Welcome to Research Repository UCD

Research Repository UCD is a digital collection of open access scholarly research publications from University College Dublin. Research Repository UCD collects, preserves and makes freely available publications including peer-reviewed articles, working papers and conference papers created by UCD researchers. Where material has already been published it is made available subject to the open-access policies of the original publishers. This service is maintained by UCD Library.

 
Most downloaded
  • Publication
      47232
  • Publication
    Corporate governance, accountability and mechanisms of accountability : an overview
    Purpose – This paper reviews traditional corporate governance and accountability research, to suggest opportunities for future research in this field. The first part adopts an analytical frame of reference based on theory, accountability mechanisms, methodology, business sector/context, globalisation and time horizon. The second part of the paper locates the seven papers in the special issue in a framework of analysis showing how each one contributes to the field. The paper presents a frame of reference which may be used as a 'roadmap' for researchers to navigate their way through the prior literature and to position their work on the frontiers of corporate governance research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs an analytical framework, and is primarily discursive and conceptual. Findings – The paper encourages broader approaches to corporate governance and accountability research beyond the traditional and primarily quantitative approaches of prior research. Broader theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, accountability mechanism, sectors/contexts, globalisation and time horizons are identified. Research limitations/implications – Greater use of qualitative research methods are suggested, which present challenges particularly of access to the “black box” of corporate boardrooms. Originality/value – Drawing on the analytical framework, and the papers in the special issue, the paper identifies opportunities for further research of accountability and corporate governance.
      33376Scopus© Citations 296
  • Publication
    Elderly care in Ireland - provisions and providers
    (University College Dublin. School of Social Justice, 2010-04) ;
      32005
  • Publication
      31030
  • Publication
    Equality in education : an equality of condition perspective
    (Sage Publications, 2005) ;
    Transforming schools into truly egalitarian institutions requires a holistic and integrated approach. Using a robust conception of 'equality of condition', we examine key dimensions of equality that are central to both the purposes and processes of education: equality in educational and related resources; equality of respect and recognition; equality of power; and equality of love, care and solidarity. We indicate in each case some of the major changes that need to occur if we are to promote equality of condition. Starting with inequalities of resources, and in particular with inequalities tied to social class, we argue for abandoning rigid grouping policies, challenging the power of parents in relation to both selection and grouping, and changing curricula and assessment systems to make them more inclusive of the wide range of human intelligences. In relation to respect and recognition, we call for much more inclusive processes for respecting differences, not only in schools' organizational cultures, but also in their curriculum, pedagogy and assessment systems. Regarding inequalities of power, we call for democratization of both teacher-student relationships and school and college organization. For promoting equality of love, care and solidarity, we argue that schools need to develop an appreciation of the intrinsic role that emotions play in the process of teaching and learning, to provide a space for students and teachers to talk about their feelings and concerns, and to devise educational experiences that will enable students to develop their emotional skills or personal intelligences as a discrete area of human capability.
    Scopus© Citations 137  23242
  • Publication
    Discretionary disclosure strategies in corporate narratives : incremental information or impression management?
    (University of Florida. Fisher School of Accounting, 2007) ;
    The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize the literature on discretionary narrative disclosures. We explore why, how, and whether preparers of corporate narrative reports use discretionary disclosures in corporate narrative documents and why, how, and whether users react thereto. To facilitate the review, we provide three taxonomies based on: the motivation for discretionary narrative disclosures (opportunistic behavior, i.e. impression management, versus provision of useful incremental information); the research perspective (preparer versus user); and seven discretionary disclosure strategies. We also examine the whole range of theoretical frameworks utilized by prior research, and we put forward some suggestions for future research.
      22414
  • Publication
    From asset based welfare to welfare housing? The changing function of social housing in Ireland
    (Routledge, 2011) ;
    This article examines a distinctive and significant aspect of social housing in Ireland – its change in function from an asset-based role in welfare support to a more standard model of welfare housing. It outlines the nationalist and agrarian drivers which expanded the initial role of social housing beyond the goal of improving housing conditions for the poor towards the goal of extending home ownership and assesses whether this focus made it more similar to the ‘asset based welfare’ approach to housing found in south-east Asia than to social housing in western Europe. From the mid-1980s, the role of Irish social housing changed as the sector contracted and evolved towards the model of welfare housing now found in many other western countries. Policy makers have struggled to address the implications of this transition and vestiges of social housing’s traditional function are still evident, consequently the boundaries between social housing, private renting and home ownership in Ireland have grown increasingly nebulous.
    Scopus© Citations 29  22010
  • Publication
    Using Twitter to recommend real-time topical news
    Recommending news stories to users, based on their preferences,has long been a favourite domain for recommender systems research. In this paper, we describe a novel approach to news recommendation that harnesses real-time micro-blogging activity, from a service such as Twitter, as the basis for promoting news stories from a user's favourite RSS feeds. A preliminary evaluation is carried out on an implementation of this technique that shows promising results.
      21350Scopus© Citations 337
  • Publication
    Constructive approaches towards water treatment works sludge management : an international review of beneficial re-uses
    (Taylor & Francis, 2007-03) ;
    Till date, virtually all known drinking water processing systems generate an enormous amount of residual sludge, and what else to do with this rapidly increasing 'waste' stream in an economic and environmentally sustainable manner remains a significant environmental issue. Perhaps, the realization of this fact has led to series of concerted efforts aimed at beneficial re-uses in an effort to close the loop between efficient water treatment and sustainable sludge management. This paper therefore presents a comprehensive review of available literature on attempts at beneficial reuses of water treatment plant sludge, in an effort to provide a compendium of recent and past developments, and update our current state of knowledge. Four broad categories of uses, which included over eleven possible ways in which waterworks sludges can be reused were identified and examined. Obvious advantages of such reuse options were highlighted and knowledge gaps identified. Future issues that will assist in the development of sustainable waterworks sludge management options with a multi-prong approach were equally discussed.
      19862Scopus© Citations 386
  • Publication
    Expansive cements and soundless chemical demolition agents : state of technology review
    Expansive cements and soundless chemical demolition agents (SCDAs) were first introduced in the early 1970s but failed to gain widespread adoption for selective removal of rock and concrete due to their proprietary nature and a lack of usage guidelines. Nearly 40 years later, the patents have expired, and a large number of competitive products have entered the market. These factors coupled with a heightened interest in their potential environmental benefits have greatly expanded their usage. Specifically, these chemicals can be introduced into a pattern of small, drilled holes in concrete and/or rock. After a specific period (usually less than 24 hours), the in-situ material will crack sufficiently that it can be removed without the use of traditional explosives or further percussive efforts. The products generate substantially less noise and vibration than usually associated with the removal of rock and concrete. This paper provides a state-of-the-technology review of five available products. The focus is on the proposed applicability of various products under specific conditions. Special attention is paid to the viability of such agents under varying temperatures and with materials of particular strengths.
      18602
  • Publication
    Clustering with the multivariate normal inverse Gaussian distribution
    Many model-based clustering methods are based on a finite Gaussian mixture model. The Gaussian mixture model implies that the data scatter within each group is elliptically shaped. Hence non-elliptical groups are often modeled by more than one component, resulting in model over-fitting. An alternative is to use a mean–variance mixture of multivariate normal distributions with an inverse Gaussian mixing distribution (MNIG) in place of the Gaussian distribution, to yield a more flexible family of distributions. Under this model the component distributions may be skewed and have fatter tails than the Gaussian distribution. The MNIG based approach is extended to include a broad range of eigendecomposed covariance structures. Furthermore, MNIG models where the other distributional parameters are constrained is considered. The Bayesian Information Criterion is used to identify the optimal model and number of mixture components. The method is demonstrated on three sample data sets and a novel variation on the univariate Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is used to assess goodness of fit.
      17517Scopus© Citations 60
  • Publication
    Inequality and crime
    (MIT Press, 2000-11)
    This paper considers the relationship between inequality and crime using data from urban counties. The behavior of property and violent crime are quite different. Inequality has no effect on property crime but a strong and robust impact on violent crime, with an elasticity above 0.5. By contrast, poverty and police activity have significant effects on property crime, but little on violent crime. Property crime is well explained by the economic theory of crime, while violent crime is better explained by strain and social disorganization theories.
    Scopus© Citations 425  17429
  • Publication
    Curriculum Design in Higher Education: Theory to Practice
    (University College Dublin. Teaching and Learning, 2015-09)
    This eBook emphasises the theory to practice of curriculum design in higher education. The book focuses on programme (not module) level of design; incorporates face-to-face, blended and online curricula; attempts to link theory to practice by giving some practical resources and/or exercises; draws the author's experiences of working and researching into curriculum design in the Irish higher education sector; is aimed at all staff involved in curriculum design, including academic staff (faculty), institutional managers, educational developers and technologists, support staff, library staff and curriculum researchers; is primarily drawn from literature and experiences in the higher education sector, however those in adult and further education may also find it useful. The structure of this book is based on a curriculum design process that the author has developed as part of her experience and research on curriculum design. 
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  • Publication
    Agent-based coordination for the sensor web
    The approach described advocates the use of a multi-agent system, and specifically the use of multi-agent distributed constraint optimisation algorithms. Developing software for low powered sensing devices introduces several problems to be addressed; the most obvious being the limited computational resources available. In this paper we discuss an implementation of ADOPT, a pre-existing algorithm for distributed constraint optimisation, and describe how it has been integrated with a reflective agent platform developed for resource constrained devices, namely Agent Factory Micro Edition (AFME). The usefulness of this work is illustrated through the canonical multi-agent coordination problem, namely graph colouring.
      16036Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Visualization in sporting contexts : the team scenario
    Wearable sensor systems require an interactive and communicative interface for the user to interpret data in a meaningful way. The development of adaptive personalization features in a visualization tool for such systems can convey a more meaningful picture to the user of the system. In this paper, a visualization tool called Visualization in Team Scenarios (VTS), which can be used by a coach to monitor an athlete’s physiological parameters, is presented. The VTS has been implemented with a wearable sensor system that can monitor players’ performance in a game in a seamless and transparent manner. Using the VTS, a coach is able to analyze the physiological data of athletes generated using select wearable sensors, and subsequently analyse the results to personalize training schedules thus improving the performance of the players.
      15357
  • Publication
    Michael White's narrative therapy
    (Springer Verlag, 1998)
    A systematized description of a number of practices central to Michael Whites' narrative approach to therapy is given. These include collaborative positioning of the therapist, externalizing the problem, excavating unique outcomes, thickening the new plot, and linking the new plot to the past and the future. The practices of remembering and incorporation, using literary means to achieve therapeutic ends, and facilitating taking-it-back practices are also described. A number of questions are given which may be useful for those concerned with narrative therapy to address.
    Scopus© Citations 105  15321
  • Publication
    Provision of childcare services in Ireland
    (University College Dublin. School of Social Justice, 2008-03) ;
    External report commissioned by and presented to the EU Directorate-General Employment and Social Affairs, Unit G1 'Equality between women and men'
      15208
  • Publication
    Financial statement fraud : some lessons from US and European case studies
    (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007-07) ;
    This paper studies 14 companies which were subject to an official investigation arising from the publication of fraudulent financial statements. The research found senior management to be responsible for most fraud. Recording false sales was the most common method of financial statement fraud. Meeting external forecasts emerged as the primary motivation. Management discovered most fraud, although the discovery was split between incumbent and new management.
      14981Scopus© Citations 38
  • Publication
    The effectiveness of family therapy and systemic interventions for child-focused problems
    (Wiley, 2009-02)
    This review updates a similar paper published in the Journal of Family Therapy in 2001. It presents evidence from meta-analyses, systematic literature reviews and controlled trials for the effectiveness of systemic interventions for families of children and adolescents with various difficulties. In this context, systemic interventions include both family therapy and other family-based approaches such as parent training. The evidence supports the effectiveness of systemic interventions either alone or as part of multimodal programmes for sleep, feeding and attachment problems in infancy; child abuse and neglect; conduct problems (including childhood behavioural difficulties, ADHD, delinquency and drug abuse); emotional problems (including anxiety, depression, grief, bipolar disorder and suicidality); eating disorders (including anorexia, bulimia and obesity); and somatic problems (including enuresis, encopresis, recurrent abdominal pain, and poorly controlled asthma and diabetes).
    Scopus© Citations 156  14410
  • Publication
    Focus groups versus individual interviews with children : A comparison of data
    (Routledge (Taylor & Francis), 2006) ;
    In recent years there has been an increase in the use of qualitative data collection techniques in research with children. Among the most common of these methods are focus groups and individual interviews. While many authors claim that focus groups have advantages over individual interviews, these claims have not been tested empirically with children. The present study reports on the use of focus groups and interviews to collect qualitative data from 116 children in three age groups, with mean ages of 8.4, 11.5 and 14.3 years. The children were randomly allocated to participate in either focus groups or individual interviews where they were presented with identical material and questions relating to their beliefs about peers with psychological disorders. In line with previous research, the interviews produced significantly more relevant and unique ideas about the causes of these disorders than the focus groups, but the latter gave rise to greater elaboration of ideas. The participating children showed no significant difference in their preference for one method over the other. Thus, whether to choose individual interviews or focus groups is likely to depend on the nature of the research question in any given study.
      14183Scopus© Citations 43
Recent Submissions
  • Publication
    Betrayal, Trust and Loyalty
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-09-28)
    I argue that while every betrayal is a breach of trust, not every breach of trust is a betrayal. I defend a conception of trust as primarily a feature of behaviour (i.e. trusting behaviour) and only secondarily a feature of a mental attitude. So it is possible to have the attitude of distrust towards someone while still trusting them in the way you behave. This makes sense of the possibility of Judas Iscariot breaching Jesus’ trust, and so betraying him, even though Jesus presumably knew that Judas would do just that. This conception of trust may be spelt out in terms of making oneself reliant on somebody in a collaboration with them. Such collaborations include relationships like friendships and love affairs, as well as political activities or defending one’s country against aggression. I argue that only when these collaborations involve a commitment to loyalty is a breach of trust a betrayal. And loyalty is a feature of those collaborations or relationships that exclude others – us/them collaborations.
      10Scopus© Citations 1
  • Publication
    Dormant and Active Emotional States
    (Springer Nature, 2022-03-10)
    George Pitcher marks a familiar distinction in the philosophy of emotions as follows: When it is said of someone that he has an emotion, this may be said of him either in (a) an occurrent, or in (b) a dispositional sense. A person who is frightened by a face at a window, or who gets angry at two boys because they are mistreating a dog, has an emotion in the former, occurrent, sense – he is actually in the grip of the emotion. But a person who hates his father, or is jealous of his landlord, has an emotion in the latter, dispositional, sense – he may not actually be feeling the emotion now. (Pitcher 1965, 331-2). I will take issue with this idea that there are two different senses in which someone has an emotion. While it is unquestionably the case that there is a proper distinction to be marked here, I take it that it is the distinction between an emotional state being active and the same state being dormant, not a distinction between two kinds of emotional state – occurrent and dispositional ones. I will argue that when you are in the grip of anger with the two boys for mistreating the dog you are in the very same dispositional state you will be in later when you have cooled down and are thinking about something else altogether though still angry with the two boys for mistreating the dog. When in the grip of anger you are in a dispositional state that is in the process of being manifested – it is an active dispositional state.
      8Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    The Contours of Locke's General Substance Dualism
    (Journal of Modern Philosophy, 2022)
    In this paper, I will argue that Locke is a substance dualist in the general sense, in that he holds that there are, independent of our classificatory schema, two distinct kinds of substances: wholly material ones and wholly immaterial ones. On Locke's view, the difference between the two lies in whether they are solid or not, thereby differentiating him from Descartes. My way of establishing Locke as a general substance dualist is to be as minimally committal as possible at the outset, especially with respect to the classic debates on Locke's positions in this domain, including those concerning substrata, real essences, and the like. Nonetheless, I show that minimal commitments about Locke's primary/secondary quality distinction are sufficient to derive some substantive conclusions about his positions on these issues, as well as that he is a general substance dualist.
      8
  • Publication
    A New Dark Age? Truth, Trust, and Environmental Science
    This review examines the alleged crisis of trust in environmental science and its impact on public opinion, policy decisions in the context of democratic governance, and the interaction between science and society. In an interdisciplinary manner, the review focuses on the following themes: the trustworthiness of environmental science, empirical studies on levels of trust and trust formation; social media, environmental science, and disinformation; trust in environmental governance and democracy; and co-production of knowledge and the production of trust in knowledge. The review explores both the normative issue of trustworthiness and empirical studies on how to build trust. The review does not provide any simple answers to whether trust in science is generally in decline or whether we are returning to a lessenlightened era in public life with decreased appreciation of knowledge and truth. The findings are more nuanced, showing signs of both distrust and trust in environmental science.
      9Scopus© Citations 6
  • Publication
    Scepticism and the value of distrust
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-11-16) ;
    Faced with urgent calls for more trust in experts, especially in high impact and politically sensitive domains, such as climate science and COVID-19, the complex nature of public trust in experts and the need for a more critical approach to the topic are easy to overlook. Scepticism–at least in its Humean mitigated form that encourages independent, questioning attitudes–can prove valuable to democratic governance, but stands in opposition to the cognitive dependency entailed by epistemic trust. In this paper, we investigate the tension between the value of mitigated scepticism and the need for trust in experts. We offer four arguments in favour of mitigated scepticism: the argument from loss of intellectual autonomy; the argument from democratic deficit; the argument from the normative failures of science; and the argument from past and current injustices. One solution, which we reject, is the idea that reliance, rather than trust, is sufficient for accommodating experts in policy matters. The solution we endorse is to create a ‘climate of trust’, where questioning experts and expertise is welcomed, but the epistemic trust necessary for acting upon information which the public cannot obtain first-hand is enabled and encouraged through structural, institutional and justice-based measures.
      9Scopus© Citations 5
  • Publication
    Epistemic Injustice and Collective Wrongdoing: Introduction to Special Issue
    (Taylor & Francis, 2021) ;
    In this introduction to the special issue ‘Epistemic Injustice and Collective Wrongdoing,’ we show how the eight contributions examine the collective dimensions of epistemic injustice. First, we contextualize the articles within theories of epistemic injustice. Second, we provide an overview of the eight articles by highlighting three central topics addressed by them: i) the effects of epistemic injustice and collective wrongdoing, ii) the underlying epistemic structures in collective wrongdoing, unjust relations and unjust societies, and iii) the remedies and strategies of resistance to epistemic injustice. We close by pointing to connections and issues that may motivate further research.
      9Scopus© Citations 5
  • Publication
    Managing Serious Violence in the Irish Prison Service: Exploring the Experiences of Prisoners and Prison Officers through the Lens of the Power Threat Meaning Framework
    (University College Dublin. School of Psychology, 2023)
    Background: The opening of the National Violence Reduction Unit (NVRU) in November 2018 represented a significant shift in how serious violence is managed under the Violently Disruptive Prisoner (VDP) policy in the Irish Prison Service (IPS). Previously, practice under the VDP policy was operationally-driven, and focused primarily on containing the violence of these prisoners through isolative, restrictive and physically secure measures. Contrastingly, current practice in the NVRU, now home to all VDP policy prisoners, aims to be psychologically-informed in various ways. In January 2018, the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) published the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF). The PTMF aims to provide a holistic way of understanding the origins, experiences and expressions of emotional distress and troubled/troubling behaviour, which contrasts to the dominant psychiatric diagnostic model. The related literature has also advocated for more holistic understandings of prison violence, with most existing theories (e.g. importation theory, deprivation theory) stratified to singular levels of understanding. Objectives: This thesis had dual theoretical and applied aims. It aimed to explore the empirical utility of the PTMF, primarily as a holistic alternative for understanding the origins, experiences and expressions of prison violence. Simultaneously, it aimed to explore prisoners’ and prison officers’ experiences and perspectives of the previous and current VDP policy, through the lens of the PTMF. Methods: This thesis is comprised of four studies. Study one involved a scoping review of the empirical PTMF evidence-base which has emerged in the five years since its publication (n = 17). Study two qualitatively explored prisoners’ (n = 4) and prison officers’ (n = 13) experiences of the previous VDP policy, using thematic analysis (TA) to generate a detailed description of what the previous VDP policy was like, why it was like this, how it was working, and how it could change. Study three qualitatively explored NVRU prisoners’ (n = 3) self-understandings of the origins, experiences and expressions of their violent behaviour. It used a hybrid inductive and deductive approach to TA to identify both a priori elements of the PTMF, and novel additions, in these narratives. Study four adopted the same methodology as study three, this time exploring NVRU prison officers’ (n = 13) understandings of the prisoners with whom they worked. Results: Study one identified a diverse empirical evidence-base which used the PTMF in five main ways: (1) PTMF-informed data collection, (2) PTMF-informed data analysis, (3) exploring experiences of/views on the PTMF, (4) evaluating PTMF-informed formulation, and (5) evaluating PTMF-informed interventions. Study two described the previous VDP policy through nine themes: (1) describing VDP policy prisoners, (2) staff characteristics and approaches, (3) describing the VDP policy regime, (4) the social environment, (5) the occupational environment, (6) function of the VDP policy, (7) impact of the VDP policy, (8) factors influencing violence, and (9) responding to violence. Studies three and four described prisoners’ and prison officers’ respective understandings of the origins, experiences and expressions of violence through six themes: (1) power, (2) threat, (3) meaning, (4) threat response, (5) function of threat response, and (6) moderating factors. These studies offer both unique contributions and integrated learnings, including the complexity of violence; intertwined cycles of adversity, trauma and violence; and the unique contributions and shared insights of prisoners and prison officers. Conclusions: These findings are contextualised within the strengths (e.g. novel theoretical framework, innovative methodology) and limitations (e.g. sample sizes and profiles, timeline of research) of this thesis. Potential implications and future directions for theory (e.g. value of holistic understandings), research (e.g. importance of adaptive methodologies), policy (e.g. benefits of psychologically-informed aims) and practice (e.g. value of prison officer perspectives) are considered.
      64
  • Publication
    Uncertainty Quantification in Tunnelling-induced Surface Settlement
    (University College Dublin. School of Civil Engineering, 2017)
    Evaluating the impact of tunnelling on above ground structures in urban areas highly relies on prediction of the settlement trough at surface level. Uncertainties in soil properties and other system characteristics for soft ground (e.g. Alluvium soil) can significantly affect the prediction. Classically, empirical formulas are used for prediction of the settlement using the experience from previous tunnelling projects. Empirical formulas do not consider the soil-lining interaction or the method of construction and lack a theoretical background for ground movement in continuum mechanics. Analytical and numerical approaches have developed to address some of these deficits, but have not to date, taken account of the many uncertainties involved in the process. This thesis introduces a stochastic method in the context of discrete random finite element theory to probabilistically predict the tunnelling-induced surface settlement. The method proposes a single mechanism (i.e. an uncertainty and sensitivity analysis framework) in which multiple sources of uncertainty can be considered within a single model (e.g. heterogeneity of the soil profile, variability in surcharge loads, and material properties). The power of the method is then examined through application to case studies involving two large-scale, shallow tunnelling projects excavated in alluvium soil. The results are compared with monitoring data, with estimations from deterministic finite element (FE) models and empirical formulas. Compared to the results of classical FEs and empirical approaches, application of the new probabilistic approach provides better understanding of the development of the settlement trough at surface level in both case studies. The output parameters for the tunnelling-induced settlement trough (volume loss and maximum settlement) are in good agreement with actual monitoring data in both case studies. Notably, the prediction result of the empirical formula in the first case study is conservative and for the second one is quite non-conservative. The new approach, on the other hand, provides more accurate predictions and insights into the effect of different sources of uncertainty.
      16
  • Publication
    'But Greek…usually knows Greek': Recognizing Queer Sexuality in Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle
    (Cork University Press, 2007-04)
    Applying the insights of lesbian and queer theory approach to a reading of Kate O’Brien’s third novel Mary Lavelle (1936) allows us to see not only a rich and intriguing text but by contrasting a queer reading to feminist readings of Mary Lavelle we can see how a queer reading can both develop and challenge a feminist approach to the text.
      7
  • Publication
    Edmund Burke and the Long Seventeenth Century
    (Iwanami Shoten, 2012-12)
    The wars and massacres, land confiscations and plantations, peace treaties and redress, and all the oscillating upheavals in socio-political power in Ireland during the seventeenth-century, can be regarded as typical of the cycle of religious sectarian warfare evident throughout Europe at that time. The warring factions that fought to control the government of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales are, when loosely sketched, analogous to those found on the continent’s mainland: a Protestant, democratising power versus a Catholic, aristocratic force that could lay claim to a traditionally-held belief in their appointment by divine power. However, by the mid’ seventeenth-century there was an ethnic dimension to this power struggle as it played out in Ireland: the supporters of the Catholic interest were overwhelmingly Gaelic with a distinctly different language and cultural practices than that of the English-speaking settlers (also known in Ireland as planters) who supported the Protestant interest. It is at this level – the level of culture – that the wars in Seventeenth-Century Ireland can be understood as a colonial struggle – with the ultimately politically vanquished Gaelic aristocrats, (known by the end of the century as Jacobites for their support of King James II and VII of the House of Stuart) not only losing political power but enduring the slow decline of their cultural dominance and social influence, becoming increasingly marginalised in the decades after the final battles of 1691.
      8
  • Publication
    Untranslatability and the ethics of pause
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023)
    Untranslatability has been seen as a problematic concept in Translation Studies, rooted in outdated views of translation as doomed to failure. In this paper, I argue against such a view of untranslatability to make two claims. The first is that at least a temporary untranslatability is the condition of translation, without it translation would be redundant. The second is that untranslatability offers us both an ethical and descriptive model for intersubjective relations such that it does not merely refer to a textual practice but also to ways in which we relate to each other as human beings. In the first part of the paper, I engage with two critics of untranslatability–Ricoeur and Venuti–to claim that in their rejection of the untranslatable, they lose something productive. Against a view of the untranslatable as something ‘sacred’, as described by Heidegger; I argue that we might think of the untranslatable as that which exceeds our understanding yet generates the desire to understand at all. Drawing on the work of Derrida, Levinas, and Cassin, I claim that the untranslatable offers us a way of thinking of translation and understanding in general as ethical when they are paused, suspended, or interrupted.
      6Scopus© Citations 1
  • Publication
    An Ethical Suspension of the Political: Untranslatability with Beauvoir and Cassin
    (Vishvanatha Kaviraja Institute, 2022)
    How we name each other sets in motion how we treat each other, each act of naming both opens up a certain mode of engagement and closes off others. When we tell each other our nationality or our political affiliation, our religion or our ethnicity, our gender or our class, and so on; we reveal an aspect of who we are. Sometimes we do this explicitly, at other times we do so implicitly or unintentionally. We each have many aspects and often these sides of who we are affirm our membership of a group – Republicans or Democrats; Catholics or Hindus; male or trans and so on. This group membership may be an integral part of how we understand ourselves and relate to others, or it may be experienced as merely incidental. As Iris Marrion Young has argued, group membership is part of the contemporary human condition that in itself is relatively neutral but is also not simple or exclusive. Rather, group membership is “multiple, cross-cutting, fluid, and shifting […]. In complex, highly differentiated societies like our own, all persons have multiple group identifications.” (Young, 48)
      11
  • Publication
    ‘Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography’: William J. Stillman and the Acropolis in Word and Image
    (Open Library of the Humanities, 2015-12-24) ;
    In 1870, the American William J. Stillman ' diplomat, journalist, painter and photographer ' published an album of autotypes entitled The Acropolis of Athens: Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography. (A second version of the publication would follow in'. ) For a newcomer to the medium, Stillman's images were remarkable for their poise and clarity. But where the photographs were 'clear and lively', to borrow John Szarkowski's phrase, the brief text which accompanied each was, by comparison, laborious and lifeless. Facing each other across each double-spread, text and image seemed to speak in completely different registers, in a manner which presaged many subsequent uses of similar material, most famously Vers Une Architecture. This paper will explore the relationship between those two registers in terms of Stillman's intentions, in terms of contemporary ideas on the depiction of architecture and in terms of the modes of publication will followed. Stillman was deeply involved in contemporary discussions of artistic depiction and its relationship to the truth of experience. In his critique of Ruskin's essay on Turner's Slave Ship, Stillman contends that Ruskin, in pressing his claims for the painting's objective validity, 'left out of all consideration the subjective transformation of natural truth which is the basis of art.' For Stillman, the vivid rendering of the experience of the world depended, ultimately, on artistic subjectivity. Conceding the power of Ruskin's 'word picture' (as he terms it), he is nonetheless uneasy with its conflation of the stable, reliable viewpoint offered by words and the visceral, mutable view by images. Thus, although primarily known for his vivid writing, in The Acropolis of Athens, Stillman used the images to communicate experience, while the words stuck close to the facts.
      12
  • Publication
    Frederick H. Evans's lantern-slide lectures as a "clock for Seeing"
    (University of California Press, 2021-06-01)
    In Frederick H. Evans’s Lantern-Slide Lectures as a “Clock for Seeing,” Dervla MacManus presents an indepth examination of the British photographer Frederick Henry Evans’s Lincoln Cathedral lantern-slide lecture, which he delivered three times—in 1896, 1899, and 1902. Although better known for his platinotype photography, Evans also created series of lantern slides that represent prolonged encounters with buildings played out in sequences of images. Recalling Roland Barthes’s description of the photograph as a “temporal hallucination,” MacManus identifies and explores the spatial and temporal hallucinations evoked by Evans’s Lincoln Cathedral lecture. She argues that the temporal character of the lecture was a complex constellation driven by the built fabric of the cathedral itself, moving back and forth between past and present, and in turn giving rise to a spatial ordering of time. This analysis highlights the significant role played by optical technologies in Evans’s creation of a spatially and temporally idealized version of the cathedral. Further, it shows how Evans’s encounter with the building, mediated by the camera lens, encouraged a shift in photographic modes—from a spatial mode intended to re-create architectural experience to a scopic mode that scrutinized the cathedral’s richly carved surfaces.
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  • Publication
    Are the Senses Silent? Travis’s Argument from Looks
    (Oxford University Press, 2018-07-19) ; ;
    Many philosophers and scientists take perceptual experience, whatever else it involves, to be representational. In ‘The Silence of the Senses’, Charles Travis argues that this view involves a kind of category mistake, and consequently, that perceptual experience is not a representational or intentional phenomenon. The details of Travis’s argument, however, have been widely misinterpreted by his representationalist opponents, many of whom dismiss it out of hand. This chapter offers an interpretation of Travis’s argument from looks that it is argued presents a genuine and important challenge to orthodox representational views of experience. Whilst this challenge may not (pace Travis) be insurmountable, it places a substantial burden upon the representationalist to explain not only how experiences come to have the contents that they do (the individuation question), but how those contents come to feature in our conscious mental lives (the availability question).
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  • Publication
    Windows on Time: Unlocking the Temporal Microstructure of Experience
    (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2023-12-01)
    Each of our sensory modalities — vision, touch, taste, etc. — works on a slightly different timescale, with differing temporal resolutions and processing lag. This raises the question of how, or indeed whether, these sensory streams are co-ordinated or ‘bound’ into a coherent multisensory experience of the perceptual ‘now’. In this paper I evaluate one account of how temporal binding is achieved: the temporal windows hypothesis, concluding that, in its simplest form, this hypothesis is inadequate to capture a variety of multisensory phenomena. Rather, the evidence suggests the existence of a more complex temporal structure in which multiple overlapping windows support distinct functional mechanisms. To aid in the precise formulation of such views, I propose a taxonomy of temporal window types and their characteristics that in turn suggests promising avenues for future empirical and philosophical research. I conclude by examining some philosophical implications of multi-window models for the metaphysics of perception and perceptual experience more generally.
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  • Publication
    Perception Without Representation
    (Springer Nature, 2017-03-23) ;
    This special issue focuses upon the debate between representational views and these emerging relational views of perception. We aim to elucidate relational views of perception in a way that facilitates a more nuanced debate (see Brewer, Travis, Martin). Other contributions explore the phenomenal character of experience and its explanatory role (Brogaard, Dokic and Martin, Eilan), and reappraise existing arguments both for (Brogaard) and against (O’Sullivan, Judge, Ivanov) relational views. We hope that this goes some way towards demonstrating that, far from being an implausible fringe view, relational theories constitute a significant and genuine attempt to overcome some central problems in the philosophy of perception, and, as such, are worthy of further consideration—not least by their opponents. Erratum to: Topoi DOI 10.1007/s11245‑017‑9460‑1. In the original publication of the article, the M. G. F. Martin quotation under the section “Relational Views” cited as (2004: 93) is from p. 83 of his (1997) The reality of appearances, in Sainsbury M. (ed) Thought and ontology, Franco Angeli, Milano, pp. 81–106, reprinted on p. 93 of Byrne A., Logue H. (eds) (2009) Disjunctivism: contemporary readings, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 91–115. DOI 10.1007/s11245-017-9489-1.
      10Scopus© Citations 20
  • Publication
    The Auditory Field: The Spatial Character of Auditory Experience
    (University of Michigan Library, 2022)
    It is widely accepted that there is a visual field, but the analogous notion of an auditory field is rejected by many philosophers on the grounds that the metaphysics or phenomenology of audition lack the necessary spatial structure. In this paper, I argue that many of the common objections to the existence of an auditory field are misguided and that, contrary to a tradition of philosophical scepticism about the spatiality of auditory experience, it is as richly spatial as visual experience — and in some ways even more so. By carefully considering the spatiality and boundedness of audition, along with how sounds or their sources are experienced as occurring within the surrounding acoustic environment, we can gain a better understanding of (i) our auditory experience of space and (ii) the conditions for the existence of spatial sensory fields in general in a way that does not privilege vision over the other senses.
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  • Publication
    Does Property-Perception Entail the Content View?
    (Springer Nature, 2024)
    Visual perception is widely taken to present properties such as redness, roundness, and so on. This in turn might be thought to give rise to accuracy conditions for experience, and so content, regardless of which metaphysical view of perception one endorses. An influential version of this argument —Susanna Siegel’s ‘Argument from Appearing’ — aims to establish the existence of content as common ground between representational and relational views of perception. This goes against proponents of ‘austere’ relationalism who deny that content plays a substantive role in philosophical explanations of conscious perceptual experience. Though Siegel’s argument purports to be neutral with respect to the metaphysics of perception, it relies upon an equivocation between the presentation of property-types and property-instances. Consequently, the argument begs the question against the austere relational view, and so fails to establish the desired conclusion. So while relationalists can and should allow that experiences have accuracy conditions, it does not follow from this that they have contents of any philosophically interesting or significant kind.
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  • Publication
    Does Attention Exist?
    (British Undergraduate Philosophy Society, 2007-07)
    The introduction to the Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau‑Ponty 2002: 34)
 states that “Attention… as a general and formal activity, does not exist”. This paper examines the meaning and truth of this difficult and surprising statement, along with its implications for the account of perception given by theorists such as Fred Dretske (1988) and Christopher Peacocke (1983). In order to elucidate Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of human perception, I present two alternative models of how attention might be thought to operate. The first is derived from the works of the aforementioned theorists and is, I argue, based upon a largely inaccurate computational or mechanistic understanding of the mind. The second is drawn from the work of Merleau-Ponty and cognitive scientist and philosopher, Alva Noë, and takes into account some recent neurological theories concerning the role of attention in human consciousness. On the basis of these models I argue that attention is an essential, rather than incidental, characteristic of consciousness that is constitutive of both thought and perception, and which cannot be understood in terms of the independent faculty or ‘general and unconditioned power’ that Dretske et al.’s account requires. I conclude by considering two potential counterexamples to my argument, and evaluate the threat that these pose to the phenomenological model.
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