Despite the signing of the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the two decades of South-North Sudan war; and the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, to end the current civil war, armed conflicts persist in South Sudan. Two key inadequacies of the liberal peacebuilding model, applied to address modern conflicts in Africa and across the globe are its insistence on international justice instruments such as the International Criminal Court, and the failure to recognize the role of local approaches and to incorporate them into peacebuilding intervention policies. This has resulted in failures to address the grievances and bitterness of war affected people and to reconcile divided communities. This study examines the potential and limits of applying local approaches to post-conflict peacebuilding in South Sudan. Based on empirical data obtained through qualitative case study conducted in South Sudan over five months in 2016, the findings reveal that despite the wide use of local institutions and justice mechanisms, many challenges exist, that pose serious difficulties in solely applying these strategies to transitional justice. However, for the liberal peacebuilding model to address the root causes of internal conflicts and build sustainable peace, local strategies could provide a significant complementary contribution, since dealing with the past entails more than retribution and truth seeking. The study has wider implications in practical and theoretical considerations for ongoing armed conflicts in Africa and other parts of the world.

Pervasive computing envisions an environment in which we are surrounded by many embedded computer devices. The existence of those networked devices provides us with a mobile, spontaneous and dynamic way to access various resources provided by different (security policy) domains. In recent years, we have witnessed the evolutionary development of numerous multiple domain applications. One of the richest examples is pervasive environments. Typi- cally, the conventional approach to secure access over multiple domains is to implement a unique trusted infrastructure, extending local identity or capa- bility based security systems and combining them with cross-domain authen- tication mechanisms. However, this does not adequately meet the security requirements of communicating with unknown players in pervasive environ- ments. Moreover, it is infeasible to define a global trust infrastructure and a set of assumptions that every player will trust in the multiple domain context. A powerful design technique to address those new security challenges posed by pervasive environments is to understand them from a domain perspective. This thesis presents Localisation of Trust (LoT), an architectural frame- work designed to address the security need of how to talk to correct strangers in pervasive environments. Based on the localising trust security principle, LoT provides a generic platform for building access control over multiple do- mains from two ends: authentication and authorisation. Firstly, LoT proposes a two-channel authentication protocol to replace traditional (strong) identity- based authentication protocols by exploring desirable contextual information for different pervasive applications. Then, delegation and localised authenti- cation are deployed to achieve authorisation in pervasive environments. The heart of this different semantic is to let the right domain get involved with its local players’ interactions by helping them to convert a “token” to a usable 2 access capability, whilst keeping revocation in mind. This is done by introduc- ing a domain-oriented Encryption-Based Access Control method, using ideas borrowed for Identity-based Encryption. The second part of this thesis describes several specific mechanisms and protocols including a Dual Capabilities Model to achieve the required anti- properties for LoT. Although novel, they are intended primarily as an existence proof rather than being claimed to be ideal. Depending upon the precise application and context, other mechanisms may be better. Most importantly, the architecture-focused LoT provides such a flexibility by introducing multiple domains as a primary concern but leaving untouched the security protocols underlying each single domain and system implementation. Finally, a single domain scenario, guest access, is examined with the light of LoT. The purpose of doing so is to enhance the understanding of domain and other concepts described in LoT and demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of LoT for the scenarios chosen.

This qualitative study explores Saudi female teachers' experience of technology use in their practice and life. The aim is to present the voices of these female teachers living in the context of Saudi Arabia, and to document how personal characteristics, society and technology come to influence one another. The field work was done in Saudi Arabia, with female teachers from three public-sector primary schools. The data generation included individual, semi-structured interviews with four Saudi female teachers - one from each of two schools and two from the third school - and focus groups sessions with five to six teachers - one session in each of the three schools. The focus group methodology used Ketso, which is a collaborative mind-mapping tool developed at the University of Manchester. The interview and focus group sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed and then analysed using broad principles of thematic analysis. The data suggests that technology use affected the teachers' classroom practices, communication with others and their professional development. The teachers were active agents in this technology use, including taking responsibility for the technology use in their schools, and improvising solutions and ways of using available resources in their practice. This active role of the teachers seemed to contribute to localised use of technology, enabled the teachers to resist some of their social positions as females and teachers, and occasionally included a determination to create new positions for themselves. Overall, technology use appeared to enhance the Saudi female teachers' sense of agency, and crucially, seemed to enhance their awareness of their lived experience. The above insights might benefit Saudi educational policy makers, other Saudi teachers as a way of sharing experiences and practices, and researchers who are interested in studying the intersection between technology and society. In addition, the study exemplifies the novel use of the Ketso collaborative mind-mapping tool as a tool for qualitative research.

No description available.