This dissertation examines the latter stages of the Second Indochina War through the lens of geography, spatial contestation, and the environment. The natural and the manmade world were not only central but a decisive factor in the struggle to control the population and territory of South Vietnam. The war was shaped and in many ways determined by spatial / environmental factors. Like other revolutionary civil conflicts, the key to winning political power in South Vietnam was to control both the physical world (territory, population, resources) and the ideational world (the political organization of occupied territory). The means to do so was insurgency and pacification - two approaches that pursued the same goals (population and territory control) and used the same methods (a blend of military force, political violence, and socioeconomic policy) despite their countervailing purposes. The war in South Vietnam, like all armed conflicts, possessed a unique spatiality due to its irregular nature. Although it has often been called a "war without fronts," the reality is that the conflict in South Vietnam was a war with innumerable fronts, as insurgents and counterinsurgents feverishly wrestled to win political power and control of the civilian environment throughout forty-four provinces, 250 districts, and more than 11,000 hamlets. The conflict in South Vietnam was not one geographical war, but many; it was a highly complex politico-military struggle that fragmented space and atomized the battlefield along a million divergent points of conflict. This paper explores the unique spatiality of the Second Indochina War and examines the ways that both sides of the conflict conceptualized and utilized geography and the environment to serve strategic, tactical, and political purposes. / History

On November 4, 1956, Soviet forces brutally suppressed the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest. Although Nikita Khrushchev had attempted to "repair" the Soviet Union's image by denouncing Stalin's crimes, the Soviet invasion of Hungary damaged the Soviet Union's legitimacy in the international community. This thesis examines the popular and religious press' coverage of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. By publishing anticommunist editorials and letters to the editor, the popular press furthered the phenomenon known as Cold War Consensus. Historians have looked at Cold War Consensus as a conscious political project created by a number of individuals and institutions. This thesis emphasizes the role of the popular and religious press as agents in the solidification of the Cold War Consensus. Most notable was the popular and religious press' use of the victimization narrative. By portraying the Hungarian freedom fighters as victims of the Soviet system, the popular and religious press condemned the Soviet Union's actions while extolling "American values" such as democracy, freedom, and charity. The popular and religious press' treatment of Soviet brutality also built a sensationalized image of Hungarian refugees. The emphasis on Soviet savagery and narrative centered on incoming Hungarian refugees as heroes strengthened anticommunist rhetoric that was typical during the 1950s. / History

A significant number of Pennsylvanians were not, in any meaningful sense, either revolutionaries or loyalists during the American War for Independence. Rather, they were disaffected from both sides in the imperial dispute, preferring, when possible, to avoid engagement with the Revolution altogether. The British Occupation of Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778 laid bare the extent of this popular disengagement and disinterest, as well as the dire lengths to which the Patriots would go to maintain the appearance of popular unity. Driven by a republican ideology that relied on popular consent in order to legitimate their new governments, American Patriots grew increasingly hostile, intolerant, and coercive toward those who refused to express their support for independence. By eliminating the revolutionaries' monopoly on military force in the region, the occupation triggered a crisis for the Patriots as they saw popular support evaporate. The result was a vicious cycle of increasing alienation as the revolutionaries embraced ever more brutal measures in attempts to secure the political acquiescence and material assistance of an increasingly disaffected population. The British withdrawal in 1778, by abandoning the region's few true loyalists and leaving many convinced that American Independence was now inevitable, shattered what little loyalism remained in the region and left the revolutionaries secure in their control of the state. In time, this allowed them to take a more lenient view of disaffection and move toward modern interpretations of silence as acquiescence and consent for the established government. / History

After the eruption of the demonstrations along the Syrian cities, in March 2011, the Syrian regime responded with hostile acts against the civilians, therefore, waves of IDPs and refugees occurred for millions of Syrians causing one of the largest catastrophes in the modern era, as a result, the international community specifically the EU and USA intervened to address the needs of those IDPs and refugees.  The thesis aimed at analyzing the Western development interventions in NW of Syria, the interventions were initiated through their development agencies and INGOs and were implemented by local stakeholders.  This thesis explored several impacts of this intervention between 2011 till present, it focused on analyzing from a decolonial approach how the intervention contributed to ngoizing the Syrian Revolution on the basis of community demand driven approach using a historical discourse analysis and interview as methodologies, accordingly, several qualitative interviews were conducted in Gaziantep with thirteen leaders of the revolution and CSOs.  Finally, this thesis reached to conclusions: the Syrians need financial then political and legal support, additionally, it reached to three different dimensions of Ngoisation: A helping strategy that aims at empowering the locals. Wrong implementation of the Donors’ policies, and a hidden agenda of the soft colonial changing tools.

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yes / The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or IRGC is a multilayered political, ideological, and security institution that has steadily acquired an increasing role in Iran’s economy in recent years. This paper analyses the increasing economic and business involvement of the IRGC in the broader context of Iranian state-society relations in general, and its civil-military dynamics in particular. More specifically, we look at the political and socio-economic processes within which the IRGC operates at the interrelated levels of the state and society. This analysis sets out the framework based on which we examine the IRGC’s increasing power in the course of its engagements and various conflicts in both political and societal arenas, and in particular its economic expansion under Ahmadinejad’s presidency. This paper concludes by discussing the implications of the IRGC’s rise on the economic policy of the new government under President Rouhani. / The full text is unavailable in the repository due to copyright restrictions.

The activity of southwest Virginia (Botetourt, Montgomery, and Washington Counties) Tories is important because of the presence of the all-important Lead Mines in what was then Montgomery County. During the Revolution the Montgomery Mines supplied the needs of the Continental Army, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the state of North Carolina. Along the frontier itself, the threat of Indian attack loomed as an ever-present fear and made protection of the lead works essential to the safety of its inhabitants. This study discusses Loyalism in general, as well as the presence of Loyalists in Virginia and the other twelve colonies. The work then focuses on the people who settled in and the environment of southwest Virginia. Characteristics of some ethnic groups, especially the Germans, made them more susceptible to becoming Tories; while traits of other groups made them likely to support independence. Throughout the Revolution frontiersmen faced a dual threat from Indians and Tories. It was in 1779 that the southwest Virginia Tories began their campaign to destroy the Lead Mines. Undaunted by failure, they attempted once more in 1780 to wrest the Mines from the Patriot's seemingly iron grip. Principal figures involved in suppressing these uprisings were Colonels Arthur and William Campbell of Washington County; Colonels Charles Lynch, Manager of the Mines, and William Preston of Smithfield in Montgomery County. The dearth of Tory success disheartened many, and no further attempts of any seriousness were launched. / M.A.

Dans le présent mémoire, nous nous intéressons principalement à la vision politique de Heidegger et à son rapport au nazisme. Plusieurs liens entre le philosophe originaire de Messkirch et des penseurs politiques comme Jünger et Spengler subsistent. Il se dit lui-même en dette concernant le livre L’homme et la technique et mentionne à Karl Löwith qu’il « est en train de lire avec beaucoup d’intérêt le livre plein d’esprit de Spengler sur Le déclin de l’Occident ». Est-ce que Heidegger appartient au mouvement de la Konservative Revolution, expression employée par le poète Hugo von Hofmannsthal, mais popularisée par la thèse de doctorat d’Armin Mohler (1920-2003) pour décrire un ensemble de penseurs appartenant à un mouvement hétéroclite auquel Jünger et Spengler sont associés ? Certains commentateurs comme Jürgen Habermas, Robert Steuckers, Reinhard Mehring, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Gérard Granel et Alexandre Douguine semblent de cet avis, tandis que d’autres comme François Fédier, en se fondant en partie sur la thèse de Mohler, affirment que Heidegger n’appartient pas à ce mouvement. Nous souhaitons montrer que la position de Mohler est plus nuancée et présente une ouverture à son inclusion au sein de la Révolution conservatrice allemande. / In this thesis, we will investigate the political vision of Martin Heidegger and his link to Nazism. Several links between the philosopher from Messkirch and political thinkers like Jünger and Spengler remain. He states he is indebted to the book Man and Technics and indicates to Karl Löwith that he “is reading with great interest Spengler’s witty book on The Decline of the West”. Does Heidegger belong to the movement of the Konservative Revolution, which is an expression used by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, but made widely known by the doctoral thesis of Armin Mohler (1920-2003) to describe a set of thinkers belonging to a heterogeneous movement to which Jünger and Spengler are some of the most well-known thinkers? Some commentators like Jürgen Habermas, Robert Steuckers, Reinhard Mehring, Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe, Gérard Granel and Alexander Dugin seem to share this opinion while others like François Fédier, partially based on Mohler’s thesis, believe Heidegger does not belong to this movement. We wish to show that Mohler’s position is more nuanced and offers an opening to include Heidegger in the Konservative Revolution.

Yes / Open research practices seek to enhance the transparency and reproducibility of research. Whilst there is evidence of increased uptake in these practices, such as study preregistration and open data, facilitated by new infrastructure and policies, little research has assessed general uptake of such practices across psychology university researchers. The current study estimates psychologists’ level of engagement in open research practices across universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland, while also assessing possible explanatory factors that may impact their engagement. Data were collected from 602 psychology researchers in the UK and Ireland on the extent to which they have implemented various practices (e.g., use of preprints, preregistration, open data, open materials). Here we present the summarised descriptive results, as well as considering differences between various categories of researcher (e.g., career stage, subdiscipline, methodology), and examining the relationship between researcher’s practices and their self-reported capability, opportunity, and motivation (COM-B) to engage in open research practices. Results show that while there is considerable variability in engagement of open research practices, differences across career stage and subdiscipline of psychology are small by comparison. We observed consistent differences according to respondent’s research methodology and based on the presence of institutional support for open research. COM-B dimensions were collectively significant predictors of engagement in open research, with automatic motivation emerging as a consistently strong predictor. We discuss these findings, outline some of the challenges experienced in this study, and offer suggestions and recommendations for future research. Estimating the prevalence of responsible research practices is important to assess sustained behaviour change in research reform, tailor educational training initiatives, and to understand potential factors that might impact engagement. / Research funding: Aston University. Article funding: Open access funding provided by IReL.

yes / This paper discusses Leibniz’s view and defence of heliocentrism, which was one of the main achievements of the Scientific Revolution (1543-1687). As Leibniz was a defender of a strictly mechanistic worldview, it seems natural to assume that he accepted Copernican heliocentrism and its completion by figures like Kepler, Descartes and Newton without reservation. However, the fact that Leibniz speaks of the Copernican theory as a hypothesis (or plausible assumption) suggests that he had several reservations regarding heliocentrism. On a first approach Leibniz employed two of his most cherished principles to defend the Copernican hypothesis against the proponents of geocentrism: these were the principle of the relativity of motion and the principle of the equivalence of hypotheses. A closer analysis reveals, however, that Leibniz also appeals to dynamic causes of planetary motions, and these constitute a much stronger support for heliocentrism than his two philosophical principles alone.