This thesis examines the development war memorialisation from 1860 until 2014 in the UK, France and the USA. It represents the first holistic and longitudinal study of war memorialisation as a continuing process. Previous approaches to memorialisation are critically reviewed and a unique new methodology is proposed. This approach challenges assumptions that memorials are only important to the generation responsible for their creation. Moving beyond an understanding that is based wholly on the socio-political circumstances surrounding their construction, it conceptualises memorials within a framework of three parallel time scales; the point of development within the war memorial tradition, the time that has passed from the conflict being commemorated and the time that has passed from the construction of the memorial. This methodology is used to demonstrate that these objects continue to have meanings for many years after the conflict they commemorate. This illustrates the many ways in which individuals continue to engage with war memorials, appropriating and re-appropriating them and transforming their meanings. Furthermore, this approach demonstrates that themes can be defined within the memorialisation process, and that these themes are not bounded by geographical context or period of time.

During the past three or four months, May to July 1918, there has been a great pandemic of so-called influenza which, starting in Spain, has spread over the whole of Europe and even other parts of the world. It has caused considerable wastage in our own Army and those of our Allies and has, therefore, been the object of much study amongst the medical services.

The upheavals of the cataclysm of the First World War reverberated through every comer of British society, how society was reconstructed afterwards is the subject of enormous critical debate. This study examines how masculinities were disrupted and. reconstructed during and after the war. It is a study of British men, previously civilians, who became servicemen in the First World War. It aims to map the continuities and discontinuities in the construction of their masculine identities during war and in its aftermath in the 1920s. Pioneered by feminist scholars concerned with analysing the historical construction of femininity, the study of gender relations has become a significant area of historical enquiry. This has resulted in a substantial body of historical scholarship on the history of masculinities and the increasing visibility of men as gendered subjects whose masculinities are lived and imagined. This thesis is informed by, and engages with, the histories of masculinities. It also draws on recent historical research on the cultural legacy of the war. The first chapter explores the subjectiver esponsesto becoming a soldier through an examination of personal memoirs; largely unpublished sources drawn from memories and written or recorded by men as narratives of their wartime experiences. The subject of the second chapter is shell shock. The outbreak of shell shock among the troops aroused anxieties about masculinity. The competing versions of masculinities which emerged in military and medical discourses is examined. Returning to individual memoirs, the chapter examines how men produced their own representations of the shell shocked man contesting other versions. Chapters 3 and 4 focus their attention on the relatively neglected subject of ex-servicemen's organisations and the collectivities of ex-servicemen. During and after the war a movement of ex-servicemen emerged to campaign for justice and fair treatment. Comradeship underpinned the attempt to forge an ex-serviceman identity and an examination of veterans' publications, a largely neglected source, has revealed the tensions and conflicts which contested this form of masculine identity. Masculine identities, as citizens and workers, presented a challenge to the potential for a unified, apolitical movement. Unemployment was a challenge to male identities traditionally secured through work and masculine codes of independence. Unlike many studies, this thesis intentionally straddles war and peace. It begins in 1914 and ends a decade later in a society restored to peace but still essentially in the shadow of war.

Warfare has long been associated with Scottish Highlanders and Islanders, especially in the period known in Gaelic tradition as ‘Linn nan Creach’ (the ‘Age of Forays’), which followed the forfeiture of the Lordship of the Isles in 1493. The sixteenth century in general is remembered as a particularly tumultuous time within the West Highlands and Isles, characterised by armed conflict on a seemingly unprecedented scale. Relatively little research has been conducted into the nature of warfare however, a gap filled by this thesis through its focus on a series of interconnected themes and in-depth case studies spanning the period c. 1544-1615. It challenges the idea that the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century was a time of endless bloodshed, and explores the rationale behind the distinctive mode of warfare practised in the West Highlands and Isles. The first part of the thesis traces the overall ‘Process of War’. Chapter 1 focuses on the mentality of the social elite in the West Highlands and Isles and demonstrates that warfare was not their raison d'être, but was tied inextricably to chiefs’ prime responsibility of protecting their lands and tenants. Chapter 2 assesses the causation of warfare and reveals that a recurrent catalyst for armed conflict was the assertion of rights to land and inheritance. There were other important causes however, including clan expectation, honour culture, punitive government policies, and the use of proxy warfare by prominent magnates. Chapter 3 takes a fresh approach to the military capacity of the region through analysis of armies and soldiers, and the final thematic chapter tackles the conduct of warfare in the West Highlands and Isles, with analysis of the tactics and strategy of militarised personnel. The second part of this thesis comprises five case studies: the Clanranald, 1544-77; the Colquhouns of Luss and the Lennox, 1592-1603; the MacLeods of Harris and MacDonalds of Sleat, 1594-1601; the Camerons, 1569-1614; and the ‘Islay Rising’, 1614-15. This thesis adopts a unique approach by contextualising the political background of warfare in order to instil a deeper understanding of why early modern Gaelic Scots resorted to bloodshed. Overall, this period was defined by a sharp rise in military activity, followed by an even sharper decline, a trajectory that will be evidenced vividly in the final case study on the ‘Islay Rising’. Although warfare was widespread, it was not unrestrained or continuous, and the traditional image of a region riven by perpetual bloodshed has been greatly exaggerated.

This thesis examines the linear swimming motion of Carangiform fish, and investigates how to improve the swimming performance of robotic fish within the fields of kinematic modeling and mechanical engineering, in a successful attempt to replicate the high performance of real fish. Intensive research was conducted in order to study the Carangiform swimming motion, where observational studies of the common carp were undertaken. Firstly, a full-body length Carangiform swimming motion is proposed to coordinate the anterior, mid-body and posterior displacements in an attempt to reduce the large kinematic errors in the existing free swimming robotic fish. It optimizes the forces around the centre of mass and initiates the starting moment of added mass upstream therefore increasing performance, in terms of swimming speed. The introduced pattern is experimentally tested against the traditional approach (of posterior confined body motion). A first generation robotic fish is devised with a novel mechanical drive system operating in the two swimming patterns. It is shown conclusively that by coordinating the full-body length of the Carangiform swimming motion a significant increase in linear swimming speed is gained over the traditional posterior confined wave form and reduces the large kinematic errors seen in existing free swimming robotic fish (Achieving the cruising speeds of real fish). Based on the experimental results of the first generation, a further three robotic fish are developed: (A) iSplash-OPTIMIZE: it becomes clear that further tuning of the kinematic parameters may provide a greater performance increase in the distance travelled per tail beat. (B) iSplash-II: it shows that combining the critical aspects of the mechanical drive system of iSplash-I with higher frequencies and higher productive forces can significantly increase maximum velocity. This prototype is able to outperform real Carangiform fish in terms of average maximum velocity (measured in body lengths/ second) and endurance, the duration that top speed is maintained. (C) iSplash-MICRO: it verifies that the mechanical drive system could be reduced in scale to improve navigational exploration, whilst retaining high-speed swimming performance. A small robotic fish is detailed with an equivalent maximum velocity (BL/s) to real fish.

The U.S. War on Drugs has been underway for several decades. Since it was declared by the Nixon Administration narcotics have been understood as a growing security threat to the American public, their health, economy and society. Illicit drugs have gradually become a securitised issue. From the Nixon Administration onward, the law enforcement and eventually military assets of the United States government were increasingly deployed in an effort to counter this drug threat. While initially regarded as a minor issue, as the potency and addictive qualities of illicit drugs increased during the 20th Century, so too did the concerns of influential actors from the political and public spheres. Nixon's actions did not represent the high-water mark of U.S. counter-narcotics. There was growing violence on American streets linked to the drug trafficking cartels out of Colombia, especially in Southern Florida where traffickers battled each other for lucrative drug markets. In response to this national security threat, the Reagan Administration – followed by the successor Bush and Clinton Administrations – gradually increased the involvement of the U.S. military in counter-narcotics policy. This occurred both at home in the form of greater militarisation of police forces, and abroad in support of several Latin American countries’ security forces. In 2000, drug-related instability in Colombia resulted in the launch of the Plan Colombia initiative, a dedicated package of American financial and security assistance, with counter-narcotics the primary purpose. In 2008, as drug-related violence in Mexico reached epidemic proportions and threatened to spillover across the American border, the U.S. launched the Merida Initiative in an attempt to aid Mexican counter-narcotics efforts. This thesis uses qualitative research methods to examine the militarisation of U.S. foreign counter-narcotics policy by analysing the case studies of Colombia and Mexico and their American-backed efforts. It also examines domestic policy, by considering the historical development of U.S. counter-narcotics, the progressive militarisation of law enforcement as a consequence of the drug war, and the security situation on the southern border with Mexico. This empirical research is facilitated by the development of a militarisation analytical framework, which builds upon the securitisation framework. Based on the findings of the case studies, the processes that drive militarisation are explored, and the framework itself is further developed and refined. The research possibilities for counter-narcotics policy and future direction for militarisation research are also explored in the Conclusion. Ultimately, this thesis offers a detailed analysis of militarisation in U.S. foreign and domestic counter-narcotics policy, the processes behind this, and develops a militarisation framework applicable to any security situation, contributing to the overall securitisation debate.

Fire-fighters are subject to attacks in the field. This idiographic Pheno-Cognitive Analysis (PCA) studies a fireman’s cognitive experience of a Critical Incident (CI) when he is attacked by dangerous dogs during an intervention. The PCA method, created for this research, extends the Elicitation Interview (EI), yields a first-person narrative of the subject’s experience out of his episodic memory, and semantically elicits 460 Cognitive Operations and four patterns of Cognitive Trajectories. Their variations in shape (Intra-Variability) and occurrence (Inter-Variability) are analysed. A model of Decision-Making-in-Action (DMA), and five Metacognitive Skills providing Peritraumatic Resilience (PTR) are revealed. Epistemological limits are discussed.

From the aftermath of Suez to the Kosovo campaign, Britain lost most of its colonies and ended up taking a moral interventionist stance on the world stage with the US its major ally. Against that contextual background, this thesis considers the attitudes in Britain towards its Armed Forces and war from 1960 to 2000. Using a range of lenses, the paper highlights the complexity of change. Homosexuality was a scandalous issue for society in the 1960s, such that the 1967 Act which decriminalised it was not really widely accepted. For the Armed Forces, searches for homosexuals increased on grounds of security. The Act of Remembrance, as recorded in churches, shows the mixed approach of the clergy to war, particularly dependent on their own experience, and also the change in mood from a religious service to a secular one. In the notable campaigns that did take place over the period, Borneo, the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Gulf War, a methodical view is taken of opinion polls, press coverage, and letters pages to establish trends at the political, elite and public levels. The media has been used as a reference throughout the thesis as a measure of opinion, but here is analysed for its own biases and approaches, since it has a clear effect on people’s opinions, both from fiction and fact. Overall, the thesis paints a complex web of declining interest in defence issues, greater self-interest amongst many, increasing secularisation, and greater tolerance, yet conversely, points to underlying themes of pride in individual servicemen and the institution of the Armed Forces.

Everest and Blanc (E&B) is at a crossroad. It grew from a ‘mom and pop’ operation into a small professional firm and plateaued. Thus, there is a desire to bring about operation efficiency, followed by expansion of the company. In order to be successful, a systematic decision making process is necessary to ensure a high probability of success, and able to pinpoint dysfunctions early for improvement. In addition, implementing processes need careful consideration and progress monitoring. This study was founded on these premises using M2 mode research methodology to establish an optimal structural course of action by surveying paradigms of management theories and concepts. The study began with an exposition on research methodologies and focused on the M2 research mode. It continued on with considering operations topics (micro concerns), extending to general issues (macro concerns) in conjunction with management theories and concepts. Finally a decision making model was shaped and applied to E&B. During the process, several important decisions were made, grounded on the findings on the research, such as relocating the corporate office anticipating expansion. Overall, the changes introduced, the process of change, the decision-making process, and implementation were all effective. The decision making model, SOMM, Strato Operation Management Model, is an extension of both Ansoff’s and Anthony’s management models together with the decision-making process. The emphasis is on the relationship of the system structure’s characteristics where it is symbolized by a matryoshka representing the three management modules (Strategic Management, Management Control and Planning and Tactical Operation) nesting within each other. Relating to the overall strategic and management control and planning competency, the workhorse is a combination of defensive and offensive approaches together with evaluation methodologies to capture emerging and unintended strategies and to control performance; whereas the tactical operation process is to bring about efficiency and effectiveness. These are new knowledge and policies cast into members of E&B. It is, therefore, fundamental that careful interventions are necessary to cause changes by motivation and to align goal congruency. Further, the inquiry had specifically focused on the needs of E&B, it did not preclude application to other organizations. For academics, it may be an engaging topic for further empirical studies advancing knowledge in management and operations. With respect to a wider world application, it was also concluded that the findings for E&B are applicable and adaptable to other professional and business concerns as innovative tools to their problems and issues.

This thesis is about the children of former Far East prisoners of war (FEPOWs): their memories of childhood, how they fashioned those memories in adulthood, and the relationship between the two. The FEPOW experience reverberated through postwar family life, and continued to shape the lives of participants across the intervening decades. Although a great deal is now known about the hardships suffered by the men, captivity had a deep and enduring impact on their children, but their history is rarely heard, and poorly understood. In Roots of Remembrance I investigate the lives of these children through in-depth interviews, using a psychosocial approach to both interviews and analysis. By tracing intergenerational transmission through the life course, I show that the memory practices of the children of Far East POWs had psychosocial roots in the captivity experiences of their fathers. For some, childhood was coloured by overt physical or psychological trauma; for others, what passed as a ‘normal’ upbringing led later to a pressing desire to discover more about their fathers’ wartime histories. My research demonstrates the need for a more nuanced and holistic approach to understanding intergenerational trauma transmission within this particular group. I argue that participants made creative use of memory practices across the course of their lives to revisit, review and reconstruct their relationships with their fathers, in order to reach an accommodation with their childhood memories. Findings include the value of attachment theory in understanding the associations between childhood experience and later memory practices, the role of the body and other implicit means of transmitting trauma, and the need for a greater awareness of the impact of cumulative and complex trauma within these families. Finally, I conclude that the psychosocial methodology enabled me to access areas of subjectivity and intersubjectivity that might otherwise have remained in the shadows.