproduction of the individual, self-sovereign and universally masculine subject of sound. Ultimately, what this research seeks to contribute is how to experience feminist composition as a social event.

Thirteen group interviews collected data from randomly recruited second and third generation black British individuals. The interview format used was largely unstructured. The participants were informed that black and ethnic minority groups are largely underrepresented in psychological and mental health services with the ensuing topic of discussion constituting the query as to why this may be. A constructivist abbreviated version of grounded theory was applied to the transcribed material resulting from the interviews. All together 16 categories emerged from the data. These were organised under four broad headings: External Struggle (Trauma), Internal Struggle (Trauma), Private Self and ‘It’s Good to Talk!’ A theoretical process model ensued from the data pointing towards various factors working together in affecting the prevention and obstruction of help-seeking in the studied population. Informed by external trauma factors such as the concept and occurrence of slavery, via a sense of collective memory, and lived observations of discriminatory practice and attitudes, internal trauma components of distrust, sense of powerlessness and disillusion are in their interplay suggested to be primary causes of avoidance and omission of help-seeking outside of the own group. This study has made an important contribution to the knowledge base on factors preventing help-seeking in the black British second and third generation population of today. Future studies can use the knowledge gained to further theory development in this area and expand theory development to other ethnic minority groups.

There is a significant need for a cross-national study in ethnic minority entrepreneurship, and in particular of a single migrant community's business start-up experiences across multiple national contexts (Basu, 2006; Greene, 1997; Ilhan-Nas et al., 2011; Legros et al., 2013; Light and Bhachu, 1993; Wood et al., 2012). This doctoral thesis provides a qualitative cross-national investigation concerning the business start-up experiences of immigrant Punjabi-Pakistani entrepreneurs and small business owners who have started businesses in three selected ethnic enclaves in the UK, Denmark, and Norway. This research builds on ethnic entrepreneurship theories by applying the mixed embeddedness perspective, push and pull theory, and the forms of capital approach to combine agency and structural perspectives for the purpose of developing a deeper and more holistic understanding of this phenomenon from the actors' perspectives. More precisely, this study comparatively draws on the enablers and constraints these migrants experience with respect to their migration context, business start-up motivations and the forms of capital available when starting a business in an ethnic enclave. This research draws on qualitative methods of inquiry through a social constructionist perspective by employing in-depth qualitative semi-structured interviews and observations of 45 immigrant Pakistani entrepreneurs and small business owners who have started businesses in the ethnic enclaves of Rusholme (Manchester, UK), Vesterbro (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Grønland (Oslo, Norway). The research access model proposed by Buchanan et al. (1988) is applied by using formal and informal methods to gain research access to these clustered but hard-to-reach communities based on a criterion sampling strategy. The data is analysed using qualitative Template Analysis to draw on thematic similarities and differences between the three sample groups represented in this study. The empirical finding of this study reveals that respondents in the UK experience more isolated and hostile business start-up experiences in comparison to respondents in Denmark and Norway. A closer examination across all three samples reveals sectoral and behavioural diversities among three different waves of migrants in their migration context and motivations for engaging in entrepreneurial activities and business start-up. The role of co-ethnic social capital is crucial to immigrant Pakistani entrepreneurs and small business owners in all three sample groups, and these are bound at a localised, regional, and transnational level. However, the national receptive context and structural features strongly influence and shape the migrants' entrepreneurial behaviour and experiences in the receiving society with respect to starting a business. This thesis provides qualitatively rich insights into immigrant business start-up experiences whilst also extending the spatial aspects in our understanding of immigrant entrepreneurship. The value of this thesis is inherent in its empirical focus on a disadvantaged community in new geographical territories, foregrounding of the respondents' perceptions, and innovative use of theoretical models from complementary disciplines.

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Self-Negation as understood in this research project is the tendency for the African Caribbean people to belittle their African heritage and valorise their European one while being a product of both. This has led to deeply considered critical responses from Caribbean historians, literary and cultural icons, and revolutionary figures. However, this has not been adequately addressed within Caribbean theological reflection, particularly in the way that Self-Negation manifests in the relationship between the Church and African Caribbean indigenous cultural productions. Located in the field of Caribbean Theology, this research project explores and describes the complex relationship between the Church and Junkanoo in contemporary Bahamian society for the purpose of suggesting praxes for addressing Self-Negation. It employs an interdisciplinary Practical, Contextual approach to Theology using ethnographic methods such as interviews and observations to access and reflect on the inner experiences of Bahamians as they integrate or separate the two in every day life. The following conclusions are made as a result of the findings: firstly, the Junkanoo/Church relationship is complex and self-negating; it is marked by dichotomy, ambivalence, and dissonance in identity. Secondly, both the Church and Junkanoo contribute to Self-Negation, but can, and do, also contribute to Overcoming, the opposite process. While the former is perpetuated by a hermeneutic of dichotomy, which continually sees Church and Junkanoo as incompatible, the latter is perpetuated by a hermeneutic of embrace, which sees them as already integrated, mutually critical and creative spaces in which African Bahamian religiocultural identity is affirmed. Thirdly, theologically reflecting on the problematic concept of sin at the heart of the Junkanoo/Church relationship, namely the conflation of African religious and cultural heritage with sinfulness, the research argues for a hermeneutic of embrace to undergird integrative practices between Junkanoo and the Church.

My thesis discusses how Plastik HT a. s., a plastics manufacturing company in the western part of the Czech Republic, attempts to educate and develop its employees. My thesis is aimed at assessing the education and development system in the company Plastik HT a. s. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part reviews theories of education and development methods and forms, new education trends (concretely E-learning), the impact of the recession on human resources and also needs identification of education and employees planning. This first part is also engaged in employee development and situation comparison in Czech employees' education versus other countries. The second part focuses on practical questions and describes the education and development of the company Plastik HT a. s. This part is especially engaged in the system of education and development in the company. We can read about basic company information such as history, products and corporate purpose. We can also read about the strategy in the human resources sphere and the organizational culture. This second part then discribes financial resources that the company invests in their employees and also in the project of getting grants from European funds for employees education. The second part of the thesis contains an analysis of the education and development of Plastik HT a. s. employees. In the conclusion, an evaluation of the situation in the company is presented including suggestions for improving finding weaknesses.

This study is a result of one not-for-profit organization’s aim to develop and evaluate a new approach to intermediate care (IC) by drawing together three separate enterprises; a not-for-profit charitable organization, a primary health care trust and local referring hospitals and social care providers in order to design a new service. This research describes and examines the factors that influenced the success (or not) of this IC service during its first two years of functioning. Using a single descriptive case study a detailed account of the innovation journey that a multidisciplinary team (MDT) underwent as they developed and implemented their own unique model of person-centred intermediate care (PCIC) within a community based nursing home facility is provided. The study describes the workings of the unit and details the service users’ outcomes and their perceptions of the care that they received on this unit. Through the use of a mixed methods, concurrent triangulation, design quantitative data (i.e. assessments of functional ability and length of stay (n= 94)) and qualitative data (i.e. semi-structured interviews-staff (n=12), service users (n=94)) were collected in order to generate thick description which allowed for an in-depth explanation of how a new event (PCIC in a nursing home) was integrated into the culture of the facility. This design allowed the data, once analysed, to be discussed from different viewpoints in order to simultaneously address the confirmatory and exploratory aims of the study. The results of this research provide the field of IC and the practice community with a detailed account of the successes and challenges that one MDT’s experiences during their innovation journey whilst crafting and successfully implementing PCIC within a community based nursing home facility. This study also exposed the staff’s use of emotional labour in order to successfully deliver their model of PCIC.

In the master´s thesis author deals with simulations of electromagnetic fields and their applications in the electric practice at the design of electromagnetic devices. The first part of thesis deals with 3 electromagnetic field simulation softwares, their comparison and selection of the best software for the practical part of the thesis. The second part contains the practical applications of electrostatic and electromagnetic field simulation of HT power supply.

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