Outdoor education in the UK has been growing in popularity and with it a further understanding of its benefits. Research shows that many young people still don’t access natural environments and many educators still struggle with how to provide them. This is particularly prevalent in urban environments where spatial inequality has been linked to a decline in health, well-being and personal development. Community mapping involves a community coming together to create a map of their locality and share local knowledge. This can take many forms. Sometimes it might be a traditional cartographic map while other times it may be stories, sculptures or poems. In this research I explore how community mapping can be used as a pedagogical tool, looking particularly at how it can help educators approach outdoor education in an urban environment. I take a teacher action research approach, inspired by previous art-based approaches to educational inquiry. Through doing a community mapping project with two groups of 8 to 10 year olds on an urban farm in central London I share the visable and often invisible components of our pedagogies, including children’s voices and work as well as the voice of myself and another educators, reflecting on the realities of outdoor education in an urban environment. I discover the cross curricular possibilities that such a project brings, the spaces it opens up for us to learn from children’s voices and the many ways in which community mapping can be used to address aims and goals of the UK primary curriculum. Community mapping can help educators overcome a lack of confidence in how to approach outdoor learning. The child-led nature of projects can allow children and educators to work together to co-create their understanding of the locality, noticing the small details they hadn’t seen before. It can provide a space for educators to learn more about how the young people they work with see the world around them while also providing authentic experiences that can be utilized in wider classroom learning. This research allows other educators to take away what resonates with them, with their experiences and pedagogies, and use these new understandings to enhance their own educational practices in their own settings.

Human ageing is accompanied by characteristic metabolic and endocrine changes, including altered hormone profiles, insulin resistance and deterioration of skeletal muscle. Obesity and diabetes may themselves drive an accelerated ageing phenotype. Untangling the causal web between ageing, obesity and diabetes is a priority in order to understand their aetiology and improve prevention and management. The role of biological ageing in determining the risk of obesity and associated conditions has often been examined using mean leukocyte telomere length (LTL), a marker of replicative fatigue and senescence. However, considering phenotypes which represent different domains of biological and functional ageing as exposures for obesity and related traits could allow the elucidation of new understudied phenotypes relevant to cardio-metabolic risk in the wider population. This PhD considers the causal role of (1) hand grip strength (HGS), a marker of overall strength and physical functioning, and (2) resting energy expenditure, an indicator of overall energy metabolism and the major component of daily energy expenditure, in cardio-metabolic risk. I also characterise a new and readily-quantifiable marker of age-related genomic instability, mosaic loss of the Y chromosome (mLOY). Observational evidence implicates each of these phenotypes in cardio-metabolic conditions and intermediate phenotypes. However, it is not possible to infer causality from these observational associations due to confounding and reverse-causality. Mendelian randomisation offers a solution to these limitations and can allow the causal nature of these relationships to be investigated. Using population-based data including UK Biobank, this thesis presents the first large-scale genetic discovery effort for each trait and provides new biological insight into their shared and separate aetiology. I used identified variants to investigate the bidirectional causal associations of each trait with cardio-metabolic outcomes, intermediate phenotypes and other related traits such as frailty and mortality. In total I identified 16 loci for hand grip strength, 19 for mLOY, and one signal for REE. I have shown that HGS is likely to be causally linked to fracture risk, and I have identified the important shared genetic architecture between mLOY, glycaemic traits and cancer. I have also demonstrated that at least one known genetic variant contributing to obesity risk acts partially via reduced REE. Overall the findings of my PhD contribute to our wider understanding of the aetiological role of ageing processes in metabolic dysfunction, and have implications for both basic science and translational applications.

In this thesis, I sought to accomplish two things. First, the thesis is written in a reflexive and even an auto-ethnographic manner. It invites the reader to follow the ethnographer through the metamorphosis of the study, from the point of conception, through the ethnographic fieldwork to the interpretation and, finally, to the presentation of the result. Doing so was an attempt to give the reader a vivid understanding of the process of making an ethnographic text. The ambition with auto-ethnographic dimension is to unveil and problematize the condition for ethnographic fieldwork, as well as to add nuance to the stories of my informants. Second, the thesis strives to answer a simple question: why the UK? The genesis of the question finds its roots in the departure of my friend Kanan, and it was by tracing Kanan’s journey that I found myself in Calais. By focusing on a transit zone like Calais, I have aimed to depart from a dualist approach of migration theories that only focus on destination and origin countries as their analytical points of reference and to present the everyday experiences of exile and statelessness as a continuous journey. The conduit for examining the experiences of my informants will be Chris Dolan’s concept of social torture. Through the concept of social torture, Chris Dolan interlinks the exercise of everyday violence and abuse on a mass scale and torture by focussing on the impacts of such acts on the individual’s body and mind. By doing so, Dolan identifies debility, dependency, dread and disorientation as the four impacts to identify a victim of social torture. The daily life experiences of my informants in Calais were that of social torture.  In this regard, I seek to show how social torture was an apparatus used to force unwanted populations from the French territory and into the UK and other European countries.

Inspired by the increasingly high visibility of British Muslim NGOs (BMNGOs), by the lack of research on their discourses and by the growing salience of frames theory within the mainstream NGO sector, this thesis offers a significant and original contribution by exploring, describing, and analysing the discourse of two BMNGOs carefully selected as case studies: Islamic Relief (IR) and MADE (Muslim Action for Development and the Environment). The primary aim of the thesis is empirical, driven by the research question: ‘what frames seem to be at work in the discourse of BMNGOs?’ Through an in-depth analysis of a range of public documents produced by the two case studies (e.g. annual reports and websites), the thesis identifies and analyses the main frames used by IR and MADE to articulate three key aspects of their discourses: i) organisational identity; ii) mobilisation efforts; and iii) conceptualisations of their supporter base. Guided by this overarching research question, the thesis offers an original and interdisciplinary insight into the nuances of the case studies’ meaning systems, thereby showing their complexities and resonance with multiple narratives and ideational repertoires. The emerging ‘thick descriptions’ of IR and MADE represent, in and of themselves, the main results of the study, which is intended to enable readers from different disciplinary backgrounds to gain a nuanced insight into BMNGOs’ discourses. At a secondary level, the thesis also pursues the theoretical aim to start exploring how the frames identified in the study inform the two research sub-questions: ‘how to think about BMNGOs?’ and ‘how to think about British Muslim civic engagement?’ Several observations are put forward in this regard. Taken together, these suggest that IR can be understood as a faith-based organisation that simultaneously draws on a range of heritages and increasingly offers opportunities for active citizenship among British Muslims within the framework of what is broadly characterizable as a ‘NGO-led order’. On the other hand, the thesis suggests that MADE can be understood as an exemplar of the current era of ‘loose activist networks’, more precisely as a ‘Muslim lifestyle’ social movement organisation that promotes among British Muslims a multifaceted form of civic engagement inspired by an Islamic ethical framework.

This thesis uses a constructivist grounded theory approach to investigate nonprofit corporate governance in the UK; using data obtained from participatory observations of board and associated meetings, workshops, and unstructured elite interviews. Open codes are generated and brought together as concepts, which are then iteratively compared and grouped in open categories. These categories are then reassembled using the paradigm model into five axial codes: the clash of orthodoxies; clash of motivations; regulator versus board power; clash of rationalities; and effective board duality. A dialectical approach is then used to create the core category of the ‘clash of neoliberal and public service world views which exists at every level of the nonprofit sector’. This core category is analysed in terms of the subordinate contradictions: at an environmental level - regulatory power versus sector power; at board level - accountability; the SMT; board practices and rituals (professionalism, actual and symbolic authority, boards meetings as theatre, and ethical standards); the concept of challenge as an expression of power relations; and rationality and decision making; and at the individual level - motivations of directors, moral duty and social purpose, social group membership, identification, credibility and trust. The substantive theory is then situated within psychology, governance, and corporate governance theories. The contribution made by the thesis are identified as the: use of ethnography to describe the inner workings of the board; creation of a model of nonprofit corporate governance; identification of the importance of political, ideological, regulatory, and ethical contexts; and concept of power, and the senior management team as a component of the board. Further research is suggested into: (i) a comparison of corporate governance in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors; (ii) challenge within the nonprofit culture; and (iii) the SMT as a major player in governance.

Family language policy (FLP) focusses on how languages are dealt with within the home; typically how languages are used and how they are maintained or promoted by family members. The present study investigates families living in the UK, where one parent is a native English speaker, and the other a native speaker of another language, the minority language. By use of a mixed-methods design, utilising questionnaires, interviews and logs, this paper answers the questions: what are the reported language practices of children and parents in bi- or multilingual families, what ideologies about FLP do parents in these families possess and what strategies do families reportedly employ in their homes. Through a nexus analysis approach, the paper establishes connections between the historical bodies, the interaction orders and the DIP of the families in order to account for their language behaviours in the home. The nexus analysis suggests that although parents show positive attitudes towards minority language use, it is the macro-level societal factors that are most powerful in determining language use within the home. That is, space plays an important role in choice of language practices. This finding suggests that children need more minority language exposure outside the home, therefore this paper suggests that the UK government could promote and encourage minority language maintenance through the implementation of language policy.

The recent upsurge of electoral success from the Brexit Leave campaign and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign 2016, confirm that populist politics has taken a greater role in Europe and in the U.S. The purpose of this research is to see to what extent each of the two campaigns are populist, and whether their statements are similar to each other. This will increase further knowledge about the populist phenomenon and its complexity. Hence, comparative analyses of six speeches from Brexit’s Leave campaign and Trump’s presidential campaign have been conducted through the framework of Mudde’s minimal definition of populism. The results show that both campaigns have populist features and that they have some commonalities, but still vary in the details, due to the countries’ historical, social and economic backgrounds. The two campaigns’ representatives are using similar populist strategies in order to reach their audiences. It is further recommended to expand this research and examine Trump’s presidency and its impacts with the UK’s process of leaving and its outcomes, which will provide a further understanding of the populist upsurge as well as its consequences.

The construction industry is considered the world over as a major contributor to the high rates of waste generation in developed countries. The negative influence of waste generation on the environment, natural resources, and the profitability of firms puts increasing pressure on the industry to reduce the waste it generates. The pressures to reduce waste are heightened by current trends demanding sustainable management of waste for the purposes of economic, social, and environmental gains. Literature on factors influencing waste management (WM) suggests government legislation is the most critical success factor for ensuring waste is sustainably managed. A review of the literature however indicated that researches holistically investigating the practices of construction firms and the extent to which these practices meet the intended outcomes of government legislation on waste are not present. Thus this research was undertaken to holistically investigate WM practices in the UK construction industry, to identify best practices and the extent to which they meet the intended outcomes of government WM legislation ad policy. The study adopted a multiple case study design to examine WM approaches, strategies and practices at both the corporate and project level within construction companies. Four construction companies who had won awards for their sustainability and environmental performance were purposefully selected to investigate best practice WM. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, passive observations, and documentary analysis. Analysis of the data revealed that the drivers for WM in the construction industry are: economic considerations; company sustainability agenda; company image; client requirements; environmental concerns; government legislation; moral and social demands; industrial benchmarking; environmental concerns; and the requirements of standards. Regarding the influence of legislation, the results revealed that government legislation plays a secondary role in influencing WM as clients are interested in using only compliant firms. Best practices targeting design to reduce waste through standardisation and prefabrication; on-site segregation through multi-skip provision; supply take back schemes; intensified site education; and the use of incentives were identified to lead to improved WM. The results also indicated that company sustainability agenda is the most influential driver for achieving sustainable construction, demolition and excavation (CD&E) WM. The findings highlighted the importance of having a clear vision and structure for WM at the corporate level alongside strategies to be implemented on projects to ensure sustainable WM is achieved. To help construction firms in achieving sustainable WM, which is the ultimate goal of government legislation, a best practice framework has been developed based on the findings from the study and evaluated using semi-structured interviews with selected target participants. The framework presents a coherent and systematic approach for achieving sustainable WM in construction companies by providing a roadmap for instituting measures at both corporate and project levels, taking into account factors that are likely to promote or inhibit the achievement of sustainable WM.

Background This work in child population medicine describes child health problems, increases knowledge of health services, systems, and wider determinants, and makes recommendations for improvements. Aims To explore trends in UK child health and health service quality and highlight policy lessons from the UK and other European countries To study child health and health services in western Europe and derive lessons from different approaches to common challenges To enhance knowledge on child to adult transition care To describe trends in UK and EU15+ child and adolescent mortality and seek explanations for deteriorating UK health system performance, and make recommendations for improving survival Methods Population level measures of health status and system performance; primary and secondary research on policies and practice for health system assessments. Quantitative: mortality rate trends, excess deaths, DALYs, healthcare processes Qualitative: case reports, system descriptions, analyses  Results European child survival has improved, but variably between countries. The UK has not matched recent EU mortality gains. There are 6,000 excess deaths annually in children under 15 years in EU14 countries. There are child survival inequities; countries investing in social protection have lower mortality. Children in the UK, compared with other EU countries, are more likely to be poor than adults. Non-communicable diseases are now dominant causes of child death, disease, and disability. Mortality, processes, and outcomes of healthcare amenable conditions varies between countries. Better outcomes seem to be associated with flexible health care models promoting cooperation, team working, and transition. Conclusions Child health in Europe is improving, but unevenly. Child health systems are not adapting sufficiently to meet needs. Recommendations are made for improving health systems and services. / How do European countries compare when it comes to child health statistics? How do different child health services, systems, and wider determinants impact long term influences for good or harm? Why do some countries seem to do better than others in safeguarding their children’s and young people’s health and wellbeing? And what can we  do to make things better for children? This thesis explores some of these difficult but important issues, and despite describing some serious signals of concern about child health, offers recommendations and clear ways forward for countries to ensure healthier futures for children.

The dynamics of our globalised world open the way for international trade and transactions between different countries; this may lead to conflicts in laws where transactions and trade may be subject to different legal systems. One of the biggest issues in international commercial law is disputes over the charging of interest, for example with regard to late payment, interest-based loans, or compensation for damages. Interest disputes are considered to be a complex area of law and even more complex in the international field. At the international level, interest claims may be connected to many areas of commerce and thus governed by various laws, which are different from one country to another; moreover, each country has its own interest rate and such rates are changeable according to the nature of law and economics under some jurisdictions. Furthermore, the concept of interest itself is affected by influences such as religious beliefs and economic, political and cultural trends. Interest can be treated as a substantive or a procedural matter. The settlement of these disputes therefore faces difficulties. Arbitration, as a method for settlement of disputes, is characterised by special features that assist in resolving these issues; but it faces some obstructions, especially in international commercial arbitration. The practices of arbitral tribunals and national courts in this regard are different. The results of different interpretations, approaches, and theories with regard to arbitration, at the pre-arbitration, during arbitration and post-arbitration stages, may also differ widely due to the diversity of financial and legal systems such as Common Law, Civil Law and the Islamic legal system – Sharia Law – across different countries. Each legal system has a different methodology and theories, even within an individual country under one legal system, and a state within a federal system has its own laws, which may have different interpretations in this respect. The New York Convention of 1958 on enforcing foreign arbitral awards was established in favour of arbitral awards and for the purpose of unifying international rules of arbitration. This Convention provides some procedural and substantive rules for the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, but also provides some grounds for refusal. These rules have been affected by different interpretations under different jurisdictions and legal systems, which lead to different perspectives on the matter of charging interest and settlement by arbitration. The outcome of applying the NYC under these interpretations often has the opposite of its intended effect: the rejection of foreign arbitral awards. Due to such ambiguities, courts occasionally intervene in arbitration in all its stages. The interventions of national courts occur in three stages: enforcement of the arbitration agreement, enforcement of the contract under the applicable law to the agreement, and enforcement of the foreign arbitral award. The confusion between substantive and procedural laws also creates confusion with respect to public policy, non-arbitrability and enforceability. In addition, there may be a lack of clarity on the scope of arbitration with respect to the parties’ agreement, whether or not the parties have agreed to the interest rates and periods and whether or not they have agreed to the authority of the arbitrator. These issues affect the enforceability of an arbitration agreement, the law applicable to the disputed contract, the freedom of parties, the authority of the arbitrators and the enforceability of the awarded interest. The thesis studies how arbitral awards containing interest have been interpreted across the three aforementioned legal systems under the NYC 1958 in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, England, France, and the US and the enforceability of such awards.