In advancing a critical examination of post-processualism, the thesis has – as its central aim – the repositioning of the Neolithic within contemporary archaeological theory. Whilst acknowledging the insights it brings to an understanding of the period, it is argued that the knowledge it produces is necessarily constrained by the emphasis it accords to the cultural. Thus, in terms of the transition, the symbolic reading of agriculture to construct a metanarrative of Mesolithic continuity is challenged through a consideration of the evidential base and the indications it gives for a corresponding movement at the level of the economy; whilst the limiting effects generated by an interpretative reading of its monuments for an understanding of the social are considered. Underpinning these constraints is the conceptual privileging of the individual consequent upon the post-processual reaction to the totalising frameworks of modernist knowledge and the metanarratives of progress they construct – as exemplified in the economic reading of Childe. In examining the form of this reaction, the wider post-processual transposition of postmodernism within contemporary archaeological theory is also considered. In utilising Giddens’ concept of reflexivity, it is argued that rather than the ‘cultural turn’ itself, it is the inflection of the epistemological frameworks of the Enlightenment with a teleological reading of the past as progress that represents the postmodern within contemporary archaeological theory and it is through this understanding of postmodernism as expressing the capacity that modernity has to be self-aware that the conditions are established for the recovery of the Neolithic as a holistic object.

In the project "moving between futures" I explored through an interactive design exhibition and a performative event on the streets how design can be used to encourage and to reflect on ones own wishes and fears regarding the future in relation to the climate crisis which we are living and facing. Part of the exploration process were a story gathering workshop and engagement with activists. This is a project about you, me, us. About the total sum of being alive, feeling alive and breathing in reality. It is about a deep unconscious knowledge that we never learned to process and act upon. It is about listening first and taking action later, together. About understanding that we are alive at the same time, at the edge of no return. It is about the stories we tell each other when we dream and the ones we tell each other when we wake up screaming from a nightmare - the inbetween and the million, trillion directions we can decide to take from here. This project is about the climate disaster we are facing and how we need to find agency within ourselves together. We can still move between these futures.

Introduction:  Spiritual care encompasses seeking or expressing meaning and purpose in life. Spiritual care is significant for the palliative patient.  When the person goes through a difficult situation or suffers from an incurable disease, it is common for existential questions and spiritual needs to arise in the individual. In this situation, in order to provide spiritual care, the nurses must be established at the patient's request, and have a holistic approach. Aim: The aim of this study is to examine registered nurses’ experiences with caring for patients' spiritual health needs in palliative care in India. Method: The study had a qualitative method, and the sample consisted of a total of 7 nurses who have experience with palliative care. Data were collected through interviews and afterward transcribed and analyzed. The interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis method where three main categories and ten subcategories emerged. Result: In the results, three main categories emerged: the Meaning of spiritual care & nurse's role, different ways to support patients with spiritual care, and the Challenges nurse face.  Conclusion: In palliative care, spiritual health is based on the patient's religious beliefs, cultural background, and personal preferences.

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This thesis describes a practice-based research project that explores the relationship between textile and fashion systems through whole-garment weaving. In the current state of the textile and fashion industry, these are mostly based on two separate systems where the textile industry merely functions as an invisible backbone of the fashion industry. The structure of the weave, the jacquard patterns, the yarns and colours have the ability to link the textile to the garment, materialising the interdependency of the two. Hybrid forms of dressing is based on a series of experiments related to the components of jacquard weaving, local yarns and weaving constructions in a layering system, to gain an understanding of their relationship in the process of garment creation. This project aims to contribute to creating an equal balance between textile and fashion systems, working in a simultaneous design approach and opening up for discussion on this matter.

The holistic listening comprehension of 112 Kyoto University students, operationalized as TOEFL iBT listening (long listening), was investigated with a battery of 12 tests, including a phoneme and word recognition test, a test of short 10-second listening, a test of long 3- to 5-minute listening, a reading comprehension of listening scripts test, listening and reading cloze tests, a gap-filling test designed to assess syntactic awareness, a grammatical error detection test, and the Vocabulary Size Test. Rasch analyses were employed to yield person ability measures; these measures were used for correlation studies, a series of linear regression analyses, principal components analysis, and structural equation modeling. Long listening correlated most strongly with the reading comprehension test (.756) and the listening cloze test (.705), and these two variables explained as much variance in long listening as all the variables combined in a linear regression (68%). Of the two prominent components yielded by a principal components analysis, capturing sounds and processing for meaning, long listening loaded significantly only on processing for meaning (.727) and showed no notable loading on capturing sounds. When long listening comprehension was viewed as a two-stage activity consisting of capturing input and processing that input for meaning, the participants were found to rely mainly on processing for meaning. As a result, long/holistic listening had more in common with reading comprehension than with short listening, for which the first stage of input capture was more important. As a part of this study, long listening was expressed as a product of aural word recognition and processing for meaning as in the Simple View of Reading, where reading comprehension is regarded as a product of decoding and linguistic comprehension. While the Simple View of Reading typically accounts for 48% of the variance in reading comprehension, its listening counterpart in this study explained up to 58% of the variance; as much as an improved version of the Simple View of Reading named the Component Model of Reading. The identification of the structural equation models required an additional component for a total of three latent variables; availability of written text, aural activities, and processing for meaning. The three-latent-variable model for long listening incorporated all the variables as indicators except for the grammatical error detection due to its insignificant contribution to holistic understanding. Generally speaking, structural equation approach produced models which were in good qualitative agreements with correlation studies, principal components analysis, and multiple regression; thus, providing an integrative view and a unified treatment of the participants' proficiency with a focus on long listening. Overall, the results highlighted the importance of processing for meaning, a skill largely shared with reading comprehension, for the long listening comprehension of Kyoto University students. This finding indicates a transfer of meaning formation skill from L1 and L2 reading to L2 listening. / CITE/Language Arts

Metatheory, a study of theories, was the focus of this research study. A qualitative, grounded theory research design was used to examine documents on systems theory found outside the field of Clothing and Textiles (CT) and the social psychological theories used within CT. Recognizing the dynamic, complex nature of the human system and its interaction with multiple other systems led to the question of: What multidimensional theoretical framework would address this complexity and provide an expanded view for research and education in the field of CT? Data were collected from documentary materials pertaining to systems theory and CT theories by the researcher in a library search of the literature. Four domains were identified from the data that were collected and analyzed. The domains were Relationship, Process, Organization, and Outcomes. Then, a holistic, systemic theoretical framework and the Human-Environment Systems model were developed from the integration of systems theory and the CT theories. The model was designed to give a general, abstract visual representation of the theoretical concepts of a holistic, systemic view of the human-environment unit. A discussion of the complex societal issue of body image and eating disorders in females served to illustrate the use of the proposed theoretical framework and model. Recommendations were made for future exploration of the use of a holistic perspective for research and educational practices in the field of CT in order to address dynamic, complex human-environment problems. / Ph. D.