the secret of human wit?
our skill to make Pindaric flights
remaining down to earth.

Erik Cambria

University of Stirling

The title of my project, born from the collaboration between the University of Stirling, Sitekit Labs and the MIT Media Lab, is ‘Application of Common Sense Computing to enable the development of next-generation Semantic Web applications’. My research work consists in merging AI and Semantic Web techniques to perform auto-categorization, improve HCI and ultimately emulate human intelligence.

A or B, too vague
Am I who I used to be?
Leibniz disagrees.

Liam Vaughan

University of Leeds

My dissertation is entitled “Is there any good reason to believe in the existence of temporal parts?” I work on disproving Leibniz’s Law that for two objects to be identical they must have exactly the same properties, since this fails to apply for one object changing over time.

Story strands weaving
thick digital tapestry –
Wind: perspective shifts.

Debbie Maxwell

University of Dundee

My dissertation explores the connections and relationships between traditional storytelling and new media. It blends four stories together; my own personal journey as a fledgling storyteller, the development of a storytelling club, storytellers’ reflections on new media, and new media students’ reactions to storytelling.

Reborn, resurgent –
Lesson for empire anew –
Mute mistress of myth.

Quentin Broughall

N.U.I. Maynooth, Republic of Ireland.

Thesis title: ‘The rehabilitation of ancient Rome in English culture, c.1870-1918’.
My thesis explores the cultural dynamics inherent in the resurgence of a Roman cultural model in English society during this period, particularly in relation to contemporary conceptions of the country’s national imperial aspirations.

Hallucinations
Voices – will they help or harm ?
enduring belief

Emese Csipke

University of Manchester

My PhD disseration was about how people with schizophrenia characterise the voices they hear, what motivations they ascribe to the voices and that beliefs about the benevolence or malevolence of voices remain strong even if the voices disappear. These beliefs are the source of more distress than the actual voices themselves.

Legitimacy?
Peaceful representations
By his painted strokes.

Kristina Decker

University College Cork, Ireland

I am writing my dissertation on the series of ceiling paintings by Vincenzo Waldré, in St. Patrick’s Hall, Dublin Castle that depict peaceful interactions between the Irish and English and benefits brought to Ireland through its connection with Britain, and how these paintings work to legitimize British political authority in Ireland in the context of the late eighteenth century.

Here, fishy, fishy
Please bite my delicious hook
I need a fin clip

Matt Siegle

University of British Columbia

I am investigating divergent selection in rockfish to see what environmental factors might promote local adaptation and how this fits into our general understanding of population connectivity.

Lobby the landlords
For plowshares and pitchforks
To cut and stab them

Joel Parker

Tel Aviv University

Akram al-Hawrani was an important nationalist politician in Syria who introduced subversive agricultural and military reforms after Syrian independence in 1946. In 1963, he was exiled by a younger generation of military officers more radical than himself.

Encrypt shall you,
Is the cipher secure?
I do not agree.

Orr Dunkelman

Technion (Isreal Institute of Technology)

My thesis is about analyzing the strength of various block ciphers, and introducing new techniques for this analysis.

Short Story Sequence
Genre of community;
Together, alone

Jeff Birkenstein

University of Kentucky, 2003

By jettisoning and adapting traditional narrative strategies—such as plot or temporal continuity—that tend to maintain their integrity only within the confines of a single story, James Joyce and Sherwood Anderson (and many authors since) use the genre of the short story sequence to present community in ways different from either the novel or the short story. Whether or not the characters in the stories understand these connections, they are connected through community even as they often remain isolated and alone.

Greenhouse gases rise
Stable boundary layer
“Whole farm” emissions

Laura A. Wittebol

McGill University

Fluxes of the greenhouse gases CO2, N2O, and methane at two eastern Canadian agricultural farms were measured using the nocturnal boundary layer budget method, which gave nighttime “whole farm” estimates. Results from this method were compared with other micrometeorological methods and a flux aggregation method.

Appendix, molars
Vestigial limbs be gone!
Vital? I think not.

Meghan

This has nothing to do with my dissertation. It is instead an homage dedicated to my former supervisor, with whom I recently parted ways. It was not amicable.

Romance, between words,
Has e’er dazed souls – brains – bodies.
You, reader, aren’t safe.

Hannah K. H. Kirby

University of Oxford

I’m researching the physical, gendered effects of romantic desire in characters and readers of prose fiction throughout time, drawing on the neurobiologial consistencies of the love concept. I address histories of authorship and readership, and find that authors tend both to favour ambiguities and to locate the power of their work in the fissures surrounding language and its participants – meaning that much of the interpretive onus (as well as its effects) remains with the reader.

they select babies
like shoes, desire blinding
from birth parent pain

Lisa Marie Rollins

University of California, Berkeley

My work focuses on the phenomenon of adoption of black and African children by white parents by examining the insertion of transracial adoption into African Diasporic history as a place for identification for displaced black bodies, and the construction of black women’s bodies during slavery as having an impact on adoption discourse ideas of motherhood and parenting in the United States.

 

Welcome, winds of change!
Oppressors can’t pay the cost,
Your perfect storm strikes!

Katrina Nowak Dusek

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

My thesis investigates patterns of pre-transition opposition-regime interaction that affect post-transition democratic trajectory in East Central Europe. Specifically, I develop a model for pre-transition interaction, a “mobilization-liberalization cycle”, which is driven by the cost to a regime to repress an opposition. Five case studies demonstrate that in countries with comparatively mild regime atmospheres, patterns of interaction resulted in mature oppositions and therefore more favorable democratic trajectories. Conversely, in countries with severe regime atmospheres, such patterns did not develop and no mature opposition was formed. In these cases, regimes were able to dictate the terms of transition, and the path to democratic consolidation was compromised.

 

With fire, woodland thrives.
With water, rainforest spreads.
Two systems, or one?

Laura Warman

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Rainforest and fire-prone (pyrophytic) vegetation in the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland are usually approached as two independent biological systems that happen to occur close together. My project examines whether they can be considered alternative stable states within single large complex system.

 

Chiral Induction
strokes my mind with Organic
(chemist) Seduction

השראה כיראלית
מלטפת ברוך את
תת ההכרה

Anat Milo

Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

My research is focused on developing solid-state organic-inorganic hybrid materials for the induction of chirality upon various organic transformations.

Medieval cities –
Not as dirty as we think.
Muck and filth cleaned up.

Dolly Jørgensen

University of Virginia

In my PhD dissertation, I examined sanitation practices in English and Scandinavian urban areas from 1350 to 1600. Using both written and archeological evidence, I defined the roles of city corporations and individuals in street maintenance, waste management, and river cleansing, and found working social and technological systems that kept the urban space relatively free from waste.

reveal the tacit
logic of your strategy
to make it better

Roberto Perez-Franco

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I am developing a methodology to help practitioners improve the supply chain strategy of their firms. The methodology calls for making explicit the tacit logic of their functional strategies, as a prerequisite for evaluating and improving them.

 

Silent falling snow.
A snowflake melts in my hand.
No more frozen tears.

John T. Bridge

My dissertation examines the relationship between the physical act of crying and the cathartic release of emotional trauma in the therapeutic setting. This reveals in more detail the intimate relationship between the mind and the body.