Magister Legum - LLM / Across the world, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)1 is disrupting the law.2 The 4IR has specifically disrupted commercial law in areas such as banking,3 competition,4 consumer protection,5 contract,6 insurance,7 labour,8 and personality.9 In addition, company law has also substantially been impacted by the 4IR. Leading legal scholars refer to this process of transformation as the ‘Digitalisation of Company Law’.10 More specifically, the scholars attribute the transformation to technological advancements.

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / This research study is informed by the White Paper for Post-School Education and Training (2013) in which the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) sets out its focus and priorities concerning higher education and training. The main purpose of this study is to find out how mature students participate despite the barriers that they experience while participating in post-school education and to offer an opportunity to achieve greater clarity about the way that the students who exercised agency overcame the barriers that they faced and in turn, achieved success.

The concepts of 'empowerment', 'agency' and 'gender' have been variously interpreted and applied by donors and development actors, and in largely instrumental terms. Theoretically, these concepts - as well as gender mainstreaming, the primary tool proposed to achieve gender equality - have drawn criticism for being disassociated with the original political intent to transform power relations. Practically, the current state of knowledge around the outcomes of gender and development programming is rife with institutional perspectives of donors and NGOs reflecting in the short-term, with voices of the constituents of development conspicuously absent. Understanding how gender and development interventions are perceived and experienced by recipients in the context of their life course is an urgent task required not only to improve the current state of knowledge, but also to understand what kinds of measures lead to positive societal changes. Drawing from ten life histories of recipients of gender mainstreamed development programming in Northern Sri Lanka, this dissertation probes how recipients situate and make sense of gender mainstreamed development programs as they navigate a post-war reality. Findings show that encounters with development programming and the development apparatus in general contributed to some positive social changes, with certain groups of women expressing agency and even moments of empowerment. However, the longitudinal scope of this study reveals that these experiences take place within the prevailing structural confines of insecurity that take place at the macro (state), meso (development apparatus) and micro (community) levels. These findings uncover how gender hierarchies and factors of identity influence these limits on choice, and therefore challenge current understandings of agency, empowerment, and the role of development programming within society. This research points to the limitations of donor-driven development programs that are ill-equipped to address structural issues of gendered insecurity, patriarchal societal norms, and deep-seated trauma. Further, this research offers new dimensions to existing frameworks around the interaction of masculinities, femininities, identity and conflict, suggesting that factors of identity must be complemented with significant experiences across a life course in order to understand how constituents receive and perceive development interventions, and to what extent these interventions are ultimately equipped to facilitate change. Methodologically, this dissertation offers innovative feminist approaches to foregrounding recipients' knowledge and experience of the development process, including pursuing more partnership approaches that include development actors, constituents, and researchers.

Thesis advisor: Sharlene N. Hesse-Biber / Sociocultural theorists of eating disorders recurrently investigate anorexia nervosa (AN) through a macro lens of inequality, underscoring thinness as a social construction of beauty and form of cultural capital. Conversely, other scholars attest that focus on AN as a manifestation of idealized body image may, instead, function as a red herring in illness understanding. Taken together, it becomes unclear how to best advance AN research and treatment practices when etiology is uncertain. While researchers largely depend on eating disorder professionals to elucidate AN healing complexities, as an alternative, I utilized a feminist epistemological approach to inquiry in centering individuals with personal AN experience, as another type of AN expert, from whom there is much for researchers to learn. With recognition of health and illness as both private and social experiences, I sought to understand how individuals experience AN and recovery in their everyday lives. I conducted 25 in-depth interviews (article one) and 150 open-ended surveys (articles two, three, and four) with individuals who identified as having had experience with AN. I explored: 1) how respondents understand AN and recovery, and 2) what respondents most want researchers to know about AN and recovery. My aim was not to explain why AN happens, as much as to phenomenologically explore how. In article one, I focused on how individuals experience AN and recovery in everyday self-presentation. A central implication is that AN and recovery can be recognized as interactional accomplishments that are un/successfully “done.” Thus, while conventional portrayals of AN often depict a person with AN looking into a mirror and seeing a distorted perception of their own body, respondents demonstrated how they relied on the interpretations of others to inform their impressions. In article two, I investigated how respondents evaluate weight as a metric of AN recovery. Respondents portrayed weight as a weak criterion, underscoring how it is a physical measure for a mental illness. Yet, respondents simultaneously stressed how weight matters for recovery, given low weight is requisite for support. In effect, respondents pivoted emphasis from weight as a catalyst for AN, to weight as an obstacle to recovery. In article three, respondents articulated how others’ expectations for healing did not always resonate with personal experience. This disjuncture led to treatment strategies that were often incompatible with respondents’ recovery realities. While a single definition of recovery may be useful to researchers, it may paradoxically present disempowering effects for individuals with AN, constituting or exacerbating iatrogenic harm. In article four, respondents further illuminated juxtapositions between clinical and personal definitions of AN healing. Notably, respondents positioned the development of positive relationships with others as among the most efficacious ways to heal. In addition, respondents advocated for recovery criteria that centered personal agency for more individualized and integrative AN healing. Collectively, the article themes overlapped, with AN manifesting as: an identity, role, entity, experience, and status. Ultimately, some respondents felt they had fully recovered from AN. However, most respondents, regardless of illness status, spoke about others’ misunderstandings of AN, which, from their perspectives, collaborated to fashion a masquerade of recovery that immobilized healing. The voices of respondents in the dissertation are profound, as they expose how the validity and legitimacy of their illness experience, as uncertain and negotiable, become the definition of the AN situation. Consequently, AN history remains a composite of social constructions that continually reposition questions of cause, meaning, and blame. The answers to these inquiries,which mold into illness etiologies, shape academic, clinical, conventional, personal, and professional responses. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Just nine months after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 a global pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines in December 2020, followed by EUA for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in February 2021. Although achieving herd immunity through vaccinations is the greatest hope for ending the pandemic, the COVID-19 vaccination effort has been plagued by misinformation and mistrust. Given the urgency to vaccinate the population, public health officials must construct messages that encourage individuals to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine. The current study examines the impact of linguistic assignment of agency on an individual’s desire to get vaccinated. Guided by the EPPM, participants (N= 296) were randomly assigned to receive either a virus agentic message or a human agentic message. The researchers discovered that the virus agentic message resulted in a greater intention to obtain the vaccine. Further, participants who received the virus agentic message reported a stronger sense of perceived self-efficacy and perceived susceptibility. Additionally, participants who perceived the societal reaction to the pandemic to be appropriate, as well as those who knew at least one person who had died from the virus, were more likely to express an intention to get vaccinated.

This study aims to understand how games teach the player how to enact agency within them. Agency refers to the ability of the player to actively interact with the world around them, and understand the circumstances and results of those actions. Three games of the shooter sub-genre were selected: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Cuphead, and Red Dead Redemption 2. These were chosen as they are modern representations of three of the most popular genres within the shooter mantle: First-Person Shooter, Run and Gun, and Third-Person Shooter, respectively. Each game’s first level was analyzed to see how they introduce the selected definition of agency. Each element that was found to convey agency was categorized according to it being diegetic (existing within the story) or non-diegetic (existing outside the story), explicit or implicit, and by the level of agency play it represented, these being Agency Relationship (the relationship between the user agency and system agency), Agency Scope (the impact the player’s actions will have on the narrative), Agency Dynamics (changes in agency through time, or more accurately, in different circumstances) and User Input Direction (what controls can be pressed to perform certain direct actions). These elements and their respective categories have been represented in a cell document, followed by which categories they belong to. Furthermore, for each game, the categories and which elements represent them are displayed as well, for a more identifiable examination of each category’s representation in each game, and to allow for comparison between them. Each level was described in accordance with the elements that conveyed agency, in their order of appearance. The elements or instances were described, and what categories they belong to were noted as well. In addition, explanations for why they belong to those specific categories were expressed if necessary. Conclusively, the games were shown to contain certain similarities among them, such as agency relationship being conveyed through the positioning of certain elements in connection to their environment and the player. However, the differences between the games were more prominent than their similarities. With each game having a particularly noticeable way in which they presented a great deal of the elements. In Modern Warfare, the game tried to use as few non-diegetic and as many diegetic elements as possible. In Cuphead, the game presented agency exclusively through enemy and object placement in relation to the level to teach the player about how certain mechanics functioned. And in Red Dead Redemption 2, the game tries to teach the player about game mechanics by juxtaposing the narrative, non-diegetic explanations, and diegetic instances, to accustom players to a fusion of elements trying to communicate the same message.

Bangladesh is the world's seven most populous country and its population with the average of 1000 people per square kilometer throughout the country. More than anything the country is facing unprecedented challenges due to Covid-19 pandemic. As of facing this unprepared challenge, the Government had to lockdown the country and the employees had to start working from home considering the situation and safety concerns. However, unlike the developed countries, the working from home scenario in Bangladesh is far more difficult as the concept is completely new. The difficulties are particularly seen in the advertising agency where the working culture needs to be collaborative. In addition to that, lack of preparation, shortage of right tools and support and overall, the new teleworking condition have turned the process overwhelming and complicated for the advertising agency employees. The purpose of this research is to explore the adaptation process of Advertising agencies during Covid-19 in Bangladesh. The research was qualitative in nature with an interpretivist perspective. As a deductive approach the concept of virtual work and its critical components were researched and later as an inductive approach email interviews with advertising agencies were conducted to discover and develop empirical understanding around the research topic. Through research it was discovered that the current work from home adaptation process has several shortcomings, without providing the required and special conditions for employees’ wellbeing and motivational factors. In addition to that, there is no adoption of any new collaborative tools that were found for the creative teams apart from the general communicative tools.

Magister Legum - LLM / Euthanasia is controversial topic that attracts conversations on grounds of fundamental human rights and freedoms. The opinions of legal scholars are inconsistent because while some view euthanasia as a gross violation of one’s human rights, others argue that it should be regarded as a fundamental human right. Extending the ‘right to die’ to children is more controversial because they are considered to be a vulnerable demographic and generally presumed to be legally incompetent to exercise their rights autonomously. The State aims to protect children by restricting their rights rather than enhancing their autonomy and including them in the discussion. To that end, children are often excluded from decision-making on the understanding that they are legally incompetent and cannot comprehend the consequences of their decisions.

The thesis explores on the negotiation of agency in experiences of age assessment of former unaccompanied refugee minors who seek asylum in Germany, as well as in their interaction with the situational context. As a combination of narrative and thematic analysis, the study is based on six online semi-structured interviews with young people and two with professionals working in Youth Welfare Offices. By employing the perspective of Emirbayer & Mische (1998), agency takes here the form of a temporal process. As a result of the juxtaposition between aspects embedded in the past: such as the fact of not having identity documents; their knowledge of age; images of childhood; experiences lived in the trajectory to Germany, and the interplay with the time, flexibility, and credibility in the practical implementation, the negotiation of agency at the time of the age assessment ranges between normalization and confusion. The findings contribute to the debate about age assessment in Germany unifying migration and childhood research. Furthermore, it advances with an empirical approach of agency in the sociology of youth.

This thesis aims to examine the role of children as agents of change in an urgent climate context. This thesis uses a normative method with an argumentative structure. The material is mainly based on secondary sources, with predominantly emphasis on the interests, concerns and rights of the child, their agency and intergenerational justice. This thesis argues for a shift in the perception of the child from helpless victims of climate change to active agents. With the use of intergenerational justice theory and children’s agency into the discourse of childhood studies and environmental studies, this thesis suggests that a updated perception on the role of children in the climate change context is needed to account for children’s right to participation and for the survival of the environment and the future of mankind. The thesis concludes that this issue is a matter of rights, future life, and justice.