http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/159 2026-06-24T08:56:20Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/33401 Title: Everybody is somebody: Personhood in the context of disabled children with complex needs Authors: Hüffmann, Maren Abstract: This study explores fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of human completeness through its focus on people who challenge conventional definitions of Western personhood: children with learning disability, complex physical and sensory impairment, and additional health needs, which cause them to be dependent on others for their most basic needs. It does so through prolonged ethnographic research, which draws upon interdisciplinary sensory and phenomenological approaches, with children, their parents, and their other carers in a special school in England. By capturing the children’s lived experiences in ways that are often absent from the literature—which tends to portray disabled children with complex needs as passive recipients of care—the study offers a unique perspective on my participants’ subjectivities, examining how interactions between the children, and between children and adults, assist in constituting them as persons in their own right. I explored the children’s lives from different angles and beyond the boundaries of the school where I interacted with them directly. Like other human beings they do not live in isolation, if marginalised. Their lives are enmeshed with those of others as well as situated in society’s normative structures. Within the protective environment of school, they find a space to assert themselves in their own unique ways. In addition, their very existence acts as a disruptor of commonly known ways of thinking and being. They challenge the value of categories, not only those applied to them, but more generally the normative viewpoints that guide everyday life in the UK. Viewed both through phenomenological and Foucauldian lenses, their lives highlight dimensions of lived experiences, which appear subdued in lives of verbal, rationally thinking humans, or are not considered as valid for inclusion in reflections on personhood. These children’s ways of being draws attention to the sensory layers of human existence and its enmeshment with the wider environment. Within this context the notion of a person can be more clearly conceived to be a doing, rather than a being. Personhood, here, is perceived as an activity linked to the embodied intentional reaching out into the world. Highlighting this also emphasises the extent of their marginalisation and barriers to inclusion in UK society. Description: This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/27657 Title: Looking at ethnic cleansing in Palestine from the occupied Syrian Golan Authors: Kastrinou, M Abstract: The unfolding genocide in Palestine today is a continuation of Israel’s 75-year-old occupation and ethnic cleansing. This article provides a perspective on the ongoing tragedy from the vantage point of the Golan Heights – often referred to as Israel’s ‘forgotten occupation.’ How are the stateless Syrians experiencing this war? And why do ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ reverberate as strongly here as in the rest of Palestine and Israel? By threading the current genocide to the story of occupation and ethnic cleansing in the Golan Heights, this article discusses the underlying settler-colonial assumptions about religious purity and war that have fuelled imperialist projects in occupied Syria and Palestine, and in the wider region.[1] Description: [1] Acknowledgement: Many thanks to colleagues and friends in the Golan Heights who despite the war read through and made suggestions; to colleagues at Brunel University, especially Isak Niehaus, Gareth Dale and Mark Neocleous; to Vera Sajrawi, and to Steven Emery. Kastrinou’s current research about the Golan Heights is supported by the Druze Heritage Foundation, London.; [2] All names are pseudonyms and some details have been altered in order to ensure my interlocutors’ anonymity. 2023-11-16T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/26035 Title: Illegal logging and nature conservation in Indonesian Borneo Authors: Thung, Paul Hasan Description: This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/25177 Title: Sacrifice, suffering and hope: education, aspiration and young people’s affective orientations to the future Authors: Froerer, P; Ansell, N; Huijsmans, R Abstract: In this editorial introduction to the Special Theme, Sacrifice, Suffering and Hope: Education, Aspiration and Young People’s Affective Orientations to the Future, we discuss the key theoretical themes (aspiration, sacrifice and affect) that underpin the papers in this collection. With geographical focus on India, Indonesia, Kenya and Bangladesh, our aim is to contribute a more ethnographically-grounded understanding of the affective orientations that emerge or become visible in the context of young people’s educational experiences, and that shape and give meaning to processes of aspiration formation. Description: For this project, field research was conducted in remote, rural India, Laos and Lesotho. For further details: https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/Projects/Education-aspiration. 2022-06-06T00:00:00Z