This report mainly introduces how I, as a designer, use the meta-design theoretical framework and design methods to explore my board game design. Introduction “The most important challenge today and in the future concerns sustainability – to create a world that is good for both people and the environment, locally and globally”. -Linnaeus University I am a design student from China studying in Sweden. It is a challenge for me to go abroad and come to a new country and city to study and live, but also an interesting change. This thesis was inspired by some of my experiences in Sweden. As a newcomer to another country. I have no particular knowledge of Swedish. Although I did some research before coming to Sweden, all I know is that Sweden is a neutral country. It is a country that likes to maintain social distance. It is a country that pays great attention to environmental protection and sustainable development. It is a country with a very lovely language. But just knowing these things cannot help me to study and live in Sweden well. I realized I needed some help from the locals. So here came my first question. How can I get in touch with the locals? For me as a student, the best connection resources are already in front of me. That is my classmates. But as a new student who just arrived in the class, I did not have enough courage to take the initiative to ask the local students about how to live in Sweden. However, I was lucky. Most of my classmates are very enthusiastic. From the conversations with them, I can feel their curiosity about me. Maybe it was because we are about to spend three years studying together, or maybe it was out of kindness to others. Compared with my luck, other friends around me who also came to Sweden to study felt a little bit lost. They found it difficult to integrate with local students. They did not know how to open the topic, and they did not know how to find a common language. They found that local students were more likely to hang out with friends from their own country. During the two years I spent in Sweden, I felt the warmth of the local people. Of course, there are also many cultural differences. I also heard from many friends around me that they think it is difficult to really integrate into Sweden. They could feel a sense of social powerlessness. So, I started thinking, as a design student, what design changes can I make for this? Is it possible to use design to make an experimental intervention game? For example, integrating the simple board games we used to play as children, and redesigning and integrating them into an activity that can be made and played together in a social place. Of course at the same time, I also discovered some small games that Swedish students like to play at parties. Like an icebreaker, everyone is happily participating. But the materials these games require are not particularly environmentally friendly. For example, disposable plastic cups, plastic ping pong balls. Especially during the epidemic, every time a party was held, some students were infected with the virus. So, I was thinking, what kind of games do not require close physical proximity, are interactive and are environmentally friendly and can be used sustainably? With this question, I started my game design journey.

Social contact networks represent proximity relationships between individual agents. Such networks are useful in diverse applications, including epidemiology, wireless networking and urban resilience. The vertices of a social contact network represent individual agents (e.g. people). Time varying edges represent time varying proximity relationship. The networks are relational -- node and edge labels represent important demographic, spatial and temporal attributes. Synthesizing social contact networks that span large urban regions is challenging for several reasons including: spatial, temporal and relational variety of data sources, noisy and incomplete data, and privacy and confidentiality requirements. Moreover, the synthesized networks differ due to the data and methods used to synthesize them. This dissertation undertakes a systematic study of synthesizing urban scale social contact networks within the specific application context of computational epidemiology. It is motivated by three important questions: (i) How does one construct a realistic social contact network that is adaptable to different levels of data availability? (ii) How does one compare different versions of the network for a given region, and what are appropriate metrics when comparing the relational networks? (iii) When does a network have adequate structural details for the specific application we have. We study these questions by synthesizing three social contact networks for Delhi, India. Our case study suggests that we can iteratively improve the quality of a network by adapting to the best data sources available within a framework. The networks differ by the data and the models used. We carry out detailed comparative analyses of the networks. The analysis has three components: (i) structure analysis that compares the structural properties of the networks, (ii) dynamics analysis that compares the epidemic dynamics on these networks and (iii) policy analysis that compares the efficacy of various interventions. We have proposed a framework to systematically analyze how details in networks impact epidemic dynamics over these networks. The results suggest that a combination of multi-level metrics instead of any individual one should be used to compare two networks. We further investigate the sensitivity of these models. The study reveals the details necessary for particular class of control policies. Our methods are entirely general and can be applied to other areas of network science. / Ph. D.

<p>Under lång tid har hälsoarbetet bestått av insatser inom det patogena området som fokuserar på orsaker till ohälsa och sjukdom. Utifrån ett salutogent perspektiv söks istället hälsans ursprung. Perspektivet utgår från vilka faktorer som gör att människor mår bra och vidmakthåller hälsan trots omständigheter som bidrar till att de är eller har varit utsatta för potentiellt sjukdomsframkallande biologiska eller psykosociala faktorer. Syftet med studien var att studera lantbrukares upplevelse av hälsa, med avsikt att beskriva salutogena faktorer för hälsa som kan vara användbara i hälsofrämjande arbete. Datainsamlingen har skett genom en postenkät till 300 lantbrukare i Skåne. Frågeformuläret innehöll frågor om arbetsförhållanden, stress, ekonomi, sociala kontakter, samt hälsa. Studien framhäver vikten av en positiv arbetsupplevelse som en signifikant påverkansfaktor för den salutogena hälsan. Det som framförallt bidrar till en positiv arbetsupplevelse är god social kontakt och en bra ekonomi. Sådana faktorer bör uppmärksammas för framtida hälsofrämjande insatser riktade till lantbrukare.</p> / <p>The health related work has included patogenesis interventions during a long term with focus on poor health and illness. Salutogenesis is a different perspective which emanates from factors that contribute to health and well-being. Salutogenesis explains why people stay well and even are able to improve their health in stressful situations. The aim of the study was to explore farmers´ health with intentions to describe salutogenic factors for health, that can be used in health promotion work. In a cross-sectional survey 300 farmers in Scania received a questionnaire with questions on work situation, stress, economy, social support and health. The study indicates how essential it is to have a positive work experience which has a significant impact on the salutogenic health experience. Good social contacts and good economy are factors that improve the positive work experience. These factors are important in future work with health promotion among farmers.</p>

Under lång tid har hälsoarbetet bestått av insatser inom det patogena området som fokuserar på orsaker till ohälsa och sjukdom. Utifrån ett salutogent perspektiv söks istället hälsans ursprung. Perspektivet utgår från vilka faktorer som gör att människor mår bra och vidmakthåller hälsan trots omständigheter som bidrar till att de är eller har varit utsatta för potentiellt sjukdomsframkallande biologiska eller psykosociala faktorer. Syftet med studien var att studera lantbrukares upplevelse av hälsa, med avsikt att beskriva salutogena faktorer för hälsa som kan vara användbara i hälsofrämjande arbete. Datainsamlingen har skett genom en postenkät till 300 lantbrukare i Skåne. Frågeformuläret innehöll frågor om arbetsförhållanden, stress, ekonomi, sociala kontakter, samt hälsa. Studien framhäver vikten av en positiv arbetsupplevelse som en signifikant påverkansfaktor för den salutogena hälsan. Det som framförallt bidrar till en positiv arbetsupplevelse är god social kontakt och en bra ekonomi. Sådana faktorer bör uppmärksammas för framtida hälsofrämjande insatser riktade till lantbrukare. / The health related work has included patogenesis interventions during a long term with focus on poor health and illness. Salutogenesis is a different perspective which emanates from factors that contribute to health and well-being. Salutogenesis explains why people stay well and even are able to improve their health in stressful situations. The aim of the study was to explore farmers´ health with intentions to describe salutogenic factors for health, that can be used in health promotion work. In a cross-sectional survey 300 farmers in Scania received a questionnaire with questions on work situation, stress, economy, social support and health. The study indicates how essential it is to have a positive work experience which has a significant impact on the salutogenic health experience. Good social contacts and good economy are factors that improve the positive work experience. These factors are important in future work with health promotion among farmers.

As part of the peacebuilding measures in scenarios of transformation from civil conflict to a state of post-conflict, the control of hostile forces constitutes a risky, yet necessary process. In such contexts there is also a concern to generate strong ties and incentives that minimize the recurrence of violence. For this purpose reconciliation emerges as a condition for long-lasting peace. This concept eventually requires that armed actors, victimized subjects and society in general agree on critical points and become able to live together. For former combatants these steps are especially challenging since they are confronted by an adverse environment that requires the assumption of new codes of conduct that are no longer ruled by any sort of weaponry. With this puzzle in mind, this study enquired about the extent to which social contact is likely to influence the perspectives of reconciliation held by demobilized combatants immerse in an institutional scheme of DDR. In order to gather a comprehensive discussion around this question, this thesis observed the Colombian DDR process, gathering unique empirical data from individuals exposed to varying degrees of contact. From the information collected and its qualitative analysis, it was found that inter-group interactions are able to promote deep understanding about out-groups; nonetheless, extended contact along ongoing hostilities does not ensure complete transformation of misperceptions, even among subjects coming to the end of their reintegration process.

Psykisk ohälsa och stress är ett stort problem i dagens samhälle och det gäller även i sjöfartsbranschen. Påverkan av dessa problem vid den isolering som en sjöman utsätts för kan vara stor. Mobilen och internet har hjälpt till att minska utsträckningen av isolering men kan det skapa nya problem är frågan. Detta ämne har undersökts genom intervjuer med sjömän som har varit till sjöss under tiden då internet inte fanns ombord idag då internet finns.  Resultatet i undersökningen visar att fördelarna som internet har medfört är större jämfört med de negativa följderna. Det sociala livet ombord var bättre innan internets införande men samtidigt visar undersökningen att det är viktigare att ha möjlighet att upprätthålla en stabil kontakt med familjen. Idag är människan inte lika beroende av att lära känna varandra till skillnad från när internet inte fanns tillgängligt. Det finns många faktorer som påverkar den psykiska hälsan både positivt och negativt som exempelvis tillgänglighet, isolering och stress. Men respondenterna är överens om att internet i slutändan är positivt. / Mental illness and stress is a big problem in today’s society and that includes the shipping industry. The effect of these symptoms under the isolation that a seafarer is exposed to can be major. The cellphone and internet have a positive effect in reducing the feeling of isolation at sea, but the questions are if these tools can contribute to negative effects. The result in the study shows that the benefits that comes with internet is more than the disadvantages that comes with it. The social life aboard was better before internets entry, but the study shows that the possibility to maintain continuous contact with family ashore is more important than having a social life aboard with your colleagues. Today, people are not as dependent on getting to know each other when the internet is available. There are many factors that affect mental health both positively and negatively in the study, but the participants generally agree that the internet is ultimately positive.

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Few issues in the contemporary American political and social environments are as salient and emotionally charged as the debate over immigration. The thesis tests several competing hypotheses concerning the determinants of public opinion – among white respondents – on immigration issues. These include: the contextual considerations of southern residence and proximity to large numbers of Hispanic immigrants, as well as the individual-level factors of economic insecurity, political knowledge, national identity, group pride, and racism. Using data from the 2004 American National Election Study, the thesis provides a critical test of the competing hypotheses using multivariate analysis. Furthermore, conditional relationships are posited, facilitating a more refined analysis of the structure of attitudes on immigration issues. The results indicate that racism, group pride, symbolic patriotism, ideology, and isolationism are the most consistent and significant predictors of immigration policy preferences. The use of four distinct dependent variable questions also highlights the inconsistency in public opinion regarding immigration and the division between public perception of documented and undocumented entries. Future research should focus on the interrelationship between variables that are used by the individual to define group associations, as well as the change in national and personal identity brought about by the events of September 11th, 2001.

In this study the experiences, perceptions and challenges of being in a mixed-race relationship (M-R) were explored against the backdrop of previous South African pieces of legislation meant to keep the various race groups apart. The study was located within a conceptual framework predominantly informed by a constructivist approach, as well as some tenets from the social constructionist approach. This study focused only on M-R relationships consisting of black and white partners. The couples were recruited through the use of a snowball sampling method. In-depth interviews were used as the primary tool for collecting data. All participants were interviewed by the researcher either at their own homes or in the researcher's office. The collected information was later transcribed and qualitatively analysed. The results of the study indicate that individuals found their involvement in M-R relationships to be a positive experience, and thus resulting in a positive attitude change and a sense of personal growth. M-R couples and their extended families experienced cognitive dissonance which required them to discard their previously internalised racial stereotypes, using strategies such as cognitive differentiation, re-categorization and de-categorization, allowing shifts toward non-racial socially constructed categories. Most of the challenges of being in M-R relationships were experienced on interpersonal and inter-group levels. The losses, disadvantages, challenges, concerns and pains experienced by M-R couples were mainly related to family and social disapproval of the relationship as well as efforts to discourage race mixing. The study concludes that the non-conformist nature of M-R relationships requires from the participants a high level of self-differentiation and individuation that challenges racial norms and cultural collectivism. Albeit being a personal or private matter, a M-R relationship carries the burden of easily being the subject of public discourse. It is in this sense that M-R relationships cannot be understood without taking the socio-political context within which they occur into consideration. / Psychology / D.Phil. (Psychology)

Portuguese global expansion was initiated by the capture of Cueta in 1415. Voyages of discovery along the West African coast ensued, resulting in the conquest and colonisation of the N’Dongo Kingdom. This dissertation comprises an archaeological survey of the Lusitanian Empire in the Republic of Angola. The Portuguese first established a settlement at Luanda in 1576, after which they set forth into the interior, following the Kwanza River upstream. The strategy for conquest was to take possession of the river with the objective to control the indigenous population, subjugate the N’gola, and, ultimately, to reach the silver mines at Cambambe. Various settlements developed along the margins of the river with associated forts and churches. Fortifications dominated the landscape while the churches expressed religious idealism. Social contact between the Mbundu people and the Portuguese at the colonial frontier is discussed. Post-colonial theory is used as the research methodology. / Anthropology and Archaeology / M. A. (Archaeology)